There
is a ‘hiding in plain sight’ corollary to the heartfelt debate in the Jewish
community over Peter Beinart’s recent New York Times opinion piece “I No
Longer Believe In A Jewish State”. The inconvenient and oft-overlooked truth
that Israelis and Jews of varied political persuasions seem unable to wrap
their minds around is this: ‘If the vision of an independent Jewish state, first articulated by Theodor
Herzl at the First Zionist Congress in 1897, is being laid to rest in 2020, it is Bibi, not Beinart,
who is snuffing it out.’
In
his article, Beinart persuasively points out that massive Jewish settlement of
East Jerusalem and the West Bank has deep-sixed any realistic possibility of a two
state solution; whether or not Israel moves ahead with annexation of much of
the West Bank as advocated by Prime Minister Netanyahu. Given that bleak assessment,
shared by majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians, liberal Zionists must
now adapt and struggle instead to achieve what most of us hitherto considered to
be the lesser of two evils; namely, a one state solution based on equal rights
for all its inhabitants, as opposed to an ‘apartheid’ one state solution with
the Jewish half of the population repressing the Palestinian half. To sweeten
the deal, Beinart floats the vision of a confederation known as Israel-Palestine,
in which each of the two component parts enjoy cultural autonomy and a good measure
of self-government. Yet he acknowledges that sovereignty would ultimately be
shared.
Predictably,
Beinart has been excoriated by self-proclaimed Zionists from hard right to
center-left for having renounced the cause of Jewish statehood. Yet, it was not
longstanding believers in liberal Zionism who snuffed out the dream, articulated in Israel’s national anthem Hatikvah
(The Hope) of a free Jewish state in its ancestral land. Instead, it was the Israeli right that ensured
there would be no sustainable Jewish state by flooding East Jerusalem and the West Bank with 650,000
Jewish settlers, deliberately mixing them with the Palestinian population so as
to make separation all-but-impossible.
Given that history, it
takes enormous chutzpah for Netanyahu and company to wrap themselves in the Star
of David and accuse the Jewish center-left of being anti-Zionist. They themselves
destroyed the dream of a viable Jewish state and should not be allowed to
project that sin onto the rest of us.
I write this essay as
someone who devoted nearly 50 years to advocacy for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation
which would allow Israel to survive and flourish as a Jewish state. I was
advocating for a two- state solution by the early 1980’s; more than 10 years
before Israeli officially accepted that position—at least for a time--by
signing the Oslo Accords in 1993. I felt in my gut for most of my life that if
Israel were ever, God Forbid, to be destroyed, I would not want to go on
living. Therefore I take umbrage at the Israeli right accusing me of being anti-Zionist;
usually contemptuously throwing in that extra-sweet appellation ‘self-hating
Jew’. Dear reader, I ask who is the real self-hating Jew: the person who
devotes his or her life to the fulfillment of the vision of a democratic,
Jewish state or someone sets out purposely to destroy it?
It is admittedly hard for
most of us—including myself---to fully absorb the implications of the very real
premise that the chief culprit in the demise of Zionism is the Jewish state
itself. Yet successive Israeli governments of Israel dating back to the 1970’s
deliberately erased the Green Line and flooded the area they renamed ‘Judea and
Samaria’ with Jewish settlers. To be sure, Palestinian rejectionism and
violence played an important role in convincing many Israelis to oppose
surrendering the occupied territories. Yet neither Hamas, the PFLP or Fatah
compelled Israel to create even one settlement. We did that to ourselves.
So how to explain why
successive Israeli governments seemingly took leave of their senses and sabotaged
the existence of an independent and sovereign Jewish state? The answer, I
believe, is that adherents of these policies deluded themselves into believing it
would be possible to sustain an enlarged Israel with a Jewish majority by
inducing large numbers of Palestinians to emigrate, or by forcing them out. Yet
that strategy failed to anticipate that deteriorating conditions across the Middle
East and drastic limitations on immigration in many western countries would
sharply limit the ability of Palestinians to emigrate, even if they desired to
do so. In the absence of large scale Palestinian emigration, the only solution the
Israeli right has to the demographic dilemma of maintaining a Jewish state in a
bi-national space, is to deny citizenship and basic rights to the Palestinians and
keep them under perpetual occupation.
That policy is not only immoral and un-Jewish but impossible to sustain over the long term. An occupier cannot successfully absorb a piece of land without providing for the rights and well-being of the people who live there, nor prevent an eventual growing together of constituent communities living side by side within one polity. Increasingly, we see ever-greater cultural and economic integration of so-called Israelis Arabs, and the birth of a palpable new Israeli-Palestinian identity among Arabs and Jews alike. A similar dynamic will take place over time in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, as growing numbers of Israelis and Palestinians build a vibrant network of NGOs and individuals dedicated to improving the quality of life for all, while strengthening inter-communal ties of friendship and trust.
Might the two-state solution be somehow revived? Sadly, it seems decidedly unlikely, given the Israeli government's fixation on settlement and eventual annexation; but miracles do happen and if this one does, no one will be happier than I. In the meantime, it is incumbent for those of us who care about both peoples to focus on nurturing conditions in which Israelis and Palestinians are able to live side by side in equality and peace. Whether it turns out to be one-state, a confederation or two states, we are duty- bound to fight so that it doesn't turn into apartheid.
Rather than falling into despair and mourning what should have been, let us therefore embrace a different, but equally uplifting dream: working to ensure that all the people of Israel-Palestine share equally—and rejoice together in—our precious Common Land.
