Yasser Arafat reincarnated as Tom Friedman
Yasser Arafat has been reincarnated as New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. Here's what Arafat tried to pull in 1999 as told by Charles Krauthammer (Hat Tip: Soccer Dad). Having failed to topple Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic, Bill Clinton had to settle for Benjamin Netanyahu. In a characteristic display of partisan glee, Clinton toasted political consultant Robert Shrum on Tuesday night (reports Lloyd Grove in The Washington Post) to congratulate him (and implicitly, the administration) for helping the Israeli opposition bring down the prime minister Washington loves to hate.And here's what Friedman is now proposing.
Yet for all the gloating at the White House, there is deep trouble ahead in the peace process. A momentous shift has occurred that has almost completely eluded the radar screen of the Western media and the attention of this administration. While Palestinians, Americans, Egyptians, other Arabs and many Israelis assiduously assailed Netanyahu for this or that alleged violation of the spirit of the Oslo peace accords, Yasser Arafat went on a 60-nation diplomatic tour--hardly a stealth campaign--to kill the accords.
Here is the background. In the 1967 Six Day War, Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza. In the 1993 Oslo accords, Israel agreed to begin giving parts of it to the Palestinians in return for peace. The whole process was explicitly grounded in UN Resolutions 242 and 338 endorsing this land-for-peace formula.
Fine. After years of persistence, Netanyahu manages to get most of the not-an-inch "nationalist" half of Israel to accept the 242/338 formula. What happens? For the last six months Arafat has been going around the world demanding instead implementation of UN Resolution 181.
What is that? An obsolete, defunct resolution passed by the General Assembly (unlike 242 and 338, not by the Security Council, and thus not even binding) . . . in 1947! It partitioned British Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. At the time, every single Arab state and the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee totally rejected 181. In fact, they invaded the area given to the Jews with the express purpose of wiping it off the map.
They failed. And now 50 years later, the Palestinians are converts to 181.
How about a different approach?Yes, Friedman now wants to do what Arafat wanted to do 12 years ago: Go back to 1947. There are two small problems with that. First, wars have consequences. No one should be able to start a war and expect to go back to the starting point if they lose.
If the Palestinians want to take this whole problem back to where it started — the U.N. — I say let’s do it. But let’s think much bigger and with more imagination.
On Nov. 29, 1947, the U.N. passed General Assembly Resolution 181, partitioning Palestine into two homes for two peoples — described as “Independent Arab and Jewish States.” This is important. That is exactly how Resolution 181 described the desired outcome of partition: an “Arab” state next to a “Jewish” state.
So why don’t we just update Resolution 181 and take it through the more prestigious Security Council? It could be a simple new U.N. resolution: “This body reaffirms that the area of historic Palestine should be divided into two homes for two peoples — a Palestinian Arab state and a Jewish state. The dividing line should be based on the 1967 borders — with mutually agreed border adjustments and security arrangements for both sides. This body recognizes the Palestinian state as a member of the General Assembly and urges both sides to enter into negotiations to resolve all the other outstanding issues.” Very simple.
Each side would get something vital provided it gives the other what it wants. The Palestinians would gain recognition of statehood and U.N. membership, within provisional boundaries, with Israel and America voting in favor. And the Israelis would get formal U.N. recognition as a Jewish state — with the Palestinians and Arabs voting in favor.
Moreover, the Palestinians would get negotiations based on the 1967 borders and Israel would get a U.N.-U.S. assurance that the final border would be shaped in negotiations between the parties, with land swaps, so theoretically the 5 percent of the West Bank where 80 percent of the settlers live could be traded for parts of pre-1967 Israel.
In recent debates about the Palestinian "Nakba," the claim has been made that there are two "narratives," an Israeli one and a Palestinian one, and we should pay attention to both of them. That, of course, is true: Alongside the Israeli-Zionist claims regarding the Jewish people's connection to its historic homeland and the Jews' miserable situation, there are Palestinian claims that regard the Jews as a religious group only and Zionism as an imperialist movement.Friedman also tells us that using the
But above and beyond these claims is the simple fact - and it is a fact, not a "narrative" - that in 1947, the Zionist movement accepted the United Nations partition plan, whereas the Arab side rejected it and went to war against it. A decision to go to war has consequences, just as it did in 1939 [when Germany attacked Poland] or 1941 [when Japan attacked the US].
So please Tom, take your bitter lemons and drink the lemonade yourself. Don't try to make us drink your poisonous brew.
Labels: 1947 partition plan, 1949 armistice lines, Tom Friedman, Yasser Arafat
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:23 PM
7 Comments:
Israel is being asked to give up all its bargaining chips in exchange for UN recognition it already has - note that Friedman is not proposing the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish State. So they get a big concession up front without having to recognize Israel or even to terminate further claims upon it!
No Israeli government - present or future - is going to ever adopt Friedman's formula. What is in it for Israel? Certainly not peace at the end of the rainbow! And no Jew in Israel apart from the Haaretz crowd is in favor of re-dividing Jerusalem.
It may play well with the Obama White House but it has no takers in Israel. Wars have consequences. I'll wait for Russia to give up Kaliningrad and the Kuril Islands before Israel gives up Jerusalem and Yesha.
They (Tom Friedman included) are trying to make the situation worse for Israel so that Israel will grab at the "chance of a lifetime" to return to the pre-67 cease fire lines (G-d forbid).
The next step is the dreaded "one state solution" that they've been threatening for decades.
They (Tom Friedman included) will eventually say, "Ok, this is it!! Only one state is possible so Israel must share power with Abu Mazen and scoot over in his PM chair so that Mahmoud Abbas can sit in on all the cabinet meetings as co-PM from now on."
This is the scary place they're all headed.
Except -- it's not actually scary. I think Israel will (and should) say, "Ok, fine. One state. One Jewish state. Abu Mazen and his cohorts are hereby retired. We will annex Judea and Samaria but we will not annex the Arab towns within. They won't get citizenship. Thank you for the suggestion. We will annex Judea and Samaria immediately."
Barry Rubin calls Friedman's approach "lying for peace." Here is a good example of what he is talking about:
"Thomas Friedman is another example. He’s one of the leaders in the lying-for-peace movement. He can make as his main argument that it’s bad for Israel to occupy the West Bank permanently because the demographic shift will make Israel into an apartheid state. First, Israel isn’t occupying the West Bank at all in the post-1967 sense because the Palestinian Authority governs the population there. Second, Israel has accepted in principle that its presence in the West Bank is temporary, pending a real peace settlement. Third, the demographic gap is far smaller than is being presented. Fourth, demography doesn’t matter since Israel has no interest in annexing, or even running directly, the West Bank and thus the number of Palestinians is no more significant than the number of Egyptians or Jordanians. And finally the apartheid argument has no actual relevance whatsoever since West Bank Palestinians aren’t subject to any Israel rules of this sort."
"In other words, an argument repeated in the largest newspapers, television, classrooms, and so on, is totally false but is never subjected to the test of a serious critique that points out the flaws and the need to respond to it."
"Some of the people who repeat such mantras are merely ignorant or simply imitating. Others are leading the lying for peace movement. Many or most are also promoting their careers by saying what might be “politically correct” but is actually factually incorrect. Lying for peace, just like lying to prevent “Islamophobia” are nominally good causes but are realy lying for bloodshed and political disaster."
"Is it rude to point this out? It would be if this were just a game. But the lives of millions of people are involved."
"This experience has confirmed my belief that the hegemonic arguments in Western governments, academia, and mainstream media are not only wrong but are so weak that they can only be kept from collapsing by making sure most people never hear cogent critiques. These premises—on which we are supposed to bet our lives—have no basis in reality."
In other words, the arguments used to justify "peace in our time" have no rational basis to them. Certainly, Israel would prefer to have peace but the notion that Israel would prefer to have peace at any price is absurd. That makes as much sense as the notion Czechoslovakia had to commit national suicide to prevent a more devastating European conflict later on.
We won't hear about it in the Western mass media. The rest of Rubin's analysis can be found here and it is a lucid and devastating presentation:
Read it all
That map is scary. We don't know how crazy the nations are going to get about Eretz Yisrael, in their frenzy to deal with their own muslim problem.
I don't see Israel embracing that approach. Outsiders forget what a small country Israel is: with the so-called West Bank its about the size of the state of New Jersey. Without it, its as wide as Massachusetts and narrower in some parts, such its coastal plain. Israel simply can't survive within the Green Line. Any one who says otherwise is simply lying. A small country has no room for error and history will not give the Jewish people a second chance. That is the argument against making dangerous concessions. Those who call on Israel to make them haven't shown a change in the status quo is even necessary or would work to Israel's benefit!
Most American Jew's agree with Friedman, I think, because they are woefully clueless to many facts, particularly when it comes to the "demographic shift argument". I had dinner with my liberal Jewish parents recently and they both appeared to be taken by surprise (and in disbelief) when I told them that Arab fertility rates have plummeted since the 60's, and what effect this has had on the Israeli "demographic problem".
What if there was a way to convince these people the "demographic shift argument" is pure bunk? Perhaps American Jews might start standing up to Friedman and his nonsense.
Addendum: Barry Rubin's article came out too late to include Tom Friedman's latest column, but here is what he has to say that is worth considering, as to what is said about the lying for peace meme common in the Western mass media today:
"Again, even in exchange for an independent Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with its capital including all of east Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority would NOT:"
–Give up a demand for a “right of return” of all Palestinians who wanted to going to live in Israel.
–Accept Israel as a Jewish State.
–Agree to end the conflict forever and formally drop all further demands on Israel."
"I can think of more items to add to this list but those three are for certain. Notice by the way that all of these fantasies have the same theme: If Israel only takes more risks and makes more concessions, peace is (easily) possible. The Arabs and Palestinians are always presented as being ready to make concessions they would never dream of making. Then because Israel won’t fall for this nonsense and has already experienced several times over the fact that these things don’t work, it is presented as being against peace, intransigent, or not understanding its own true interests."
"So let’s ask these people to stop lying or at least speaking from ignorance. If they refuse to do that, can’t they at least allow those who see that the emperor’s analysts have no clothes to have equal space and try (although they would fail) to answer the serious arguments to be made about these issues?"
That is precisely why people who don't understand the Middle East and its dynamics shouldn't be allowed to write "analyses" of the region that don't correspond in the slightest to reality there. Of course, its easier to present Israel as the obstacle to peace because in part it easier to move a democracy than a dictatorship but also in part due to the naive belief the Arabs will moderate if Israel is open to making more concessions to them - it hasn't been for the past two decades and is easily refuted by empirical observation - the larger point is all those who write about the Middle East won't ever let those facts and bitter experience change their understanding of what is going on there.
And Israel is not going to gamble in the end with the lives of its own people and its national existence on the assumption the liars' foolish prognoses will turn out to be correct. Israel has been down that road before and its not ever going to do it again and in any case, for a variety of reasons, peace is not going to happen in the Middle East in our lifetime. All the facile columns of Tom Friedman won't ever change that verdict.
Read it all
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