'We must return to a creative, innovative and energetic Zionism'


November 13, 2015
Sarah Benton

This posting has five more articles from the Haaretz series connected to this week’s peace conference in Tel Aviv:

1) Israel May Not Be Able to Achieve Peace, but We Need to Separate From the Palestinians, Ron Huldai argues that to preserve the Zionist ideal – that is, a state in which Jews can realise themselves as citizens (and not its degeneration into megalomaniac land-grabbing) Israeli Jews have to facilitate the creation of a separate Palestinian state. The ideal cannot be realized while Israelis govern Palestinian lives;
2) Palestine’s Fluctuating Ratings, Aluf Benn surveys the wavering positions of Israeli politicians and advises ‘if the Palestinians display endurance, they are capable of compelling Israel to change its policies’, though perhaps not under Netanyahu’s regime;
3) Held Together by Bruises, This Land Must Be Divided, the Palestinian Druze writer Salman Masalha lambasts Arabs for their initial refusal to accept Israel. Now both sides must accept that the other shares and loves the land and must co-exist in two states;
4) The World Doesn’t Care About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, it seems, writes Anshel Pfeffer, the world is indifferent to the plight of Palestinians under occupation and boycotts have no popular support [written before the EC guidelines on importing settlement products];
5) Martin Indyk Tells Israel Conference on Peace: Israelis Must Stop Playing the Victim, former US ambassador and peace envoy Martin Indyk has been involved in trying to bring about a peace agreement more than most. He picks out two obstacles: the Israeli fear of persecution, making them in-turned and over-defensive; and the ‘toxic relationship’ of mistrust between Israeli and Palestinian leaders;


The second Zionist Congress, Basel, 1898. 

Israel May Not Be Able to Achieve Peace, but We Need to Separate From the Palestinians

A huge sword hangs over Herzl’s vision. To counteract it, we have no choice but to separate from the Palestinians and draw permanent and defensible borders.

By Ron Huldai, Haaretz
November 06, 2015

Let us begin with the bottom line: For the next 20 years at least, the concept of “peace” with the Palestinians will probably not be relevant. Even the camp to which I belong, the camp that for many years has dreamed and fought for peace and believed in it with all his heart, cannot seriously talk about it today without sounding naive. The main danger we face now is not the end of the dream of peace, but the looming end of the Zionist ideal, an end that can only be prevented by a determined effort to separate from the Palestinians.

Theodor Herzl, the visionary of the state, did not promise peace; his declared objective was a Jewish state that would be a liberal and progressive home of the Jews and would ensure the welfare of its inhabitants and strive to uphold legal and social justice, equal rights and equal opportunity. A state with a guaranteed Jewish majority in which the equal rights of minorities who wish to live there would also be guaranteed.

Let us be honest: A huge sword is currently dangling over this vision. The aimless meandering along the paths of diplomatic inertia and the unending control of the lives of millions of Palestinians are eroding Israel’s democratic character and causing us to slide toward a situation in which the only state of the Jewish people will cease to be a Jewish state.

This is the gravest danger facing Israel.

In the face of this danger, the government’s ruinous inaction is all the more appalling. Netanyahu & Co. tenaciously adhere to the paths of inertia as they zealously try to maintain the current situation, failing to understand that nothing stands still in the Middle East. If you are not moving ahead, you are in retreat and fall behind, as hope is eroded and the extremist forces that seek to set the region alight are strengthened. We have been feeling the consequences of this process in the international arena for the past decade, with the growing political and economic boycotts; and on the national level in the past weeks, with the surge of Palestinian terrorism.

The way our leaders see it, the solution to the current wave of attacks is to build more settlements. In response to the absence of hope and the escalation in the security situation, our leaders want to take steps that would deepen the connection with the Palestinians rather than untangle it. In this sense, the far right is finding common cause with the vision of the far left, and is pushing toward the creation of one state for two peoples, which would in fact spell the end of the Jewish state.

As someone who has devoted many years of his life to the security of Israel and who was personally involved in our nation’s wars for survival and its dreams for peace; as someone who took part in the great victory of the Six-Day War and shared in the most difficult and anxious moments of the Yom Kippur War, I cannot be accused of naïveté. I know very well that in the Middle East there is no national revival or independence, no survival or liberty, for a state that is not capable of protecting itself, of maintaining its security and its citizens’ safety. This is all the more evident given the turmoil that has been roiling our region in recent years, with everything from lone terrorists to the dangerous nuclear program being pursued by the regime in Tehran.

In every scenario and under all circumstances, Israel must remain several steps ahead of its enemies. It must preserve its military dominance and its technological superiority. For the foreseeable future, at least, Israel will still have to live by the sword. Apparently, there is no other possibility.

Theodor Herzl at the first Zionist congress. The 1947 designers have put in the Zionist flag, left and the current Israeli flag. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But we must honestly ask ourselves: What will lead us to a more secure future, a state with a clear Jewish majority, in which the non-Jewish minority enjoys genuine and full equal rights; or a state that is home to two peoples – millions of Jews with full rights and millions of Palestinians without equal rights?

For me the answer is clear: A state in which the vast majority of inhabitants are Jews will be a much stronger and safer state, a more equal and ethical state, than one that has more territory but in which the Jews become a minority.

Indeed, we have no choice but to separate from the Palestinians and draw permanent and defensible borders. The sceptics will say, “There is no partner.” But “no partner” is the best friend of the agents of fear and despair. Yet the Israeli leadership does not have the luxury of blaming others for our situation. Even if there is scepticism about the desires of the other side, our leaders must present a clear political horizon and create the practical conditions that will help to dissolve the hostility and suspicion, and bring us closer to this objective.

Personally, I cannot say if there is a partner or not, nor do I know what the Palestinian leadership wants. I know what is right for my people and the only country I have. And I know that separating from the Palestinians will not detract from security; rather, it is the only step that can ensure security. It is the only way for anyone whose heart is still filled with the Zionist dream.

Today more than ever, Herzl, the man and his vision, should serve as a source of inspiration for us. We must return to a creative, innovative and energetic Zionism, one that sees the opportunities as well as the risks. A Zionism that does not simply react hastily to events that are imposed upon it, but which actively shapes the reality, which defines a national vision and strives to realize it with determination, courage and boldness.

We must get back to advancing a political process that will lead to the drawing of permanent and defensible borders, with the understanding that separating from the Palestinians is not counter to our security interests. Just the opposite. Setting borders is a prerequisite for security. If we are not willing to give up some of our dreams, we will end up emptying the entire Zionist dream of meaning. The time has come for us to be a nation like all other nations, a nation in which a teacher can point to a map of the country and tell his or her students – these are the recognized borders of our country.

The writer is mayor of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and a brigadier general in the Israel Air Force reserves.



Former Prime Minster Ehud Barak. His view that ‘there is no partner for peace’ has remained the cornerstone of Israel’s policy, or perhaps non-policy. Photo by Miriam Alster/Flash90


Palestine’s Fluctuating Ratings

Even with Benjamin Netanyahu conveying conflicting messages about it, left-wing parties keeping mostly mum about it, the centre-right not expressing a stance and Habayit Hayehudi firmly opposed – the ‘two states’ idea is not dead yet.

By Aluf Benn, Haaretz
November 09, 2015

Last March’s Knesset election seemed to sign the death certificate of the “two-state solution,” the vision of dividing the land between Israel and a future Palestinian state. The parties and candidates in favour of the idea – even Meretz and the Joint Arab List – buried it deep in their platforms and didn’t speak of it during the campaign.

THE ISRAEL CONFERENCE ON PEACE –
NOV. 12, TEL AVIV

Opponents were more vocal: Two days before the election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that if he were reelected, there would be no Palestinian state. Right-wing voters lapped up the message and kept Likud in power, even though it had been lagging badly
in the polls.

Palestine died on Election Day, but was subsequently resurrected with astounding speed. Right after his victory, Netanyahu hastened to shift direction, and explained in interviews with foreign media that he supports the two-state solution. He repeated this stance in his recent speech before the UN General Assembly, saying: “I remain committed to a vision of two states for two peoples, in which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes the Jewish State.”

Mahmoud Abbas, [R] has, like previous Palestinian leaders, turned down offers of partition. Had they been accepted, especially the UN partition plan, the Palestinians would be in a better position than they are today.

The contradiction in Netanyahu’s positions – ostensible support for a Palestinian state, coupled with a promise that no such state will arise on his watch – is smaller than it appears. It reflects the position of a majority of Jewish Israelis, as witnessed by numerous polls conducted over the last 15 years, since the collapse of the Camp David Summit (which spelled the end of the Oslo process), have shown.

Then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak summed up the failure by saying there was “no partner” on the Palestinian side, and this claim has remained at the heart of Israeli politics ever since. The Jewish majority supports the “two states” idea but doesn’t believe it can realistically be implemented, and pins the blame for this on the Palestinian leadership.

This stance allows the Israeli mainstream to feel good and see itself as desiring peace and willing to make concessions, without having to pay the price that such a deal would entail: evacuating settlers, an internal rift, the relinquishing of dreams. Blaming the other side absolves Israel of moral culpability for the continuation of the conflict, even as it builds settlements intended to thwart a potential division of the land, and as it forcibly oppresses Palestinians. We offered them everything and they turned it down, Barak assured the public, which embraced his message.

Eight years after Barak, then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas an even more generous territorial proposal, and it too was turned down. At the time, the episode was overshadowed by Olmert’s mounting legal troubles, but after the fact it reinforced the “no partner” attitude.

Defence mechanism

Netanyahu adopted the “two states for two peoples” idea in his 2009 Bar-Ilan speech as a defence against international pressure. He went ahead and uttered the words that U.S. President Barack Obama and his European friends were so eager to hear.

The booby-trap that Netanyahu planted in his proposal – in the form of the demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people – seemed like a surefire barrier against any practical discussion about dividing the land.

But this defence mechanism wasn’t enough to satisfy his Likud party, so Netanyahu did not venture to bring the Bar-Ilan formula up for discussion and approval in the cabinet or various party forums. In the last two election campaigns, Netanyahu refrained from publishing a Likud platform, thus circumventing the need to present a consensus party position.

The public perceived the Bar-Ilan speech and the moves that followed as a hollow ploy by the prime minister. A Peace Index poll conducted last March, following the election, found that only 13 percent of Jewish respondents believed that Netanyahu genuinely supports the idea of two states for two peoples (the answers of Arab respondents on this question were inconclusive).

Fifty-two percent, meanwhile, said Netanyahu does not support the idea, and no disparity was found among voters from different political parties in the assessment of the prime minister’s stance on the issue.

A review of the party platforms published prior to the election shows that support for a Palestinian state marks the dividing line between the Israeli left and right. From Yesh Atid leftward – to the Zionist Union, Meretz and the Joint Arab List – all openly support the idea, albeit with different conditions. From Kulanu rightward – to the ultra-Orthodox parties and Habayit Hayehudi – the parties refrain from making any specific mention of a Palestinian state. Habayit Hayehudi is opposed, while the rest are vague, at most supporting “diplomatic moves and preservation of settlement blocs” (Kulanu), “peace for peace” (Yisrael Beiteinu) or “the rabbis will decide” (United Torah Judaism).

Likud, which, as noted, did not publish a platform, is divided between the position of its leader, Netanyahu, which resembles the Zionist Union platform, and the position of a majority of the party’s ministers, which resembles that of Habayit Hayehudi chairman Naftali Bennett.

This ideological schism is reflected in actual politics. Netanyahu formed a rightist coalition that is largely opposed to a Palestinian state, but since the election has been wooing both Bennett and Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog – trying to entice the former into a party merger and the latter into a unity government. Nothing has come of either move so far, but Netanyahu’s zigzagging between the right and moderate left is yet another indication that he is wavering on this issue.

Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, who wants to run for prime minister in the next election and has declared himself “ready for the job,” did not waver. On September 20, he went to Bar-Ilan University and delivered a speech in which he called for the adoption of the 2002 Saudi peace initiative and “the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside Israel.”

Right-wing politicians savaged him, citing the sections of the Saudi initiative that call for an Israeli withdrawal from all of the territories, the division of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees. Lapid backed his position by citing the usual argument made by the left – that a division of the land is necessary in order to preserve Israel’s Jewish and democratic character.

The conditions Lapid presented in his speech, such as Jerusalem remaining united and the Israel Defence Forces having full freedom of operation in the West Bank, are not acceptable to the Palestinians. But it doesn’t matter. The former finance minister currently heads a middling opposition party and is not overseeing peace negotiations.

Allure of two-state solution

His speech is important, though, in terms of how it plays in Israel’s domestic politics. Lapid was a weak finance minister and has yet to prove himself as a statesman, but he has a keen grasp of ratings. He built a brilliant journalistic, literary and political career out of deciphering the position of the mainstream, boiled down to the question he regularly posed as an interviewer: “What is ‘Israeli’ to you?”

Lapid’s speech indicates that he has identified the two-state idea, neatly wrapped within “the regional solution,” as a ratings magnet. No one forced him to nail his colours to this mast. If he considered the concept of a Palestinian state completely passé and unpopular, he would not have floated it again as the basis for his future run for the premiership.

Lapid is aiming to tap into the centrist Jewish electorate’s anxiety over the erosion of Israel’s legitimacy in the family of nations, or over the prospective loss of the nation’s Jewish majority and Israel becoming a binational state that more resembles its Arab neighbours.

Unlike Netanyahu, Lapid doesn’t need to concern himself with party approval, since he wields total control over his party and its institutions. Nor does he have anything to fear from his voters, who are not deterred by such positions.

The Yesh Atid leader has shown that the division idea is not dead and still holds more allure for the mainstream than the various one-state solutions touted by President Reuven Rivlin and extremists from both right and left.

And then the violent conflict erupted anew in October – in the form of a “terror wave” or “stabbing intifada” – and the Palestinian state was put back in the drawer. Netanyahu portrayed Abbas as an arch-inciter and the direct successor to Hitler’s “partner,” the mufti, even going so far as to pin responsibility for the Final Solution on the Palestinians and retroactively absolving the Nazis.

Lapid, perhaps inspired by his fondness for Hollywood movies, encouraged the (Jewish) public to shoot and kill “anyone who brandishes a knife or screwdriver.” Nobody asked him if, in the current circumstances, he still supports the Arab initiative and a division of the land.
In the autumn of 2015, it’s the Rambos, not the soft-spoken diplomats who are coming to the fore.

The experience of the two previous intifadas shows that if the Palestinians display endurance, they are capable of compelling Israel to change its policies. Because after the harsh measures of suppression (like “Break their bones”) that characterize the initial stages of a confrontation, Israel grows weary and opts for a political compromise.

The first intifada led to Oslo and the Palestinian Authority, and the second to the evacuation of Gush Katif. If the model repeats itself again this time, Palestine’s ratings will be topping the charts once more.

The writer is editor-in-chief of Haaretz.



If this is the future, who wants it? A Palestinian woman berates a religious Jew for praying at the Noble Sanctuary. Photo by Reuters

Held Together by Bruises, This Land Must Be Divided

Those who really love this land understand that it belongs to two peoples. Now, before it is too late, what measures must be taken to allow them to share it?

By Salman Masalha, Haaretz
November 08, 2015

All the nationalists, Jewish and Arab alike, claim to love this land. But what does the Jewish nationalist dream of? That he’ll wake up one day, look right and left and not see a single Arab around. The Arab nationalist has a similar dream, with the opposite wish – that he’ll wake up one day and not see a single Jew around. Both of these dreamy nationalists are stuck in pipe dreams. For neither the Jew nor the Arab is about to go anywhere.

Every reasonable person, if such still exist in these parts, ought to be reminded that the nationalists and fundamentalists on either side of the nightmare are more haters of the land than lovers of the land. For love of the land cannot exist without love of its flora and fauna. Nor can love of the land exist without love of the person who lives in the land, under his grapevine and under his olive tree. All of the various trespassers, anyone who demolishes a house, uproots or cuts down an olive tree, whether he’s a new occupier or an old occupier, a believer in this religion or that religion, is a hater of the land, not a lover of the land.

The Zionist movement established the State of Israel as an expression of the negation of the Jewish exile and Diaspora in other lands and among other nations, with the aim of returning them to their history and forging them into a nation like all other nations, inside a defined territory. The Zionist dream gained moral validity and international support following the Holocaust in Europe. Thus was born the UN Partition Plan for Palestine.

But the “people without a land” landed in a land where a Palestinian “people of the land” was in a process of consolidation. The “city square” was not “empty” at all. The Zionist leadership, correctly reading the map of powers in the world, jumped on the historic moment and consented to the partition plan. Not so the Palestinian and Arab leadership. And so the Jews’ “War of Independence” erupted, while the “Palestinian Nakba” occurred and the refugee problem was created.

The Palestinian national movement began to gain strength prior to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in a “Zionist-like” attempt to negate the Palestinian exile within the Arab world. For though the Arab world is known for its “hospitality,” it is not at all known for welcoming refugees that wish to lodge there, even if these refugees are “brothers,” as the rhetoric of the trite Arabic slogan goes. The Arab world is the only place in the world where refugee camps have existed since the middle of the last century, with no end in sight.

Judaization vs. democratization

The Six-Day War brought the Jews closer to the most historically and religious charged places from the distant past. From this point on, the “Judaization” of the state started to take the reins as its “democratization” began to retreat, first within the occupied territories and later within the Green Line.

The Arab “refusal front” did not budge, and thus played into the hands of Israel, which began building settlements in the territories. The dogs of the refusal front continued to bark as the settlement convoy kept moving and growing.

Over the years, secular nationalism, both Zionist and Palestinian, began to give way to the forces that emerged from the influence of God’s messengers on earth, Jewish and Muslim alike. When God himself enters the arena of delusions and the dreamers start investing stones and ancestral graves and so on with holiness, nothing good can come of it. The path to fathers digging their children’s graves only grows shorter and shorter. And so the ones who dream of the Kingdom of God end up dragging the land and all its inhabitants into a bottomless abyss.
When God is brought into the picture of the conflict, he takes over the whole picture and paints it in bloody hues. For these are his favourite colors. The “God of revenge” will soon dispatch his foolish disciples to commit ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. So it was, so it is and so it will ever be in the Middle East.

And so we have reached this point. The land is “joined together” with fresh wounds and bruises. All those, whether on the right or the left, who amuse themselves with the idea of a binational solution are hopeless dreamers of another kind. When supposedly “nationalist” states break apart into religious tribal fragments, their binational visions turn out to be dangerous hallucinations. This is a recipe for an even more dangerous situation, akin to Balkanization.

Bear in mind that the Palestinians are not Swedes and the Jews are not Norwegians. What’s more, even these two Scandinavian peoples were unable to live together in a binational state, went their separate ways in 1905, and have lived happily ever after.

So, considering the current situation, what more can be done to save the two peoples?
If there remains any chance whatsoever, it must be based upon the following principles:

1. The leadership of both peoples must publicly declare that this land belongs to both peoples, and since each people wants to live in its independent state, like all other nations, the land must be divided between the two of them.

2. To this end, Israel commits to end the occupation, and to dismantle the settlements that were built in the territories seized in the Six-Day War. Settlers who wish to remain where they are will become part of the Palestinian state with Palestinian civil identification and subject to Palestinian law.

3. Jerusalem will be an open city, but divided politically. West Jerusalem will be recognized as Israel’s capital and East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.

4. The Palestinian state is the Palestinian nation-state without regard to religion, race and ethnicity, and so on, and will absorb every Arab or Jew who wishes to realize his Palestinian civil nationality there. Israel is the Israeli nation-state without regard to religion, race and ethnicity, and so on, and will absorb every Jew or Arab who wishes to realize his Israeli civil nationality.

5. Hebrew and Arabic will be the official languages of both states.

6. Both states will adopt the principle of separation of religion and state.

7. Implementation of the agreement will begin immediately and last 10 years.
When the leaderships of the two peoples announce their recognition of these guiding principles, a total cease-fire will be declared between the two peoples and all Jewish and Arab prisoners detained in connection to the conflict will be released. The two peoples, represented by their respective leaderships, will declare their intention to deal harshly with anyone who forcibly tries to subvert the execution of the historic compromise.

Without recognition of these guiding principles, and the sooner the better, we will all go on sliding toward a Balkan-style abyss.

The writer is a poet and author.



Boycott protest in Sainsbury’s, Islington (because, say their flyers, Sainsbury’s still buy settlement products, unlike the Co-op. Photo by Mark Kerrison, Demotix


The World Doesn’t Care About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The boycott movement exists only online and the diplomatic tsunami still hasn’t reached us. The world is sick of our conflict, but the heavy price of the occupation remains local.

Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz
November 01, 2015

Less than four months after Israel was scandalized by the CEO of French telecoms giant Orange saying the company plans to end its operations in Israel, one of Orange’s venture capital funds announced a $17-million investment in an Israeli startup. Business as usual, once again.

In Britain, meanwhile, less than a month after the main opposition Labour party voted in Jeremy Corbyn – the pro-Palestine and staunch supporter of boycotting Israel – as leader, the Conservative government announced plans to introduce legislation that will prohibit local councils from using their budgets to fund boycott resolutions. The aim is to stop such resolutions being made against Israel. Prime Minister David Cameron’s government wouldn’t be taking such a step if it feared it would cause an outcry.

Furthermore, research carried out by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) showed that, for all the talk of anti-Israel incitement on U.S. campuses, significant activity is taking place at only around 20 colleges, out of thousands.

So where is the boycott?

Mainly in the echo chambers of social media and in speeches by Israeli right-wing politicians eager to prove that the-whole-world-hates-us.

Even the cultural boycott seems to be largely a fiction, with the procession of box-office stars to Israel continuing. Former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters, who has become a one-man task force to ostracize Israel in the music community, is so frustrated at his lack of success that he wrote an open letter to Jon Bon Jovi (who performed in Tel Aviv in early October), accusing him of standing “shoulder to shoulder with the settler who burned the baby.” No less.

Where is the world determined to punish Israel for continuing the occupation? U.S. President Barack Obama didn’t even mention Israel or Palestine in his speech at this year’s United Nations General Assembly. The French government has shelved plans for a Security Council resolution that would set a timetable for negotiations and the establishment of a Palestinian state. India, which once automatically voted for every condemnation of Israel, is now a habitual absentee while signing new arms deals.

Chinese delegations are swamping Israel, searching for new investment opportunities. Russian President Vladimir Putin hosts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Moscow and promises to take care of Israel’s security concerns in Syria. European lawmakers pass nonbinding resolutions to recognize a Palestinian state that have no diplomatic implications, while their governments have still to draft agreed guidelines on labelling goods made in the settlements. Labels, mind you, not a boycott.

Over four years after former Prime Minister Ehud Barak warned of Israel facing a “diplomatic tsunami” if it didn’t make progress in the diplomatic arena, the tidal wave has still to break on our shore.

Of course, some Israeli politicians will rush to take credit for their forceful action, blocking the wave of sanctions and breaching the walls of isolation. But the truth is, nothing has been done. The astronomic sums promised by Netanyahu to combat anti-Israel moves haven’t materialized; there isn’t even agreement on which ministry will get the money should it ever be allocated.

A nonexistent movement

Minister Gilad Erdan, who took upon himself the “anti-delegitimization” brief, has sunk into the corrupt morass of Israel’s police force. The anti-boycott task force that was to operate in the Prime Minister’s Office remains on paper. Even the organization set up in the United States to fight boycotts – funded by billionaires Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban – has failed to take off due to differences between the two tycoons.

The boycott movement has failed because it doesn’t actually exist. BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) is an Internet fiction, a loose network of keyboard warriors and a few die-hard protesters prepared to spend their weekends shouting outside a small, Israeli-owned soap shop in London or picketing a “Tel Aviv Beach” event in Paris. They’re a passing and harmless nuisance. Nothing more. In most cases, the boycott attempts have achieved the opposite result, uniting local Jewish communities behind Israel – including many who are no fans of the Netanyahu government.

Most of Israel’s exports today are not easily identifiable products that can be boycotted, but technological components and software, usually sold to large companies and governments. A growing proportion of trade is with the Far East, where the entire concept of political boycotts is totally alien. Only financial considerations matter.

But even in the countries where BDS is ostensibly active, its effect is less than negligible. The water company supplying southeastern England has installed 600,000 advanced water meters made by the Israeli Arad company. For years, BDS activists have been agitating against the deal until, finally, they “won”: the water company agreed that residents who object could refuse the new meters and stick with the older model. Only a tiny handful of customers took them up on their offer. The world just doesn’t care. Give them high-tech, make business not boycott. They’re sick of hearing about the conflict.

It could all change. The tsunami may break and the boycott group balloon into a mass movement, like the one that challenged South African apartheid in the 1980s. For now, though, there is no indication of that happening. The United States and Europe are focusing inward on their own problems. The attention returns to the Middle East only when there’s concern that the region’s problems could impact them directly – in Islamist terror attacks or waves of refugees.

For better or worse, the extent of foreign media coverage is shrinking. And even though international leaders continue to arrive in Jerusalem, the standard statements on ending the occupation and the settlements obstructing the road to peace are made for the sake of protocol. The agenda in the closed meetings is mainly business and economic cooperation. The statesmen have despaired of solving the Israel-Palestine conflict in their lifetimes. They’ve moved on. We have exhausted them.

The Israeli left’s unspoken dream that overseas pressure will finally rid us of the occupation, that the threat of isolation will shake Israelis from their apathy over the unending injustice toward another people, isn’t about to come true anytime soon. If ever. We’re home alone with the Palestinians, and here is where we pay the price.

For decades, Israelis argued that the world should look elsewhere – to places where much worse injustices are taking place, to other conflicts and occupations. The world is now saying, “OK, you and the Palestinians sort things out between yourselves.”

The price of occupation and absence of peace will be paid at home, in local currency. The price of terrible moral erosion for what is now a third generation of young men and women carrying out orders to use live fire on children, conducting “mapping” missions in homes in the middle of the night, protecting Jewish rioters who take over Palestinians’ fields and viewing our neighbours through gunsights. The price of a country incapable of setting economic priorities, of solving its housing crisis and rebuilding a fairer society.

The price of occupation we pay daily is in our impotence to fight racism, corruption and inequality. It is the price we exact from ourselves, and no one from the outside is about to give us a discount. The world prefers business.

The writer is a journalist for Haaretz.




Martin Indyk Tells Israel Conference on Peace: Israelis Must Stop Playing the Victim

Former U.S. envoy tells Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn that peace process today is all but doomed by the lack of trust.

Danna Harman, Haaretz
November 12, 2015

TEL AVIV – Stop being so insecure and playing the victim, the U.S.’s former special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations practically begged a packed audience in Tel Aviv, speaking on Thursday at Haaretz’s Israel Conference on Peace.

Martin Indyk, two-time U.S. ambassador to Israel and the Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs during the Clinton administration – who returned here under President Barack Obama to try and broker a peace deal, only to give up in great frustration – said the process today is all but doomed by the lack of trust.

“The heart of the matter is trust. So much has happened since 1993 handshake on White House lawn between [slain Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin and [late Palestinian leader] Arafat,” Indyk, who today is the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C. told Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn in their candid conversation on the stage.
Yigal Amir, who murdered Rabin 20 years ago this month, understood something that Indyk admits he had not understood at the time – and that was that Rabin was critical because “he had the trust of the Israeli people, and the trust of Yasser Arafat.”

“The point at which we came back into the process – Secretary of State [John] Kerry and myself as envoy was one in which both sides were already convinced they did not have a partner,” said Indyk. “And the leaders had also developed such a toxic relationship between them – the combination was deadly.”

Despite the warning signs, Indyk agreed to jump back into the fray in 2013 because, as he put it, “I have always followed the injunction of President Clinton – that it is better to try and fail than not to try at all,” He has done a lot of “Cheshbon Nefesh,” or soul searching, said Indyk, using the Hebrew term, as to whether it was worth the effort. “But the alternative to not trying is what we face today,” he said. “It’s a kind of hopelessness that leads nowhere.”
Indyk argued that the right wing in Israel has “benefited greatly” from the idea that there is no partner on the other side, which makes them repeat that mantra, even when it is not true. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas could become a partner “tomorrow” charged Indyk – if only the Israelis would freeze the settlement building and agree to move forward in good faith and with generosity.

“The point it, and this is something which I don’t know how to communicate effectively to the Israeli public, but I will try,” said Indyk, raising his voice for emphasis: “You are not victims. You are not. You have built a beautiful country which is incredibly strong…with the backing of the most powerful country in the world. You are not victims anymore. You are players in your own fate.”

“To allow your leaders to convince you that you are victims and have to live by the sword – is to give way to hopeless future for your people,” charged the veteran diplomat.

What really concerns him, said Indyk, is that Israelis do not seem to understand that, with continued settlement building, they are on the brink of needing to make a choice between remaining a Jewish state or a democratic one.

“The creeping annexation of land which is continuing apace will make it impossible [for there to be a] Palestinian state, or a two-state solution,” Indyk warned. “You can’t have it both ways,” he said, reflecting on the gap between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s words and actions: “You can’t be for a two-state solution and require that the occupation go on for the foreseeable future. Not possible.”

Understanding – and doing something about – being on that brink is something that must come from Israel, said Indyk. The U.S., he said, is there to play the role of “Israel’s second line of defence,” and “underwrite the risks” as and when Israel takes them. They can do no more.

Part of the problem, suggested Indyk, is that when Kerry or Obama or he himself tells Israel it needs to make choices now, that admonition might sound like a threat. “Of course if you feel threatened you are not going to respond positively. But this is not a threat,” said Indyk plaintively. “It’s a warning.”

“I love Israel, it’s a critical part of my identity. I do not want Israel to have to make that choice between being Jewish and being democratic. But we are at that point.”

“This goes back to what I was saying about feeling like victims,” said Indyk. “It’s in our DNA as Jews and comes from thousands of years of prosecution. We are a deeply insecure people and God knows there are enough enemies out there to justify that concern.”

“It’s easy to hunker down, circle the wagons, and say the whole world is against you and you have no choice but to live by the sword,” continued Indyk. But where, he asked, is that leading?

Benn also asked about the failed peace negotiations Indyk led in the late 1990s between Israel and Syria – and whether or not, in retrospect, now that Syria has deteriorated into complete and violent chaos, it is not better those talks did not bear fruit and Israel does not have ISIS or Al-Qaida on the shores of its Lake Kinneret.

“For the historical record, five Israeli prime ministers, including Netanyahu, offered full withdrawal from the Golan,” stated Indyk. Withdrawal would not necessarily have meant the Syrian army returned to that territory, clarified Indyk – just as in the peace deals between Israel and Jordan and Egypt there are arrangements in place as to where the Arab armies are stationed.

“If you want to ask ‘Where would you have been if’– you would have been where you are with Egypt today,” said Indyk. “A revolution and a counter revolution later you still have a peace treaty with them. Guess what? ISIS is in the Sinai, but you have an arrangement with Egypt under which you can help fight ISIS.”

Indyk, who has often expressed his disappointment with the collapse of the Israeli-Syrian track, claimed that if a deal had been reached way back then, he suspects Arafat would have, under pressure, made a final deal with Israel. “It would have transformed the Israeli-Arab conflict in a dramatic way,” Indyk claimed. “We missed the opportunity for a comprehensive peace between Israel and its neighbours—Lebanon would have followed as well. Problems with Hezbollah would have been in an entirely different context. And the U.S. would have remained the dominant power in the region.”

“You can trace the arc of the decline of American influence in the region to that moment, when we failed to get the Syrian deal,” Indyk concluded.

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