|
 |
|
The 'Road Map' to peace, and the roadblock it faces
By Francis R. Nicosia , The Times Argus 7/17/2003
Israel's dilemma since its establishment in 1948 has been its inability to reconcile the two building blocks of Zionist ideology, namely democracy and a Jewish state. In the historical context of Europe and the Middle East since the nineteenth century, each of these ideals has sharply contradicted the other. It is important to understand the nature and consequences of this contradiction if the so-called "road map" to peace in the Middle East is to have any chance of success. The fledgling Zionist movement among mainly German-speaking Jews in Central and Eastern Europe more than a century ago described Palestine as Das Land ohne Volk für das Volk ohne Land ("The Land Without People for the People Without a Land"). This was a popular refrain in early Zionist literature and propaganda, and a preferred message on the banners that draped Zionist meeting halls. For Zionists in those early years, the Jews truly were a "people without a land." But the land to which they aspired was not "a land without a people," as some 90 percent of the inhabitants of the area that would later become mandatory Palestine were non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Herein lay the demographic reality that is the basis of the fundamental contradiction in Zionist ideology, and a dilemma that the state of Israel has yet to resolve. The early Zionists soon realized that Palestine was not an empty land, and that its non-Jewish population could render the ideals of democracy and a Jewish state incompatible. A truly democratic Jewish state would be possible only with a very small minority of non-Jews or none at all. To put it another way, a truly democratic state with so many non-Jews could not be a Jewish state. The end of the Second World War and the reality of the Holocaust dramatically increased the pressure to establish immediately an independent Jewish state in Palestine, despite the fact that the Jews constituted barely one third of the population of mandatory Palestine. But how could a democratic Jewish state come into existence if two thirds of the population was not Jewish? Reluctantly, most Zionists accepted as a solution the partition of mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. However, the partition approach merely exposed the contradictions in Zionist ideology in the 1947 United Nations partition plan. With the Jewish population of Palestine at barely one third, the U.N. plan gave the proposed Jewish state 55 percent of the land; the remaining 45 percent of the land would go to the Arab two thirds of the population. Had the Arab world accepted this plan, as the Zionists reluctantly had, the population of the new Jewish state would have been 45 percent Arab. Thus, the new state of Israel would have had to choose between a democracy and a Jewish state; with a 45 percent non-Jewish minority, it could not have been both, unless the Arabs were forced to leave. Arab rejection of the plan and the subsequent war in 1948 resulted in the exodus, much of it the result of Israeli expulsion, of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs from the lands that remained in Jewish hands when the war ended. When the fighting was halted, only about 10 percent of the population that remained within what became the boundaries of Israel was Arab. Eventually, this enabled Israel to be both a democracy and a Jewish state. Arab rejection of the partition plan, coupled with Israel's victory in the war, and the removal of most of the Arab population from Israeli-controlled territory spared the new Jewish state from having to face the contradictions in its founding principles. Israel's conquest of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 war, coupled with its decision that year to begin extensive Jewish settlement in those territories, brought Israel face to face once again with this contradiction. As Jewish settlements in the occupied territories have steadily expanded since 1967, the likelihood of a return of those territories to the Palestinians has naturally diminished, and with it, the possibility of peace based on partition and the existence of two viable, equally sovereign states. Jewish settlement patterns in the territories since 1967, with some 250,000 Jewish settlers now living throughout the territories, have made it impossible to imagine a viable, contiguous, and sovereign Palestinian state in the 22 percent of Mandatory Palestine that constitute the West Bank and Gaza Strip, unless, of course, virtually all of the settlements are dismantled and their inhabitants resettled within the pre-1967 borders of Israel. The alternative for Israel is to hold on to the territories permanently, to continue to the dispossession of the Palestinians and the expansion of Jewish settlements. The consequences of this would be catastrophic. Either the Palestinians in the territories and inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel would be permitted to remain, or they would be expelled. Should they be allowed to stay, they would either continue to be non-citizens or, at best, second-class citizens, with few rights if any in their own land; or they would be granted full Israeli citizenship with full equality. The first scenario would amount to apartheid, making a Greater Israel not unlike the South Africa of old; in the second, democracy and a non-Jewish population of almost 40 percent, and a non-Jewish majority in the near future, would mean the end the Jewish state. Alternatively, should the Palestinians be "transferred" (expelled) as some Israelis propose, Israel would embrace policies not unlike those adopted by the Nazis that drove several hundred thousand Jews out of Germany during the 1930s. After 1967, Israeli policy should have undertaken occupation only as a means to achieve acceptance by its Arab neighbors, but without the expropriation of Palestinian land and the establishment of Jewish settlements on that land. In Israel's case, one can legitimately argue that temporary occupation can enhance security. But it is obvious that settlements have nothing whatever to do with security. What killed Oslo, and what will kill the "road map," is the absence at the beginning of the peace process of a clear picture of an end game, one that must include the ultimate removal of virtually all the Jewish settlements as an indispensable step toward the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state. It is not too late for Israel to adopt this approach. It is in Israel's interest in the long run to do so if it hopes to achieve the Zionist ideal of a truly democratic Jewish state. Francis R. Nicosia is Professor of History at St. Michael's College and author of the "Third Reich and the Palestine Question."
|
|
|
|
