19.06. 2009
http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000700.html
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Zionism & Israel Center http://zionism-israel.com
No 'return' of Palestinian refugees to Israel These three conditions form the core of the Israeli case, and efforts at justifying and explaining the case for Israeli peace should focus on them, and not be distracted by gimmicks and side issues such as settlement freezes and outposts. In a hundred years, it will not matter if there was or was not a settlement freeze. But the decision on every one of the above issues will matter for as long as there is a Jewish state and a Jewish people. Palestinians have understood this longer than we have. It is no accident that they have objected strenuously to all three conditions, because they are the heart of peace for Israel. The aim of pro-Palestinian propaganda in the west is to divert attention from the focus of the conflict, defined in those issues, where the Israeli case is strong, to the issue of settlement freeze, and to force a split between the United States and Israel. Regrettably, some of the pro-Israel reaction in recent days has served the Palestinians very well. The delegation of the USSR maintains that the decision to partition Palestine is in keeping with the high principles and aims of the United Nations. It is in keeping with the principle of the national self-determination of peoples.... The excuse of the Arab states and Palestinians is that recognition of a Jewish state would cause Israel to expel its Arab citizens. Any such recognition of course, can add the infamously misinterpreted, but still fair provision of the Balfour declaration, "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities." Both the right of the Jewish people and the qualifying provision are international law, embodied in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine Not one of these requirements is new, and they have all been stated before, but this is the first time they were put together in the context of a policy statement regarding the peace process. Read more here: Israeli policy after Netanyahu's speech
The speech was a workmanlike and competent component that be the basis of a reasonable foreign policy. It served several very important purposes. The first was to return some of the "peace process" initiative to Israel, and to counter some of the extreme diplomatic isolation that Israel experienced following the installation of the Netanyahu government. The second was to pay the necessary debt to Barack Obama in his quest for Middle East peace. The third and most important was to provide a relatively clear policy statement and delineation of Israeli rights around three principles:
No division of Jerusalem
Palestinians must recognize the right of the Jewish people to self determination.
The three conditions are pretty close both to Israeli consensus and to the bare minimum that Israel would need in order for the peace treaty to have any value. For Israel, peace means recognition of the right of the Jewish people to self determination; that is what the whole conflict has been about. It was a grave error not to include some such clause in treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Of course, if Israel had to accept hordes of 'returning' refugees (most of whom never lived in the places to which they want to 'return') there could be no Jewish state. The Arabs are well aware of this.
It is true that Israel existed for 19 years without the old city of Jerusalem, and even today, Jerusalem is not recognized as part of Israel by the United States, and certainly not by the Arabs. Israel can exist without Jerusalem, but it could not have peace. For Jerusalem is a symbol not only to Jews, but to the entire world. Whoever controls Jerusalem in history, has always, in the long run, controlled the land. Without Jerusalem, Israel will be, in the eyes of the Arab states and the world, something like the crusader states after the conquest of Salah al Din. The Palestinians could, and would, view the "peace" as a step in the famous staged destruction of Israel. Of course, even the Hamas are willing to "accept" a Palestinian state provided they can wrest Jerusalem from the Jews and flood Israel with refugees, and provided they do not have to recognize a Jewish state. But in reality, Fatah conditions are no different. Mahmoud Abbas stated the Palestinian position on Right of Return and on Jerusalem in an interview he gave in 2000, and different officials reiterated them many times since. The refusal to recognize a Jewish state was added as soon as the issue was first raised by Ehud Olmert.
None of these conditions are new or harsh. Israel's first governments resisted return of refugees. United Jerusalem has been the policy of the Israeli government since it was annexed. The right of the Jewish people to self determination is actually an international consensus. Not only was the Jewish state mentioned in UN General Assembly Resolution 181. It was asserted by no less a personage than Soviet Ambassador Andrei Gromyko in UN debates preceding the passage of the Palestine Partition Resolution:
The solution of the Palestine problem based on a partition of Palestine into two separate states will be of profound historical significance, because this decision will meet the legitimate demands of the Jewish people
Mr Netanyahu also took the opportunity to explain that the Israeli-Arab conflict did not begin in 1967 and therefore could not be due to settlements, and that Israel, despite the implications of Barack Obama's speech, was not founded because of the Holocaust. It is always important to use such speeches to remind the world of basic truths, which have been attacked and diluted incessantly by Arab world propaganda and anti-Zionist "narratives."
Mr. Netanyahu seems to have grasped the cardinal rule of Israeli foreign policy that has been in place since the foundation of the state: Israel can never allow itself to lose the support of the United States by seeming to be against peace. Therefore it was important that Netanyahu welcomed the Obama peace initiative and proposed a plan that meets at least some of the conditions set forth by Mr. Obama, by Secretary of State Clinton, and by special envoy George Mitchell.
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