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Lawrence J.
Haas
Read Larry's bio and previous columns
July 7, 2009
Two-State Delusions in the Middle East
“Hope springs eternal
in the human breast,” Alexander Pope wrote in 1733, as if presaging the
seemingly endless search for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
On this issue, hope
springs to life especially with the change of political seasons in
Washington, Jerusalem and other key capitals. New leaders assume office,
promising to apply new energy and new approaches to a conflict that has
dogged the Middle East and bedeviled the world for decades.
And so it is with
President Obama, who vows a renewed U.S. engagement in the Middle East,
and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently announced
his conditions for supporting the so-called “two-state solution” –
Israel and a new state of Palestine living side-by-side in peace.
But, alas, the hope of
today blinds us to the historical reality that, on this issue, “what’s
old is new again.” Simply put, what underlies the conflict between
Israelis and Palestinians and makes peace elusive has not changed in any
real way since Zionists first sought to turn the promise of the Balfour
Declaration of 1917 – that Jews should have a national home in Palestine
– into a State of Israel.
As Obama and his team
seek success where earlier administrations failed, they would do well to
1) read two new books about the roots of today’s conflict – One
State, Two States, by Middle East scholar Benny Morris, and A
Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel, by
historians Allis and Ronald Radosh; and 2) then compare today’s
Palestinian leadership with that of its predecessors.
For in their hopes and
aspirations, their rhetoric and activities, today’s Palestinian leaders
mirror their predecessors. They reject Israel’s existence as a Jewish
state, and they seek to control the full area from the Jordan River to
the Mediterranean Sea.
Benny Morris’s tale is
surely the more depressing. He argues that, in the early 20th
Century, Zionist and Palestinian leaders both sought to control the full
area of Palestine after the British mandate expired. But whereas the
Zionists eventually bowed to political reality and sought compromise in
a two-state solution, Palestinian leaders never made this transition,
rejecting any notion of a Jewish state within their midst.
“The Palestinian
national movement started life with a vision and goal of a Palestinian
Muslim Arab-majority state in all of Palestine – a one-state ‘solution’
– and continues to espouse and aim to establish such a state down to the
present day,” Morris writes.
The historical evidence
is compelling. For how different is the rejectionism of the Arab states’
“point man” in the 1930s, Iraqi Prime Minister Hikmat Sulaiman, from
that of today’s Palestinian leaders?
After Britain’s Peel
Commission in 1937 recommended two states in Palestine – one for Jews,
one for Arabs – Sulaiman declared, “Any person venturing to agree to act
as Head of such a (partial Palestinian) State would be regarded as an
outcast throughout the Arab world, and would incur the wrath of Moslems
all over the East.”
Today, even “moderate”
leaders like Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reject the
idea of a Jewish-majority Israel (as do, according to polls, most
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza). After Netanyahu called last
month for a two-state solution that would guarantee Israel’s Jewish
character, the PLO Executive Committee secretary labeled him “a liar and
a crook.”
Allis and Ronald Radosh
tell a far more uplifting tale, for they chronicle the political courage
of President Truman as he fought the British and his own State
Department first to push for a two-state solution and then to quickly
recognize Israel almost immediately after its official founding in 1948.
Arab rejectionism is a
pervasive theme of their story as well. Palestinian and Arab leaders
pressured British leaders and the State Department to not allow the
creation of a Jewish-majority state in Palestine.
With the United Nations
poised in late 1946 to decide the fate of Palestine, the authors write,
“the Arab states remained steadfast in their position: Palestine must be
an Arab state in which Jews could live as a minority.”
More than a
half-century later, the problem remains: For a two-state solution to
work, each state must accept the reality of the other.
With mutual respect,
peace is achievable. Without it, not even the most creative and
energetic U.S. president will succeed.
© 2009
North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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