Israeli policy has been based on such a premise for a dangerously long time. I'm not just talking about the past few years. Many Israeli leaders have been dreaming of this since even before the beginning of the State of Israel. Labor Zionists have considered Peace to be something attainable if only we'd...
Never have mainstream Israeli leaders dared accept the unpleasant fact that there is absolutely nothing we can do to make the Arabs accept a viable Jewish state here. They, meaning we though not me and my ilk personally, have tried everything possible to show how nice, friendly and tolerant we can be. Whatever other country would accept enemy wounded into our hospitals as proof of "apology" for shooting back after being attacked? Yep, it does sound pretty dumb.
And in the sixty-six years of Israeli statehood, so many different negotiated plans have been proposed, and they've all been failures. And unfortunately most, if not all, have been unilateral concessions by Israel. Each one leaving us smaller and weaker.
The reason that the great 1967 victory of Land, in the Six Days War wasn't fully embraced by Israeli policy is that the movers and shakers of the time considered that Land to be what the Arabs wanted in exchange for peace. The Israeli leadership was wrong on both counts.
- Jordan, at that time there was no concept or history of an Arab Palestine, was not interested in continued Jordanian occupation of Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley.
- Syria only used the Golan Heights as launching pads against northern Israel.
- Egypt only used the Sinai as a useless buffer zone.
- And none of them wanted peace with us, no matter what we bribed them with. That only changed once Sadat took over after Nasser in Egypt.
Here we are decades later, and after the invention of a "Palestinian People" sic, and they still don't want to negotiate peace with us, because they don't want a Jewish State in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheva etc. Shiloh isn't the problem.
The latest Arab tactics totally bypass negotiations with us. That's because the Israeli plan for negotiations for a "two state solution" is for Israel to have power over the new Arab state.The Arabs don't need us for a state, because so many countries and international bodies already recognize a state called "Palestine."
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| The Washington Post |
Israel's continued insistence on the viability of such negotiations is like buying LP records to play on your MP3.
8 comments:
Nice analogy. Pity those who love their LPs will not even see the MP3's viability. Old dreams die hard. But keep trying...
There may be something Israel can do. Help the people in the Arab countries who, among other things, genuinely want peace.
Israeli policy since 1948 has consistently been never to lead any autocratic Arab regime to believe that it might be threatened by the existence of Israel.
It hasn't worked.
Led by Saudi Arabia, they still feel threatened.
Israel cannot make peace with wicked people. Maybe the United States or countires in Europe can, can, but Israel can't.
>> The reason that the great 1967 victory of Land, in the Six Days War wasn't fully embraced by Israeli policy is that the movers and shakers of the time considered that Land to be what the Arabs wanted in exchange for peace.
I'm not sure about that. They didn't think the Arabs wanted that then, but they may have thought they would accept that later.
That is, that they'd want their territory, or much of their recently lost territory, back.
And maybe Jordan would, but Jordan wasn't alone, or capable of acting alone.
But of the course the problem was the danger that the existence of Israel, or at least interaction by their people with Israel, posed to dictatorial Arab regimes, in the eyes of the political theorists of Saudi Arabia.
I mean people have to understand this.
Saudi Arabia was terrified of the effects of the French Revolution, which delegitimized monarchies, in principle, regardless of what the moonarch did in the eyes of most people.
It didn't want its people to have more contact with such ideas.
And I think the thinking was also that what was there to gain by not offering to return territory?
It would cerainly make the Unoted States happier.
Israel always took the diplomatic position that it was willing to negotiate peace even though none of its leaders believed that any of the neighboring countries was willing to talk (openly) to Israel at that point, or at any time in the immediate future.
And Israel still take this position: i.e. Israel is willing to talk, even if the Arabs are not wlling to talk. (there are some recent exceptions, like Hamas, but the government of Syria, for instance, was never included in that refusal.)
Israel probably needs to have higher standards for whom it is willing to negotiate with.
>> And none of them wanted peace with us, no matter what we bribed them with. That only changed once Sadat took over after Nasser in Egypt.
It changed only after the Egyptian regime became less tyrannical.
Natan Sharansky had a point.
Sammy, Sinai is a buffer, and as long as it's not used like Gaza is as a launching pad of missiles against us, it probably doesn't matter who's ruling it. It's giant.
Ruti, thanks
Duh! There can never be peace with them. It's like saying, wearing lightweight cotten clothes in the freezing winter and wearing furcoats in the hot summer makes sense; that's how much sense it is to believe that there ever could be peace with them. Long before there was a State of Israel, they were murdering our people. Good cannot live side by side with evil. Most importantly, the leaders better start learning Torah and see what the correct answer is!
those Arabs aren't "a people"
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