David Solway on Prospecting for Peace

David Solway , writing in Pajamas Media has perhaps the best estimate for peace parameters for a Israeli Palestinian deal in at least a generation. Prospects? It's a salted mine at best.

Surely, it has become obvious by this time, after sixty-plus years of tractionless discussions and bloody confrontations, that the current negotiating paradigm of Israeli concessions for Palestinian recalcitrance, that is, land for no peace and a raft of further demands, is simply not working, nor is it going to work. Why the Israeli leadership ever embarked on so fruitless a project is beyond rational explanation. In matters of life and death, unanchored hope is no substitute for hard-headed assaying and a grounding in history. For peace to have even an unhouseled ghost of a chance, several correlative concessions on the part of the Palestinians would be absolutely mandatory. For example:

The Palestinians would have to agree that a Palestinian state would be no more
Judenrein than Israel would be, let’s say, Muslimrein; there are one and half million Arabs resident in Israel, most of whom will not surrender their Israeli
citizenship. Why then should 300,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria be evicted
from their homes?

The Palestinians would have to realize that their insistence on the “right of return” to Israel of seven million so-called “refugees” is a complete nonstarter, and must be dropped from their negotiating position. Israel is not about to commit demographic suicide.

They will be required to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

They will have to accept Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and Ramallah as the capital of Palestine.

They will need to be reminded that the “green line” is not an officially ratified international border but merely a temporary armistice line, allowing for adjustments that ensure Israel’s retention of strategic depth. For the Palestinian Authority to assume that its proposed or unilaterally declared state would abut the pre-1967 borders is a violation of UN Resolution 242. Moreover, Clause 5(2)of the Rhodes Armistice Agreement of 1949 stipulates that “In no sense are the ceasefire lines to be interpreted as political or territorial borders” and that they do not affect “the final disposition of the Palestine question.”

They will consent to cease promulgating anti-Jewish hatred in media and mosque and to erase anti-Israeli incitement from textbook and classroom.

Given Israel’s meager territorial scale and the volatility and inherent violence in the region, especially the aggressive meddling of Iran in local affairs, the smuggling of rockets and other armaments threatening Israel, and the inroads made by al-Qaeda and its offshoots, the Palestinian Authority will be compelled to permit a defensive Israeli presence in the adjacent hill country.

This is how the majority of Israelis feel about ANY peace deal. Enough is enough. The current bankrupt Clinton era model nutures the maintenance of a welfare warring entity known as the Palestinian Authority based on foreign handouts, domestic extortion, and violence.

Put simply, we often have to do what we would prefer not having to do. In private life, such constraints may be financial or medical, but the ultimate purpose is survival — just as it is in the realm of national existence, even if this means having to stay on a permanent war footing. If you have to take insulin, then you have to take insulin, or die. If you have to pay down a mortgage, then you have to pay down a mortgage, or lose your house. And if you are dealing with an enemy that has a 1400 year history of conquest and spoliation, and which is committed to your annihilation, then you must remain in a state of perennial military readiness and be prepared to defend yourself in perpetuity. Clearly, this is not a pleasant option but, unfortunately, there is no other feasible alternative. What is true for people is also true for a people. I, for one, cannot see the value in pretending otherwise.

Israel cannot afford to capitulate, not only to its self-declared enemies but to its own passionate yearning for peace. Falling backwards over the possibility of peace is a bungled negotiating paradigm, as Oslo made painfully clear. Any Israeli politician still hooked on Oslo represents a threat to his country. The same applies to the Israeli left — Kadima, Labor, Meretz, Haaretz, the peace constituencies, a treasonable professoriate and many NGOs — who are essentially a pack of useful jewdiots, victims-in-waiting of their own self-immolating policies.

Perhaps this, in addition to his own personalized sense of aggrandizement, is what motivated Ehud Barak to break ranks with the ultra left Labor Party and take a centrist political position.

Yet, this is not enough. Both Barak and Netanyahu continue the Clinton era trope. More importantly, both are more concerned with Lieberman's growing popularity and the country's continued drift to the right. Solway's assessment is much closer to the bone--they are about finished with the mishigas from the extremes on political left and the religious right. Unlike Tunisia or Turkey, Israelis are committed to living in a modern society with political as well as economic freedoms. And, they aren't stupid.