A meeting in New York this week of the UN’s Ad-Hoc Liaison
Committee ended
on a dissonant note. The committee’s purpose is to
coordinate financial aid for the Palestinian Authority. At this
meeting, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon was in attendance
representing Israel, and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was there on
behalf of the PA.
Fayyad, however, stormed out of the meeting over a
disagreement with Ayalon, leading to the cancellation of a press
conference.
Ayalon had refused to approve a summary of the meeting
that used the phrase “two states” — referring to the putative
resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute that is seen as the
end-goal of the recently relaunched peace talks. Ayalon had
demanded instead that the summary use the phrase “two states for
two peoples,” and Fayyad reacted by exiting the
premises.
A tempest in a teacup? Semantics? Not quite.
As Ayalon told Ynet, the website of Israel’s largest daily
Yediot Aharonot, “I demanded to know what they meant. One
Palestinian state and one binational state, or another Palestinian
state? I made it clear that we were out of the picture if the
summary didn’t say two states for two peoples.”
The question, in other words, is how the Palestinians —
even as represented by reputedly moderate leaders like Fayyad and
PA president Mahmoud Abbas — would regard Israel even if a
two-state settlement were to be reached. If they remain unable to
accept Israel as a permanently existing, fully legitimate Jewish
state, there are two ramifications.
One is that the current talks — if they don’t break down
before then — would likely break down on the “refugee” issue. In
other words, the demand that the descendants of Arabs who left
Israel in the 1948-49 war, still domiciled six decades later in
“refugee camps” in Arab countries and the PA itself, be allowed to
“return” to Israel. Such a demand spells Israel’s demographic
demise as a Jewish state and is seen as anathema across the Israeli
political spectrum.
The other ramification is that, even if the refugee issue
were somehow to be finessed in the negotiations, a Palestinian
state that did not accept Israel as a Jewish state would not be a
factor for peace or a genuine resolution of the conflict. Instead
it would keep working to subvert Israel through various means, from
terror to alliances with hostile countries like Iran to stoking
agitation among Israel’s sizable Israeli Arab minority, whose
leadership already calls for dissolving Israel into a binational or
non-Jewish state.
Since his landmark speech at Bar-Ilan University in June
last year, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stressed
the Jewish-state issue. In the speech, under heavy pressure from
the Obama administration, Netanyahu broke with his own and his
Likud Party’s longstanding position and accepted the principle of a
sovereign Palestinian state. Netanyahu hedged this acceptance with
two conditions — that the Palestinian state be demilitarized, and
that the Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish state.
The notion of the Palestinian state’s demilitarization was
already long familiar, though Netanyahu had been among those
raising incisive points about its feasibility. The Jewish-state
emphasis, though, was new in the context. It could be interpreted
either as an attempt to highlight to the U.S., and the West in
general, that there is a crucial issue of Israel’s genuine
acceptance by the Palestinians and the Arab world, without which
“peace” agreements will solve nothing; or as a prospective
negotiating tactic against Abbas, Fayyad, and crew. It was actually
a combination of both.
Since then Abbas and Fayyad have indeed remained unable to
get over the lump in their throats when it comes to saying “Jewish
state.” Most recently Abbas resorted
to mocking the idea, saying Israel could call itself
“the Israeli Zionist Jewish Empire” for all he cares; and Fayyad
has had the latest two-states contretemps with Ayalon.
The question is whether this is impressing anyone. In the
case of Obama — despite rhetorical
obeisances to “Israel as the Jewish homeland” — the
answer is no, as he keeps pushing the peace talks hard despite the
Palestinian recalcitrance. As for the Middle East Quartet, the
international body responsible for the Israeli-Palestinian issue
that comprises the U.S., the UN, the EU, and Russia, it released a
statement this week that criticizes Israel for
settlements and — just barely — Hamas for terrorism but says
nothing about the Jewish-state matter.
Having already staked much on it, though, Netanyahu and
his government should keep pressing the point home to those,
including Congress and the American public, inclined to listen.
Someone who, even though there are twenty-two Arab states and
fifty-seven Muslim states, has grave difficulty with the idea of a
single Jewish state is not much of a peace partner.
And considering that the land Israel is supposed to give
up is of the greatest security and religious-historical value, and
that the Middle East is characterized by volatility, ceding it is
problematic and risk-fraught in any case. Ceding it to someone who
remains fundamentally antagonistic is a formula for something other
than peace.
