COLUMN: It takes two to compromise
Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part article about the history of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
I used to believe that the Palestinian leadership was ultimately willing to compromise with Israel in order to live in peace. I thought — and wanted to believe — that Yassir Arafat could come out from behind his dark sunglasses and rise to the role of national leader.
I assumed that the rest of the Palestinian leadership would prefer part of historic Palestine and the lives of their children, rather than teaching yet another generation to hate and kill in the vain hope of getting back every inch of what they think only they have the right to. I thought, when I saw the actions of Anwar Sadat and read his words and the words of Camelia Sadat, his peace-activist daughter, that compassion and compromise were possible on both sides.
I should have paid more attention to history.
* In 1937, the British Peel Commission proposed a partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish state was to be minuscule — basically a coastal strip, the area around Tel-Aviv, and the Galilee — a total of less than 2,000 square miles, a country roughly the size of the Great Salt Lake. That tiny Israel would have been an Israel without Jerusalem.
The Arab Palestine that was envisioned (which would have been more than three times the size of the Jewish state) would have included the West Bank, the Negev and other areas.
* This plan fell far short of the dream of a Jewish homeland throughout the biblical holy land, and some Jews opposed it. Nevertheless, the majority understood that it was better to accept part of their dream for the sake of peace. They were idealists, but they were realists, too. Better to have something rather than nothing. And better to have peace rather than death, especially death for children. The Zionist movement arrived at a compromise that supported the division of Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state. Arab leaders took an extremist position and rejected consideration of any partition, perhaps unwittingly and unintentionally undoing their own large Palestinian state, too. They hoped to wipe out the Jews, then as now, and have it all.
* Fast forward 10 years to 1947 and the United Nations Partition Plan. The Jewish population in Palestine had grown, especially after Word War II and the Holocaust, when the justness and correctness of Zionism was obvious to nearly all the world, as evidenced in the U.N. resolution creating Israel in 1948. Once again a partition plan was devised which promised a minimal Jewish state — albeit one that was larger than what had been proposed in 1937. (Jerusalem and its suburbs were still to be an international zone.)
* This was not the full Zionist dream and meant giving up a great deal, but the Jewish leadership understood that no one ever gets everything he wants, and they agreed to the plan. The Arab world opposed this plan, too (which would have created an Arab state considerably larger than the current West Bank) and went to war against the new, U.N.-sanctioned state of Israel at its birth.
* Five Arab armies invaded Israel, and a terrible war ensued — a war in which Israeli civilians were the daily targets of snipers. The nature of what this war was to be like was made clear by Arab leaders. The Secretary-general of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, in an interview with the BBC on the eve of the war (May 15, 1948), said, “The Arabs intend to conduct a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”
* Note two important facts here.
First, the murder of Jewish civilians by Arab terrorists is not something new today, justified as a response to the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, as Arab propaganda and the mass media would have you think. Homicide/suicide bombing is a “refinement” of Arab terrorism, which preceded the founding of the state of Israel and is clearly not post-1967. In fact, murderous attacks on Jewish civilians by Arabs goes back at least to 1920.
Second, doesn’t it seem strange that the Arab nations and Palestinian leaders who often cite post-1967 U.N. resolutions in their verbal and political attacks on Israel have not renounced their lack of compliance with the earlier U.N. resolution that admitted Israel to the family of nations? If later U.N. resolutions carry weight, why not earlier, even more fundamental ones?
* When the 1948 war, which was imposed on Israel, ended, the Israeli side had succeeded in extending its control over more territory than it had lost. One out of every 100 Israelis had died in the war. Proportionately, that would be like a war in which almost 3 million Americans died, God forbid. The Jewish quarter of Jerusalem and the Western Wall had been lost, too. Jordan occupied those areas, and the Jordanian government did not allow Jews access to the Western Wall, the most holy site of Judaism, for the next 20 years, the years of Jordanian occupation.
Steve Siporin is an associate professor of English. Comments can be sent to siporin@cc.usu.edu.
Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
When Israel regained the area in 1967, it did not do the same thing to Muslims. Rather, Israel respectfully allowed Muslims continued access to their traditional holy sites, as is the case today.
The armistice lines became the de facto borders of the new Jewish state — a state once again larger than what the Arab side could have had if it had chosen peace rather than to start a war in 1947. The West Bank was prevented from becoming the new Arab Palestinian state not by Israel but by the Jordanian occupation, which was also in violation of the U. N. resolution.
* Fast forward again, this time to 1967. All through the spring of that year — and I remember it well — Egypt threatened Israel with annihilation, in much the same style as Azzam Pasha’s words quoted above. This time it was Nasser, the Egyptian leader, who spoke of driving Israelis into the sea. His acts of war began with the closing of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and the demand that the U.N. peace-keeping force leave the Sinai peninsula buffer zone separating Egyptian and Israeli forces.
If you have ever wondered why Israel is often suspicious of U.N. promises, remember this terrible U.N. failure that led to another war: A U.N. peace-keeping force had been created to occupy a buffer zone in the Sinai and thus prevent conflict between Egypt and Israel. When Nasser demanded the force leave as he prepared to invade Israel, the U.N. cooperated and vacated the force.
Israel was then left exposed to Egyptian aggression. Israel, outnumbered and threatened on all sides, struck as an underdog must, with a pre-emptive attack against Egypt. And once again, the Arab leaders lost territory and a tragic, untold number of lives.
* This is the history that I hadn’t learned from, in spite of the consistent pattern and evidence, until the homicide-suicide bombing attacks began. Israelis say that Ehud Barak offered Yassir Arafat more than 95 percent of the West Bank at Camp David in 2000.
Palestinians dispute this claim. But there is one thing all reports agree on: Arafat did not make any counter proposal. I’m afraid it’s all too obvious that he made no counter offer because the only satisfactory proposal for the Palestinian leadership is still what it has always been: no Israel whatsoever.
This is what is taught in Palestinian classrooms and textbooks. Don’t bother, for instance, to look for Israel on Arab maps in the West Bank and Gaza — you won’t find it. I remember seeing a necklace worn by a Palestinian acquaintance who I had thought was enlightened and open-minded. The necklace was a map of Palestine — an Arab Palestine that had replaced all of Israel.
Thus we should not have been surprised by Mr. Yasir Kaheil’s intolerant statement in The Utah Statesman (Jan. 29): “The only solution that I can think of for this Israeli/Palestinian Issue is for all of the Israelis to go back to where they came from.” (Most Israelis were born in Israel; Israel is where they come from, Mr. Kaheil.)
That solution — the eradication of Jews from the Middle East, another “final solution” — is the only solution Mr. Kaheil’s leaders have ever been able to think of. As in 1937, 1947, 1949, 1967 and 2000, they have not yet learned the word compromise.
Although I don’t agree with President Bush on most issues, one statement he made in his recent State of the Union speech caught my attention: “…tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country — your enemy is ruling your country.”
Isn’t this true for the Palestinian people, too? Isn’t their own leadership and their Arab “supporters” (like Iraq) their greatest curse? Is Israel really the cause of all their suffering? Is Yassir Arafat a leader of vision? Has it really been necessary to stay in refugee camps all these years? Wouldn’t it have been better to spend the money that’s been spent on war on absorbing Palestinian refugees into the West Bank, Jordan and other Arab countries, as Jews did for their refugees from Arab lands, in Israel?
Wouldn’t Palestinians be better off with leaders who didn’t exploit their suffering, who didn’t keep them suffering in order to gain sympathy? Is there a worse leadership than one that encourages children to kill themselves in intentional homicidal attacks on civilians so as to be able to say, “Look at how we bleed.”
This leadership has created a disaster for Palestinians and Israelis through its unwillingness to acknowledge another people’s legitimate national aspirations and learn to compromise with them. It’s time to do so. It’s been time for far too long.
Steve Siporin is an associate professor of English. Comments can be sent to siporin@cc.usu.edu.