Monday, April 15, 2024

The Puzzle of History

The Moving Finger writes and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.[1]

On the Sunday before the 6-day war in 1967, I walked with my middle school Political Science class in the Salute to Israel Parade along Riverside Drive in New York City. It was a sunny day and there were a lot of people walking beside us. About 250,000 people participated that day in sympathy and solidarity with Israel. It looked like Israel was about to lose a war.

The next time we were in class, we split up into small groups to work on solutions to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The consensus was around a two-state solution, but I don’t remember the details. We had a right to be naive. We were, after all, kids in Middle School.

After the events since last October, it may be naive to believe that a difficult political problem is not intractable and may be solved by non-violent means, especially when in many countries, civil disobedience and non-violent protesting is throwing one’s life away. But no one should be raped, tortured, murdered, or indiscriminately bombed, starved out of existence, targeted by missiles, or ambushed while attempting to do one’s job. We are witnessing the latest chapter of a violent struggle that may never end, between two peoples with their own religious beliefs, language, and culture.

There should be a cease fire in Gaza so that the hostages may be returned to their families and food and supplies are delivered to innocent civilians. Hamas should be destroyed, not by bombs, but by slowly and methodically rooting them out of their network of tunnels. I'm proposing an expensive, difficult, time consuming, and dangerous approach.

I listened to "Israel is carpet-bombing children," and read about mass graves found near the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza. If the bodies were buried by Palestinians months ago, or buried, dug up and reburied by the IDF, they were human beings who died in this war.

Images from Gaza of the Palestinian Civil Defense recovering bodies in Khan Yunis may serve as a bookend to the video footage on October seventh of a young German-Israeli woman who, after taken hostage by Hamas and brought to Gaza, was lying face-down in the back of a pickup truck. She was probably already dead. The crowd spat on her as the truck drove through the streets. The rage in Israel must have been overwhelming.

At the end of the first World War, after the fall of the Ottoman empire, both the Zionists and the Arab Palestinians desired a nation governing what is today Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza strip. The same vision exists today on both sides. Netanyahu's 1977 Likud party platform, which stated “between the Sea and the Jordan there will be only Israeli sovereignty," was the Zionist vision in 1917. The Hamas slogan, "from the river to the sea," was basically why the Arab leaders rejected the Peel partition plan in 1937 and the UN partition plan ten years later. Over the years extremists on both sides continued to believe in one state for themselves and violently opposed every peace plan.

It is also true that, at least at one time, the Arab vision of a Palestine state would allow Jews to live peacefully within its borders, while reserving the right to restrict Jewish immigration.[2] And Israel allowed Arabs who remained within its 1948 borders to stay, and gave them Israeli citizenship. Today, the number of Arab-Israelis is over 21% of Israel's total population.

Disclaimer

I should not be writing about a foreign war as I'm on the outside looking in. But the protests are here, many here in the US are deeply affected amd troubled by the war, the US is supplying Israel with bombs, and I need to understand. I could have put more time and energy into research, but I did more than watch YouTube videos and read Wikipedia articles. If I had the time and money, I'd travel to the UN and British archives and read the original documents. At least I read the online summaries.

Two States

The plan that has been proposed, debated, rejected, and proposed and rejected again, is the partition of land into two separate countries, Palestine and Israel. Our Middle School plan may have worked, but boundaries and demographics changed dramatically after 1967. When the 2024 war in Gaza ends, it's been proposed that a consortium of Arab countries come in to help the Palestinians rebuild Gaza. I'd like to see this happen, but it's a two state solution only if Gaza and Israel are the two states. The West Bank today is a patchwork of Israeli settlements and Palestinian villages. The apartheid state run by Israel in the West Bank must end. How can it end?

A Palestinian state in the West Bank would have to be created out of the land that's been left to them. The Israeli settlers won't leave. Even if they allow the state to be born, it probably won't succeed, not having a single contiguous border, as history (e.g., Pakistan) has shown.

After the 1936 Arab uprising in what was the British Mandate, the Peel commission was created to find a solution to the crisis. In 1937, the commission proposed a plan to partitian the land into separate states. During a debate about the plan, Chaim Weizmann said, “The Jews would be fools not to accept it, even if the Jewish state were the size of a tablecloth.” Mr. Weizmann regarded agreeing to the idea of a Jewish state as an important first step. But the Zionists did not agree to the plan’s borders. The Arabs would have greatly benefited from a similar, more flexible, perspective.

The Arab leaders rejected the 1937 plan. They didn’t want their land merged with Trans-Jordan, the plan required the transfer of about 120,000 Palestinians from their homes, they hated the idea of a Jewish state, and they wanted above all an independent state over all of Palestine. Ten years later, after they rejected of the 1947 United Nations partition plan, the state of Israel was created, followed by Israel’s war for independence and the Nakba, which was the catastrophic eviction of about 700,000 Palestinians from their homes. The word Nakba should also be translated as debacle, or fiasco.

Plainly, after the rejection of each peace plan, if a Palestinian state was an investment, the Arabs suffered from diminishing returns. But the extremists have held on to "from the river to the sea," and are forever martyrs devoted to their cause. Hamas may be destroyed, but the cause may well live on. To get to a solution, what's needed on both sides is patience, restraint, and education. It's a pipe dream.

One State

Across college campuses there have been protests with chants of "from the river to the sea." I learned that they mean a single nation governing all the land with equal justice and freedom for everyone. Sounds great, but I'm not sure exactly what they mean. Some may simply want Israel to change its policies. I'm not sure what the protesters waving Palestinian flags mean.

The idea that Israel would extend citizenship to Palestinians is not ridiculously unrealistic. Netanyahu's right-wing coalition would likely have to be replaced with a government with a leader who is willing to take a risk for peace. The Palestinians would have to give in to pressure to accept citizenship. The pressure would have to come from trusted Arab sources, voices for change, that would point out what Palestinians would gain and what they wouldn't lose by accepting citizenship.

Once citizenship is accepted, areas under military control in the West Bank would be placed under civilian rule of law. Organizations in Israel would raise money to help Palestinians, now Palestinian-Israelis, keep their homes. Zoning rules would be changed so that their homes and businesses would not be demolished. The Israeli settlers wouldn't leave but the system that supports their expansion into the West Bank would be abolished.

No longer fed a steady diet of Hamas ideology, Palestinian-Israelis would not be proud to be martyrs. They wouldn't want their children to die as warriors and human shields. Their children would have an education that I hope would be elightened, and Arab-Israelis are happy with.

Security and strict access to the Temple Mount compound, also known as Haram al Sharif, must be ensured. Either the agreement between Israel and Jordan is strengthened, and everyone abides by its rules, or the complex is put under international control. The latter idea may be unrealistic, but international control over Jerusalem was in the 1947 UN partition plan. Israel should not ever approve tearing down the compound and rebuilding the temple, the beginning of the end times.

Notes

  1. Omar Khayyám, The Rubáiyát
    Stanza LXXI, Quatrain 36, translated into English by Edward FitzGerald, 1859 4th ed.

    زین پیش نشان بودنیها بوده است
    پیوسته قلم ز نیک و بد ناسوده است
    در روز ازل هرآنچه بایست بداد
    غم خوردن و کوشیدنِ ما بیهوده است

  2. The Zionist movement was encouraging Jewish immigration, but in the 1930's Jews were fleeing from the Nazi holocaust and few countries were letting them in. After the massacre in Hebron and the Arab uprising of 1936, Jews would be justifiably wary of Arab leaders saying they would be allowed to stay and live peacefully under their rule. It wasn't clear how much political freedom they would have. If Arab rule was to be like living in the Ottoman empire, the Jews would have to pay a poll-tax and acknowledge the superiority of Islam. Allah would again be sovereign over all Palestine.

  3. Seraj Assi, Mass Graves in Khan Yunis Reveal Unspeakable Horror of US-Backed Gaza Invasion
    Truthout, April 26, 2024
  4. The Avalon Project, Balfour Declaration 1917
    Yale Law School Lillian Goldman Library
  5. The U.S. and the Holocaust
    A film by Ken Burns
  6. Eli Barnavi, The Sephardic Exodus to the Ottoman Empire
    "How Jews fleeing Spain and Portugal transformed the region."
    My Jewish Learning
  7. Avi Shlaim Ph.D., The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
    Norton Paperback January 17, 2001

    "The Zionist movement, which emerged in Europe in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, aimed at the national revival of the Jewish people in its ancestral home after nearly two thousand years of exile. The term "Zionism" was coined in 1885 by the Viennese Jewish writer Nathan Birnbaum, Zion being one of the biblical names for Jerusalem. Zionism was in essence an answer to the Jewish problem that derived from two basic facts: the Jews were dispersed in various countries around the world, and in each country they constituted a minority. The Zionist solution was to end this anomalous existence and dependence on others, to return to Zion, and to attain majority status there and, ultimately, political independence and statehood.

    Ever since the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C. and the exile to Babylon, the Jews yearned to return to Zion. This yearning was reflected in Jewish prayers, and it manifested itself in a number of messianic movements. Modern Zionism, by contrast, was a secular movement, with a political orientation toward Palestine. Modern Zionism was a phenomenon of the late nineteenth-century Europe. It had its roots in the failure of Jewish efforts to become assimilated in Western society, in the intensification of antisemitism in Europe, and in the parallel and not unrelated upsurge of nationalism. If nationalism posed a problem to the Jews by identifying them as an alien and unwanted minority, it also suggested a solution: self-determination for the Jews in a state of their own in which they would constitute a majority. Zionism, however, embodied the urge to create not merely a new Jewish state in Palestine but also a new society, based on the universal values of freedom, democracy, and social justice."

  8. Avi Shlaim, The Two-State Solution – Illusion and Reality
    Palesting-Israel Journal, Vol. 26 No. 3&4 2021
  9. United Nations
    Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I)
    Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: Part II (1947-1977)
    The Question of Palestine
  10. Report of the Palestine Royal Commission,
    League pf Nations Mandates Palestine, July 1937

    "Considering the attitude which both the Arab and the Jewish representatives adopted in giving evidence, the Commission think it improbable that either party will be satisfied at first sight with the proposals submitted for the adjustment of their rival claims. For Partition means that neither will get all it wants. It means that the Arabs must acquiesce in the exclusion from their sovereignty of a piece of territory, long occupied and once ruled by them. It means that the Jews must be content with less than the Land of Israel they once ruled and have hoped to rule again. But it seems possible that on reflection both parties will come to realize that the drawbacks of Partition are outweighed by its advantages. For, if it offers neither party all it wants, it offers each what it wants most, namely freedom and security."

  11. Holocaust Encyclopedia, Hajj Amin al-Husayni: The Mufti of Jerusalem
    The United States Holocaust Museum

    "In exile between 1937 and 1945, al-Husayni, claiming to speak for the Arab nation and the Muslim world, sought an alliance with the Axis powers (Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy)..."

  12. List of Killings and Massacres in Mandatory Palestine
    Wikipedia

    "The neutrality of this article is disputed."

  13. Robin Wright, The Jihadi Threat 5: Drivers of Extremism
    Wilson Center, December 8, 2016

    The word jihad is somewhat misunderstood, in that it primarily means struggle, strive, or exert oneself to be a better muslim and, by extension, a better person. It also means, secondarily, to struggle against the oppression of other religions or political groups.

  14. Ilyas Ahmad, Sovereignty in Islam (Continued)
    JSTOR, Journal article:
    Pakistan Horizon Vol. 11, No. 4 (December, 1958), pp. 244-257 (14 pages)
    Published By: Pakistan Institute of International Affairs
  15. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Spiritual Significance of Jihad
    Al-Islam.org

    "On the more external level, the lesser jihad also includes the socio-economic domain."

  16. Nicholas Casey, ‘Where Is the Palestinian Gandhi?’
    The New York Times Magazine, May 1, 2024

    "Issa Amro, who has been arrested and beaten for simple acts of defiance, is trying to pursue nonviolent resistance in the West Bank at a time when violence has become inescapable."

  17. Joel Greenberg, Sharon Touches a Nerve, and Jerusalem Explodes
    NY Times, Sept. 29, 2000
  18. Israeli settlers storm Al-Aqsa Mosque complex on fifth day of Sukkot
    Al Jazeera and News Agencies Oct. 4, 2023

    "Israeli settlers have stormed the complex in groups and attempted to perform ‘Talmudic rituals’, according to a Waqf official."

  19. Shabbat 31a, The William Davidson Talmud (Koren - Steinsaltz)
    Sefaria

    "There was another incident involving one gentile who came before Shammai and said to Shammai: Convert me on condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I am standing on one foot. Shammai pushed him away with the builder’s cubit in his hand. This was a common measuring stick and Shammai was a builder by trade. The same gentile came before Hillel. He converted him and said to him: That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study."

A selection of YouTube videos

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