WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Enough re Omar and Tlaib. What mattered more deeply this week was a letter sent to U.S. Congressmen by 21 Israeli MKs about “the two-state solution.” They rightly warned that creating an inside-the-land-of-Israel Arab state would be “far more dangerous to Israel” than BDS.
This Week: Meanwhile, Back In The World of What Lastingly Matters ….
WARNING: You’ve just started reading an article about Israel this week that’s not about Israel excluding from visiting “Palestine” Congresswomen Omar and Tlaib. Well, almost not about that. For the record, I agree fully with unapologetic Alex Traiman on JNS that Israel rightly delivered a strong message to the two Congresswomen that if you boycott us, then you can’t come here to push that. I hope these Israel boycott-pushers get it that their exclusion is not Trump’s doing, but that it’s all about the Benjamin, Baby – Benjamin Netanyahu.
U.S. Congressional Action on “Two-States”
Now, then, back in the real world of public positions on Israel that have really really fundamental lasting consequences for the Jewish State’s security, indeed long-term survival, and Jewish homeland redemption meaningfulness, consider the letter that 21 members of Israel’s Knesset addressed to members of the United States Congress this week, thanking them for supporting recent passage of H. Res. 246 that condemned BDS against Israel, “but warning them that the resolution’s endorsement of a two-state solution is harmful, because the repercussions of a Palestinian state would be ‘far more dangerous for Israel’ than the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement.” (Gil Hoffman, Jerusalem Post, 8/12/19).
But concern about U.S. Congressional action on “two-states” is not over with. On June 5, 2019, coincidentally (?) the fifty-second anniversary of the start of the Six Day War, six Democratic and one Independent (guess who) United States Senators introduced
“S.Res. 234: A resolution affirming the United States commitment to the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and noting that Israeli annexation of territory in the West Bank would undermine peace and Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state.”
The effect of this resolution would be to undo the results of that War, retracting Israel back to indefensible boundaries nine-miles-wide in the lowland middle, sacrificing Judea-Samaria and, presumably, historic Jerusalem. Indeed, it would go beyond just “undoing” the Six Day War’s results, by replacing what had been invading Jordan’s mostly unrecognized possession of Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem with their irrevocable de jure possession by a new Arab state comprised of exclusively those very Jewish homeland heartland territories.
Making Our Alternative “Two-State Solution” Case to Publics in The West
As the MK letter writers to Congress (see Hoffman JPost article) and many others have pointed out, a western Palestine two-state solution is not the actual will of the Israeli people or its government. But it is, alas, actively favored by key institutions of American Jews, including AIPAC and the Reform and Conservative movements.
The reality is that the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine is so deep and zero-sum today that the actual implementation of no solution seems feasible in the foreseeable future. However, a struggle in which progress is attainable is over western public perception of what constitutes an equitable division of Palestine into two states for Arabs and Jews.
The concept of a “two-state solution” apportioning “Palestine” between Arabs and Jews seems equitable on its face. The key lies in what constitutes “Palestine.” Many of us American Jews believe that creating a new inside-the-land-of-Israel Arab state would be a security-wise suicidal and Jewish homeland redemption-surrendering disaster for Israel. Our mission must be to get through to open-minded people in the West that dividing the land of Israel, western Palestine, into Arab and Jewish states is not an equitable division of Palestine between Arabs and Jews, but that there does exist an equitable division if “Palestine” is considered in its entirety – i.e., as the League of Nations Palestine Mandate defined it.
The Arab side defines the “Palestine” to be apportioned into the Palestine conflict’s Two-State Solution’s two states as just that part of the original Palestine Mandate that has not already been apportioned exclusively to Arabs, and defines the parties to Palestine’s pending apportionment as “the Palestinians” and Jews. Cute.
There are two inequities in this.
[1] The original Palestine Mandate included what are today the states of Jordan and Israel. The British early on, exercising an optional power in the Mandate, excised the 78% of the Mandate’s area east of the Jordan River, today’s Jordan, in which it enthroned Hashemite Arabs as kings. Excluding all-Arab Jordan from the definition of Palestine is saying, “What’s mine is mine; what’s yours is apportionable.”
[2] Calling the parties to the Two-State apportionment of Palestine “the Palestinians” and Jews is like calling for apportioning Philadelphia between “the Philadelphians” and Jews. Abbas this week (see World Israel News, 8/14/19) without smiling called Palestinian Arabs descendants of the Canaanites, but widely accepted “indigenous origin” school archeologists will tell you that it’s the Israelites who arose out of the Canaanite population. In any case, many centuries before Arabs arrived on the scene, the conquering Romans, following ferocious wars with the Jews, renamed Judaea as Palestine, after the long-gone Philistines, to disassociate what had been Jewish from Jews. And during the Mandate, it was mostly the Jews, not the Arabs, who called the place Palestine and themselves Palestinian. There’s Jewish equity in “Palestine” and “Palestinian.”
Calling for apportionment of Palestine between “Palestinians” and Jews, as opposed to between Arabs and Jews, also lends credence to the other side’s claim that Hashemite Arab-ruled Jordan (Palestine Mandate-origin and Palestinian Arab-majority population and all) isn’t part of the “Palestine” included in the apportioning. The equitable solution to the Mandate’s 78% slice not being ruled by its majority Palestinian Arabs isn’t re-slicing the first slicing’s remaining 22% left for the Jews for a second time between Arabs and Jews.
Conclusion: What All This Is About and Why It Matters So Much
Genuinely pro-Israel AIPAC and American Reform and Conservative movements, rabbis and all, notwithstanding, creating a new western Palestine two-state solution, with Israel ceding to it the Judea-Samaria hill country and Jerusalem corridor high ground and points like Latrun that were so desperately fought over in 1948 and 1967, and presumably historic Jerusalem itself, is security-wise unthinkable, and from a Jewish homeland sovereign redemption standpoint likewise unthinkable. The MKs were right in what they said in their letter.
Realistically, the Arab-Jewish Palestine conflict remains so bitter and deep and so zero-sum in the two sides’ positions, that no actual implementation of any solution seems feasible for the foreseeable future. But the battle for Western publics’ perception of what constitutes an equitable apportionment of Palestine into two states remains critical. What we have to press for is recognition that the 3:1 Arab-Jewish apportionment along the natural boundary of the Jordan River accomplished Palestine’s equitable two-state solution and that this, not an inside-the-land-of-Israel Arab state, should be the guiding principle when the time does come to negotiate and implement an Arab-Jewish Palestine conflict solution.