A Palestinian youth throws a stone toward Israeli border police in East Jerusalem on Oct. 12, 2010.AMMAR AWAD/Reuters
On the op-ed page of Thursday's New York Times, one finds a contribution signed by Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren. The full piece is available here, but here's the nub of Mr. Oren's argument:
Just as Israel recognizes the existence of a Palestinian people with an inalienable right to self-determination in its homeland, so, too, must the Palestinians accede to the Jewish people's 3,000-year connection to our homeland and our right to sovereignty there. This mutual acceptance is essential if both peoples are to live side by side in two states in genuine and lasting peace.
So why won't the Palestinians reciprocate? After all, the Jewish right to statehood is a tenet of international law. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 called for the creation of "a national home for the Jewish people" in the land then known as Palestine and, in 1922, the League of Nations cited the "historical connection of the Jewish people" to that country as "the grounds for reconstituting their national home." In 1947, the United Nations authorized the establishment of "an independent Jewish state," and recently, while addressing the General Assembly, U.S. President Barack Obama proclaimed Israel as "the historic homeland of the Jewish people." Why, then, can't the Palestinians simply say "Israel is the Jewish state"?
The reason, perhaps, is that so much of Palestinian identity as a people has coalesced around denying that same status to Jews. "I will not allow it to be written of me that I have ... confirmed the existence of the so-called Temple beneath the Mount," Yasir Arafat told president Bill Clinton in 2000.
For Palestinians, recognizing Israel as a Jewish state also means accepting that the millions of them residing in Arab countries would be resettled within a future Palestinian state and not within Israel, which their numbers would transform into a Palestinian state in all but name. Reconciling with the Jewish state means that the two-state solution is not a two-stage solution leading, as many Palestinians hope, to Israel's dissolution.
The core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the refusal to recognize Jews as a people, indigenous to the region and endowed with the right to self-government. Criticism of Israeli policies often serves to obscure this fact, and peace continues to elude us. By urging the Palestinians to recognize us as their permanent and legitimate neighbors, Prime Minister Netanyahu is pointing the way out of the current impasse: he is identifying the only path to co-existence.
Over at USA Today, one finds an editorial board interview with Maen Rashid Areikat, the Palestine Liberation Organization's representative to the United States. The transcript is available here, but here's the nub of Mr. Areikat's argument:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to support a new settlement freeze if Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Is this workable?
The Israeli government is fixated on short-term gains. Netanyahu is negotiating with his coalition partners. He is not negotiating with us. All he is trying to do is to please the right-wing parties in his coalition. As long as he continues doing that, I don't see how we can make progress toward a resolution.
You sound very pessimistic. Is this immediate peace effort dead?
I am not saying that it is. The U.S. administration will be preoccupied with the midterm elections now. The one month just gives them time after the midterms to try once again to revive it. But are we going to take a different approach?
How do we get to that different approach?
Everybody in this room would give me the same parameters that I agree will be needed to resolve the conflict. The two-state solution, the sharing of Jerusalem, the agreed resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem, security guarantees for Israel, sharing the water resources. That is why we have to set a time frame and tell the parties we have to reach that target and figure out what the endgame is going to look like.
Are the settlements really that important?
People don't understand the impact of these settlements and settlers. To us these are people who are there to uproot us and to take our places. It is an existential threat for us because they are some of the most hard-line Israelis in the world. They don't believe in coexistence….
Many Israelis are concerned that Palestinians are negotiating for a two-state solution as a way to get to a two-stage solution - and that the second stage is the rest of the land. How do you see this playing out?
I don't think that given the status of Israel and its military capabilities, that it's even realistic to think that the Palestinians will be able to get more than what the international community and what the Palestinians want. We are focusing on the future state in the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem. The Israelis are stuck in the mentality of today. We should think about a new order after we sign a peace agreement with them. Why can't we think of Israelis driving back through Palestinian cities and villages and coming for shopping and we go to Jaffa and Haifa to sit on the beach? Why not think of a new order where we can live in peace? Why do we always think about the day after as being rockets, Israeli shells, Palestinians attacks? We need to change that paradigm. If we don't do that, we will be stuck in today and we will never move forward.