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The Israel we need is not the one we’ve got

Yoram Peri, an Israeli patriot who has fought in three wars for his country and now directs the University of Maryland’s new Institute for Israel Studies, gave a post-service talk Friday night at our local synagogue.  His family has lived in Palestine and Israel since the 1860s.  What he had to say about the collapse of the Israel/Palestine peace talks and Israel’s politics may interest readers.  Here is what I remember of his impassioned presentation.*

Contrary to what has been reported, Yoram understands that Mahmoud Abbas was prepared to make major concessions in the US-sponsored negotiations.  Palestine would be demilitarized.  Eighty per cent of the Jewish population living beyond the wall would remain in placed.  Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem would not be disturbed.  Israeli troops would remain in the Jordan River valley for five years and then be replaced by American troops for another five years.  Israel would decide how many displaced and refugee Palestinians would be able to return to Israel proper.

Abbas was asking in return that Israel specify within a few months exactly where the border would lie (presumably based on swaps for land in the West Bank kept by Israel).  Jerusalem would be Palestine’s capital.  If Yoram mentioned other important Palestinian requirements, I am not remembering them.

Netanyahu rejected this offer.  His coalition has too many hardline settler supporters to allow him to accept.  Nor is he himself interested in making peace.  He is more comfortable talking about the Holocaust.

But when Abbas made a strong statement on the Holocaust to mark Yom HaShoah, Netanyahu rejected it as public relations.  Likewise, Netanyahu has complained for years that Abbas can’t deliver on peace with Israel because the Palestinian Authority he leads does not control Gaza.  Now that Hamas, which does control Gaza, has pledged to join a Palestinian Authority government consisting of “technical” ministers, Netanyahu says he won’t negotiate because then the Palestinian government will include terrorists.

Yoram thinks Hamas, as part of a unity government, will have to accept the “Quartet” (US, Russia, EU and UN) conditions for participation in the peace talks:  mutual recognition, acceptance of previous agreements, and ending violence as a means of attaining goals.  Abbas has also said as much.  If Hamas does accept these conditions, why wouldn’t Israel negotiate with it?  Yoram suggests there is no harm in talking with them to see what is possible.

Israel’s reluctance to accept a good deal with the Palestinians is rooted in the evolution of its politics.  The weight of the ultra religious has increased enormously.  And what the ultra religious want has also changed.  Whereas traditionally Jews are prohibited from praying on the Temple Mount (they pray only at the Wailing Wall at its base), some ultra religious militants are demanding not only to pray there but also to destroy the Dome of the Rock mosque and rebuild the ancient temple.  Only a few years ago, only fringe lunatics held such views.  Now they are entering mainstream discourse.

Israel officially accepts only Jewish orthodoxy as legitimate.  There are few reform synagogues.  Most of Israel’s Jews are either orthodox or secular.  They know nothing of the more liberal Reform Judaism practiced in the United States.  What is needed is a reverse birthright program:  one that brings young Israelis to the United States to learn about modern Jewish practices.

Ultimately, Yoram suggests the problem for Israel is the one John Kerry made recent reference to:  if it holds on to the West Bank, it cannot remain both democratic and Jewish.  The demography will require it to deny equal rights to the Arabs who live there, thus eventually meriting the appellation “apartheid.”  This is an opinion many Israeli leaders have expressed, so it is hard to understand why it caused such a furor recently in the US.

Israel faces a difficult future.  A third intifada is a possibility, though the Palestinians seem weary of the violence associated with the first two.  A nonviolent one is possible, a well-informed Arab journalist told me recently, but only after dissolving the Palestinian Authority, so it would not be faced with the difficulty of repressing the rebellion.  Yoram suggested the BDS (boycotts, disinvestment and sanctions) movement will grow.  Israel will increasingly stand alone against a world that regards it as extreme and uncompromising.  Rather than being a beacon of hope, it will be isolated in a hostile environment.

Asked about the future of Israel’s Arabs, Yoram suggested that its national anthem “Hatikvah” (the Hope) could be amended to be more inclusive.  This is the current version:

As long as deep in the heart,

The soul of a Jew yearns,

And forward to the East

To Zion, an eye looks

Our hope will not be lost,

The hope of two thousand years,

To be a free nation in our land,

The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

I have my doubts any amendment will satisfy Israel’s more than 20% Arab citizens, but the Israel that would at least give it a try would also be one that signed up for the deal Mahmoud Abbas was offering.  That unfortunately is not the Israel we’ve got.  But it is the Israel we need.

*Virtually all of what Yoram said about what the Palestinians were prepared to agree has now been published, based on American sources:  Inside the talks’ failure: US officials open up.