American Jews’ Peace Views – A Nakba In the Making
POP QUIZ, Girls and Boys:
Who said this in 2019?
“While that [two-state] solution is unlikely to hew precisely to the 1967 borders, any territorial adjustments must result in a signed agreement between the two sides.”
[A] Congresswomen Omar and Tlaib in a late night interview on CNN;
[B] The U.N. Security Council 14-zip with the abstention of the U.S.;
[C] The official bodies of American Jews’ Reform and Conservative Movements in an open letter to the President of the United States.
Ask all but “rightwing” American Jews whether “Jordan Is Palestine,” and the answer will be as consistent as if you’d asked whether they like Donald Trump. And it’s not just the non-Orthodox American Jewish religious movements. Respected important AIPAC puts its support of “two-states” this way: “AIPAC remains fully supportive of direct negotiations leading to a two-state solution – a Jewish state living in peace with a demilitarized Palestinian state.”
Jordan IS a Palestinian Arab Population-Majority State in 78% of the Mandate
“Jordan is a Palestinian Arab state that has occupied 78% of the land comprised in the Mandate for Palestine since 1922.” – David Singer, INN, in Israpundit, 6/15/19
The knee-jerk American Jewish answer to “Is Jordan Palestine?” is “It will never happen.” But both the question and answer are phrased wrong. “Palestine” is not a term that refers only to Arabs. The question should be: “Is Jordan the Arab state of the Palestine Mandate’s partition into separate states for Arabs and Jews?” And the answer is, not that “it will never happen,” but that it did happen in the excision from the Mandate of 78% as all-Arab Transjordan. The world religiously ignores this, but we shouldn’t.
Originally, “Palestine” didn’t apply to Arabs at all. In 135 C.E., the Romans coined it to disassociate what had been Jewish, Roman-defeated Judaea, from Jews. In the twentieth century, the League of Nations used “Palestine” in defining the territory – today’s Israel and Jordan – comprising the Mandate assigned to Britain in which would be reconstituted the Jewish National Home with its close settlement of Jews on the land. That Palestine Mandate was among the existing League legal documents accepted by its successor U.N. So, almost two millennia after its coining by Rome, “Palestine” still had reference to Jews. And, during the term of the Mandate, it was its Jews – Palestine Post, Palestine Electric Company, American League for a Free Palestine, etc. – more than its Arabs, who used “Palestine” and “Palestinian” in reference to themselves.
It’s true that the Palestinian Arab population majority isn’t in charge of Jordan, still ruled by colonial British-installed Hashemite kings. But the equitable solution to that is making that 78% all-Arab portion of the Mandate democratic, not performing a second partition dividing the remaining 22% that had been left for the Jews once again between Arabs and Jews.
“Unrealistic” Applies To All the Alternatives
It’s said that those whom the gods would destroy they first set to the impossible task of making peace between the Arabs and Jews. “It will never happen” doesn’t apply just to “Jordan is Palestine.” It applies as well to “the two-state solution.”
For one thing, the Arab side has never accepted the American-Israeli definition of “two-states” as “two states for two peoples.” Years ago, Abbas said “We shall not recognize a Jewish state,” and his negotiator Nabil Sha’ath put it: “The story of ‘two states for two peoples’ means that there will be a Jewish people over there and a Palestinian people here. We will never accept this.” (Cited in Bender and Verlin, Pressing Israel, pp. 50-51.) This attitude hasn’t changed.
For another, the “demilitarized Palestinian state” that AIPAC posits in the Judea-Samaria hill country overlooking Israel’s narrow central coastal plain may not, given the history of “demilitarized” sovereign states, remain demilitarized for very long. What then?
And we American Jews proposing peace plans between Israelis and Arabs need to take into account not only what is not acceptable to Palestinian Arabs but likewise what is not acceptable to Israel’s Jews. The dream of generations for Israel’s sovereign redemption which Israelis are bringing to pass (present tense) in our time was not for a coastal strip nine miles wide in the lowland middle, sans historic Jerusalem and the Judea-Samaria hill country. The Reform and Conservative Movements’ letter to President Trump may have meant “hew precisely to the 1967 borders” in the context only of Judea-Samaria, but if the 1949 lines, expressly declared in their defining document as not being political borders, are sanctified as “1967 borders” there, they’re 1967 borders as well in Jerusalem. Very few Israelis would accept this.
Jordan and Israel as the Palestine Mandate’s Two States Is Best for Palestine’s Peoples
Jews: British Col. Kemp and other military experts have forcefully made the case that ceding the Jordan Valley and the Judea-Samaria hill country overlooking Israel’s narrow coastal plain would render Israel militarily indefensible, making every day one of existential concern for its people.
Israel was not “created because of the Holocaust” and centuries of persecution of Diaspora Jews, but regained independence as the three-millennia historical homeland of Jews. Yet persecution of Diaspora Jews somewhere on earth goes along with death and taxes as constants in our imperfect world. Israel has to have room to absorb them. Israel with natural borders of the Sea and the River, with the hill country inside it, is not what the media mockingly calls “Greater Israel.” It’s Lesser Israel, a less-than-one-quarter-size remnant of the original Mandate.
Palestinian Arabs: To the extent that their peoplehood is grounded in affinities deeper than disaffection for us, having a country four times Israel’s size, instead of a landlocked fraction of the 22% defined by the ceasefire of a 1948-49 war, would enable them to absorb generations of “Palestinian refugees” dating back to that war who’ve been less than well-treated by their fellow-Arab “hosts.”
Holy Land Christians: Middle East Forum and Gatestone Fellow Raymond Ibrahim has a Gatestone article this week, The Suppressed Plight of Palestinian Christians, quoting an expert: “The systematic persecution of Christian Arabs living in Palestinian areas is being met with near total silence by the international community, human rights activists, the media and NGOs…. In a society in which Arab Christians have no voice and no protection, it is no surprise that they are leaving.” Historically, Holy Land Christians have not overflowed with rachmonas for us, but they have an opportunity now to help secure a future for themselves free from dhimmi status and all the unpleasantness which that entails. Christian nations should support and stand by them in this.
Conclusion
So what would be the outcome for Israel of American Jews-forced-upon-Israel borders that “hew precisely” to “the 1967 borders”? A nakba.