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Israel Resource Review |
4th May, 1998 |
Contents:
Israel at Fifty
Makes an Offer "Territories for Peace", Not
"Territories Before Peace"
by David S. Bedein, MSW,
Media Research Analyst
Bureau Chief: Israel Resource News Agency
Beit Agron International Press Center, Jerusalem
On the occaision of Israel's fiftieth anniversary, the Jewish state
finally finds itself in full scale peace process, following formal peace
treaties signed with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994).
That is because of a surprising turn in Israeli public opinion, which
now widely accepts 1974 Yariv-ShemTov formula of "territories for
peace", which at the time it was suggested was embraced by less than 15
members of Israel's 120-member Knesset parliament. Yet by the 1996
Israeli elections, 118 members elected to Israel's Knesset had run on
platforms that favored and endorsed the concept of territories for
peace, as embodied in the 1993 Oslo accords signed on the White House
lawn by US President Bill Clinton, PLO leader Yassir Arafat and the late
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
This most recent Israeli election occurred at a time of unprecedented
Israeli-Arab cooperation in almost all fields of endeavor.
Israel's level of exports to Arab countries, some of whom are still in a
formal state of war with Israel, has surpassed a billion dollars.
Israel's former Minister of Public Security, Attorney Moshe Shachal,
who recently resigned the Knesset to resume his law practice, now
represents Arab countries from the Gulf States.
Israel's former military liason to the west bank and the Palestine
Authority, General Oren Shachor, now exports soft drinks to Kuwait,
working with Palestinian partners, some of whom spent years in Israeli
prisons.
Likud member of Knesset Gideon Ezra, a career Israeli intelligence
officer, opened a firm together with Palestinian partners to locate
stolen vehicles.
The examples of economic cooperation are matched by a new social milieu
- No less than five hundred Arab-Jewish reconciliation
organizations are now registered with Israel's Registrar of Non-Profit
Organizations, some of which have been initiated by Arabs.
Indeed, Palestinian Arab journalist Daoud Kuttab, Arafat's press liason
during the Intifada riots of the late eighties, intiated a private
media firm that cooperates with Israeli and American tv companies to
produce the first Middle East "Sesame Street" to encourage Israeli and
Arab children to play together without stereotypes and hatred.
You can ask the obvious question With all this cooperation, why are
the peace talks between Israel and the new Palestine Authority so bogged
down?
Have Israelis lost their desire for peace. I would think not. Have
Palestinian Arabs had second thoughts? Not in my judgement.
As a religious Jew and a social work professional , I have the
opportunity to participate in timely dialogues with Palestinian Arabs
from all walks of life. The Palestinian Arab people want peace. So what
is holding up the works?
Well, there is the institution known as the United Nations, which in
Jerusalem is headquartered on what the New Testament refers to as the
"Hill of Evil Counsel".
The UN, back in 1949, established UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and
Works Agency, that now plays host to more than three million
Palestinian Arab refugees who are descended from the 650,000 Arabs who
left the area that became known as the new state of Israel, at a time
that Israel absorbed more than 800,000 Jews who left the Arab countries.
Such a population exchange is not rare in the twentieth century, except
that the way that the UN chose to deal with the issue was exceptional -
by confining the Arab refugees to the squalor of transient huts, where
they have languished for almost fifty years, under the proscribed UN
resolution #194 promise and premise of the "right of return" to homes
and villages that no longer exist, with absolutely no UN right to
compensation for the property that the Arabs lost in 1948 .
The idea of a west bank/Gaza Palestinian entity may be acceptable to the
one million Palestinians who see the west bank and Gaza as their home,
but not to the vast majority of Palestinians who live in the UN refugee
camps of the west bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
Tragically, one of the first laws of the new Palestine Authority,
established in 1994, was to forbid improvements on the UNRWA camps,
based on the legislated UN promise and premise of the "right of return"
to what Israel proper.
In the heart of Samaria, in an area under the Palestine Authority area
of control, sits a mountain of 1,300 empty homes that were built to
house Palestinian Arab refugees, constructed with generous funds
provided by a Catholic charity with Israeli encouragement.
However, United Nations retains a guard at the foot of the hill,
ensuring that no Palestinian Arab refugee will move into these
homes. According to a United Nations decsion in 1985, any such move into
any such permanent housing would violate the "inalienable right of
return " of Palestinian Arabs.
Many people are inclined to believe that Yassir Arafat's willingness to
sign a peace accord with Israel was based on new Arab willingness to
accept what for them would be a historic compromise that would limit
Palestinian Arab sovereignty to the west bank and Gaza, with some
linkage to East Jerusalem. That was the basis on which Arafat was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a ceremony which I covered in Oslo.
On that occasion, I asked Arafat whether he would indeed relinquish
the greater Palestinian vision that demanded the "right of return" of
three million Palestinian Arabs. Arafat would not answer my question. I
also asked Arafat if he would disarm the Hamas. Arafat again would not
answer. The answers to my questions were not long in coming. In May
1995, Arafat authorized weaponry for the Hamas. In December 1995,
Arafat signed a pact with the Hamas, to include them in the Palestine
Authority. And in April 1996, my TV crew covered the session of the
Palestine National Council, which was supposed to cancel the PLO
state of war against the state of Israel and agree to a "west
bank/Gaza" entity. At that session, Arafat would only authorize the
PNC to establish of a committee to consider "changes" in the PLO
constitution.
And, most recently, on April 19, 1998, Arafat told Egyptian television,
that, indeed, "all options are open before the Palestinian people",
and that, as an Arab Moslem leader, Arafat had signed the Oslo accords
in the context of the historic Khudaibiya agreement that was made by
Muhammad with the tribe of Koreish. The Khudaibiya agreement, slated to
last for ten years, was broken within two years, when Muhammad's forces
- having used the peace pact to become stronger - massacred the Koreish
tribe.
So much for the concept of "territories for peace".
Shortly before his death, I interviewed Aharon Yariv, the Israeli
general and former IDF intelligence chief who had first conceptualized
the idea of territories for peace.
Yariv said to me that "people today misunderstand the Yariv-Shemtov
formula. We offered `territories for peace', not `territories before
peace' ...", said Yariv.
That formula constitutes the risk that the government and people of
Israel are ready to make.
All indications are that the Palestinian Arab people are ready for such
a formula.
Tragically, the United Nations and the new Palestine Authority, under
the leadership of Yassir Arafat, are not.
That remains the complex legacy of peace for Israel's fiftieth birthday.
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