The Bleacherman has entered the stadium…
Several nights ago, as I was lighting the Chanukah candles in front of some friends of mine, I was asked if I ever thought that there would be peace between Palestine and Israel. I think I startled everyone when I responded with a resounding, emphatic, “NO! NEVER!”
So here I was, surrounded by peace activists, leftists, progressives and an odd assortment of non-political types all wondering why I, a old peacenik myself, would say such a thing. “It’s just the truth,” I sighed in resignation of a nightmare that has haunted me for years.
So I proceeded to sit everyone down and began a rendition of life according to the Bleacherman – Chapter 39, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
We hear a great deal about the two state solution. And on paper it sounds all very well and reasonable. Except that it can never work. In fact, it can never even be implemented. There are just too many old non-retractable promises and too many decades of hate and mistrust to simply put away in the freezer in a Tupperware container labeled yesterday.
Let’s make some assumptions here. First we will start with some relatively simple issues. So topic one is the land referred to as the West Bank. Now prior to the six day war (June 1967) this land was controlled by Jordan. There never was talk about any Palestinian state, no wars of liberation, no insurrections, no buses being blown up or airplanes being hijacked and eventually destroyed in the desert somewhere. Why?
The answerer is really simple. The Palestinians were conned. They were lied to, not by Israel, not by the United Nations, but by their own leadership and the heads of all the major Arab States.
In 1967, the issue was not about Palestinian independence. The issue was about returning to the homes that they were forced from or voluntarily left when the State of Israel was created in 1948. These displaced Palestinians were forced to live in squalid, putrid, disgusting refugee camps. It was all part of a greater plan conceived and executed by the great Arab powers. The displaced Palestinians were being used as pawns in a greater conflict. Rather than allow them to assimilate and become permanent residents of areas like Gaza, the West Bank, and even Lebanon, they were forced to live a life of shame and embarrassment that only fueled the fires of their hatred against Israel. The calls for revenge, the calls for war, and the calls for the liberation of their homes –their homeland as they saw it – were as common place as eating a falafel in the afternoon.
For twenty years these Palestinians were promised that one day Isreael would be destroyed. One day the Israelis would be forced into the sea. One day the Palestinians would be allowed to return to their homes. This promise, this dream that one day they would return home to their homes in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is embedded in their culture. It is their mission statement. It is referred to as ‘The Law of Return.’
In June 5, 967, first Egypt, then Syria, then Jordan attacked Israel. The moment had come to fulfill the promise that Arab leadership made to the Palestinians. But there was one slight miscalculation. They lost the war. Israel reoccupied East Jerusalem and went on to take not only the West Bank but all of the Sinai as well.
Prime Minister Begin gave back the Sinai to Egypt. A peace treaty was signed. And over the years, Egypt has found ways if not to ignore the Treaty, mitigate it for sure. But I believe that wars between Israel and Egypt are over. Forever! There would be peace between the two countries unless of course, the fundamentalists (Islamic Brotherhood) succeed in taking over control of the government of Egypt and begin to make holy war on Israel.
So the question is, what would happen if Israel was willing to give up its settlements in the West Bank. And they would return 95% of the West Bank back to the Palestinians. Prime Minister Barak proposed this a decade ago but Arafat rejected the offer. It was a 100% or nothing. But Israel cannot give up control of the borders. At Jerusalem, the width of Israel (from the city to the Mediterranean Sea) is about 40 miles. Can you image militants, like those now in Gaza, firing off their missiles from sites embedded in the Great Mosques in Jerusalem? Sites they consider so holy that Israel would not dare bomb them.
So Israel, strategically, must control the borders of any Palestinian state. And the Palestinians will not agree to this. They will not compromise. They want to return to pre June 1967 borders. All I can say: Fat Chance. My Cubs will win the World Series before Israel gives up the Wailing Wall. Even to that farce of a organization referred to as the UN.
Let’s continue to talk about Jerusalem. The Palestinians want their half back. All back. They want to go back to pre-1967 lines. They want to control the Western Wall….Judaism’s holiest site. They promise that they would protect it. They promise they would give unrestricted access to the Wall. Just like they promised to do before the 1967 war.
But what they did was far from what they promised. The Western Wall was turned into part of a donkey stable. Access to the wall was never granted. Grave Stones were pulled from Jewish grave sites and used for a urinal at a local hotel. Give back the Wall. It will never happen.
And even if all other issues had somehow been miraculously resolved, can you even imagine a Palestinian Prime Minister telling the Palestinians that the Law of Return was not part of the negotiated peace settlement? It is as if the Palestinians were being told that they were lied to for sixty years years, played with and manipulated. How do you think they would respond? Sixty years forced to live in squalid, disgusting, demeaning conditions and then be told they were nothing more than pawns. No, there is not a bulletproof vest thick enough to protect a Prime Minister that signs a peace treaty that does not evoke the Law of Return.
So can there be peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis? No. Never.
…the Bleacherman has left the stadium.