Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2002, pages 16-18, 72

Diplomatic Perspectives

 

Exploring—Rather, Exposing—Some Myths About Israel-Palestine

 

By Ambassador Robert V. Keeley

There have been so many mythologies generated over the years about the Israel-Palestine problem that the truth about certain very important matters has been almost totally obscured. I would like to revisit a few of these myths to try to sort out the facts that should underlie any serious discussion of this serious issue.

 

First, a Fact and a Question

Let’s start with one that is not a myth but factual. That is that the Jews hoping to establish the state of Israel accepted the United Nations Partition Plan proposed in 1947, whereas the Palestinians and the Arab states generally did not. But then we must ask why these diametrically opposed positions occurred. The answer is that the plan was more than fair to the Jews then residing in Palestine but very unfair to the Arab Palestinians, Christians and Muslims, then living there. The Jewish population was approximately one-third of the total inhabitants, and the land then owned by Jews comprised about 6 percent of the total land area. Yet the Partition Plan awarded about 52 percent of the territory to the prospective Jewish state, in which the Jews would not even be a majority of the population, and consigned massive numbers of Palestinians to live in an Israel to be. Thus, it is not surprising that the Arabs rejected the plan. When Israel declared its independence in 1948 the Arabs invaded Palestine with military forces and tried to overturn the result. The British made no effort to enforce the U.N. plan, nor did the United Nations. Instead the U.N. sent in a mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, who in turn was assassinated by Jewish terrorists.

What the Palestinians could not understand or accept was why their land had been chosen to “solve” the age-old problem in the countries of Western, Central and Eastern Europe of anti-Jewish prejudice, discrimination and persecution, culminating in the European Holocaust’s extermination of millions of Jews. (The term anti-Semitism, by the way, makes no sense at all, for Arabs are also Semites, so should hardly be accused of anti-Semitism.) Jewish communities throughout the major centers of the Arab world had not been so treated. In fact, under Ottoman rule these communities had been protected by the rulers of the empire. Just one example: The Jews who comprised the plurality of the population of the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki prior to World War II were nearly entirely wiped out in the Holocaust. But how had they come to be there? They had been expelled from Spain and Portugal by Christian rulers in 1492, had been invited to Salonika by the Muslim Ottoman sultan, and had been protected by his successors over the following centuries.

What the Palestinians asked was, why are we being forced to pay the price for the persecution of Jews in Europe? The easy answer is because the European Jewish national movement, Zionism, chose to establish its state in Palestine, and the European powers concurred in that wish. The immigration was slow prior to World War I—but then came the Balfour Declaration, issued by the British government during that war to win the support of Jews for the allies fighting against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. Just what did the Balfour Declaration promise, however? Here are the exact words: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

 

A Disappeared Phrase

The latter phrase has all but disappeared from our media and from the history of this problem. If, as the Israelis insist, that “national home” was actually to become a state of Israel, then the intention of the Declaration was to create two states in Palestine, one Jewish and one non-Jewish. Some 85 years later the latter state still has not come into existence. If the intention was to create two national homes for two peoples in a single state, then that hasn’t happened either.

It is of course true that the British made contradictory promises to the Arabs when inviting them to join in revolt against their Ottoman rulers. The Arabs thought they had received a promise of independence. Some —in Iraq and Jordan—received that, but the British and French reneged on that promise for Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, and took control under League of Nations mandates. And, in the case of Palestine, there was the fully contradictory promise to the Jewish Zionists. If it was European persecution of the Jews that fueled the Zionist movement, and the Holocaust that won the sympathy of the world for the sufferings of those executed and their survivors, many in refugee status, why was there not a European solution to the problem? Why not give the Zionists a piece of Europe?

Why were the survivors of the Holocaust not offered Bavaria, for example? Of course because that would have been a major imposition on the Bavarians—and, in any case, the Zionists wanted Palestine, not a piece of Europe. At one point the British offered them the province of Karamoja in Uganda. This was indeed a land without people, for the simple reason that it was infested with the tsetse fly, the vector of sleeping sickness. But eradication of that pest should not have been beyond the competence of people who claim to have made the desert bloom— a desert which in fact was already blooming before the Zionists arrived. Andrew Killgore, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, has reminded me that in 1903 the World Zionist Organization did accept the Uganda offer, but nothing came of it in the end, as the focus remained on Palestine.

 

“A Land Without People”

Speaking of a land without people, the most preposterous Zionist slogan from the early days was to describe Palestine as “a land without people for a people without land.” This too was propagated by irresponsible journalists who should have ridiculed it whenever they mentioned it. Obviously that land was inhabited by a great many people—including quite a few who were Jews.

The 1948-49 Israeli War of Independence resulted in the expansion of the Jewish state from 52 percent of Palestine to 78 percent. It also caused hundreds of thousands of Arab Palestinians to become refugees as they were forced out or fled in terror, affected among other things by the example of the Deir Yassin massacre. They continue in that condition today, in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, and in the West Bank and Gaza, and around the world. This is a well-known and indisputable fact, but I mention it because if Palestine was a land without people, where did all these refugees come from?

 

“Jordan Is Palestine”

Another myth that the media sometimes fall for is that Jordan is actually Palestine. This has been a favorite formulation of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. In fact, the sparsely populated, partly desert territory originally labeled Transjordan that the British carved out of the lands wrested from the Ottomans in World War I could more accurately be described as southern Syria. Since the French had acquired the mandate over Syria plus Lebanon, however, this southern portion had to have a different, invented name. But it is a real stretch to even include it in any geographic region labeled Palestine, at the same time detaching that name from the land that has been known for millennia as Palestine.

 

“Pushing Them Into the Sea”

One of the most persistent and pernicious myths is that the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel is considered by the Palestinian and other Arab enemies of Israel as only the first step toward the eventual elimination of the Jewish state by pushing the Israelis into the sea. No doubt there are elements who hold this view among some Palestinians and some Arabs—and, of course, those numbers will have increased as a result of the Israeli military’s human and material depredations inflicted on Palestinian towns and villages in recent weeks. That view, however, is a quite unrealistic one, and is used simply to justify opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state.

Prior to the late 1980s the PLO did advocate the return of all of Palestine to the Arabs. As far back as Yasser Arafat’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly in December 1988, however, Palestinian official and publicly declared policy has been to accept Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, to accept Israeli borders on the June 4, 1967 lines, to recognize such a state de jure, and to seek a Palestinian state in the 22 percent of Palestine on the other sides of those lines. Two of Israel’s most important neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, have signed peace treaties and established diplomatic relations with Israel. Similar steps with a Palestinian state would open the way for similar actions by Syria and Lebanon. Israel is much too powerful militarily to be challenged by any combination of Arab states, and the United States would never allow Israel to be eliminated or even seriously threatened existentially. So much for this myth of vulnerability.

 

The Oslo Agreement

Let us move on to the Oslo agreement of 1993. This was a major breakthrough that held out the hope for a comprehensive and permanent peace settlement among the antagonists. There were, however, several things wrong with it. A major one, hardly understood at the time, was that Israel forced Arafat and his Palestinian Authority to undertake the burden of policing the territories against terrorist and other acts of violence, including actions of resistance to the occupation, when Israel itself, with all of its firepower, intelligence resources, and means of coercion had been unable to curb the first intifada—a manifestation mostly of stone-throwing by youths. The PA’s inability to keep order in the territories and prevent attacks against Israelis inside Israel allowed Israel to take the position that until all violence against Israelis ceased there would be no more progress toward peace. As former Israeli official David Kimche has pointed out, Sharon’s insistence (backed by the U.S. government) on a 100 percent halt to Palestinian violence actually invited more violence by giving fanatics the power to scuttle negotiations at any time with suicide bombs.

Under Oslo, the steps toward a settlement were scheduled in stages over too many years, allowing the Israelis to drag things out and to fail to carry out the promised withdrawals from Palestinian territory. The most contentious issues—borders, settlements, refugees, and Jerusalem—were postponed to be the last of the permanent status issues to be negotiated. Nor did Israel observe the stricture that no actions were to be taken in the interim that would prejudice the outcome of these issues. Every Israeli government that held office following the signing of the Oslo Declaration of Principles continued to build and expand the settlements on Palestinian territory. Their purpose was obvious: to “create facts on the ground” to make it impossible for Israel actually to withdraw from increasingly large parts of the West Bank and Gaza. Between 1993 (that is, after Oslo) and 2000 the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza doubled from around 100,000 to 200,000. These figures do not include settlers in East Jerusalem and the Golan. Today the number of settlers totals nearly 400,000.

 

“Facts on the Ground”

The settlements are the major obstacle to a permanent solution. Unfortunately, the U.S. government has dealt most egregiously with this deal-breaking issue. Back in the Carter administration such settlements were deemed “illegal,” which in fact they are. Under Reagan they were “unhelpful,” and under Bush they became an “obstacle to peace,” although the first President Bush tried to pressure Israel to halt the expansion by withholding U.S. funding. Under Clinton settlements evolved into “a matter for negotiation between the two sides.” And in the most recent negotiations Israel insisted that the bulk of the settlers and the lands they sit on be incorporated into Israel.

Oslo, therefore, has failed for a variety of reasons—the most important having been the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish Israeli extremist. Without him to lead the Israeli side, the prospects of a successful agreement probably disappeared.

 

Barak’s “Generous Offer”

Which brings us to the most recent and perhaps the biggest myth of all, namely that at Camp David II in the year 2000 Arafat rejected Ehud Barak’s “most generous offer” that Israel ever had made or ever could make. Arafat came to that meeting reluctantly, believing—correctly, as it turned out—that the situation was not yet ripe for a settlement. Although he extracted a promise that he would not be blamed if Camp David failed, when it did fail President Clinton blamed Arafat, and the “generous offer” has become the conventional wisdom ever since.

I am indebted to Uri Avnery and to Robert Malley for setting us straight about this alleged “most generous offer” myth. Unfortunately, little of substance was put into writing at those Camp David sessions, so we have to rely on witnesses who were present, such as Malley. Avnery, a leader of the Peace Camp in Israel, has pointed out that Barak proposed that 69 Israeli settlements, populated by 85 percent of the West Bank settlers, would be annexed as blocs to Israel. This would have required the Palestinians to relinquish another 10 percent of their meager remaining 22 percent. Yet another 10 percent of that land—the area that contains the settlements of the most extreme religious zealots—would be retained for an indefinite period under “temporary Israeli control.” Checkpoints and bypass roads for the settlers would further segment the Palestinian areas into three or four Bantustans, with movement among them so hindered as to make a normal life impossible. Israel would continue to control the borders with Jordan and Egypt, something no sovereign state could accept.

The later talks at Taba modified these proposals somewhat, as regards the temporary control zones, but the election results bringing Sharon to power sent all of that to the dustbin. Arafat had no choice but to reject this so-called generous offer, which was generous only to the Israeli side. Had Arafat accepted it, Sharon would have rejected what his predecessor had done, so there would have been no settlement.

Robert Malley published his exposé in The New York Times in July 2001 (as well as in The New York Review of Books). Malley was present at Camp David as President Clinton’s adviser for Arab-Israel affairs and is the most authoritative witness to have gone public about exactly what went on there. He called his revelations “fictions” rather than “myths,” but they are the same thing. He then listed three myths: (1) Camp David became a test of Arafat’s intentions, but what prevented progress, from Arafat’s point of view, was that the gaps had not been sufficiently narrowed, his relations with Barak were not good, he believed that Barak was simply trying to skirt his obligations to carry out more withdrawals, and none of the still unresolved core issues had been discussed. (2) Barak’s was not the “dream offer” it has been made out to be, from the Palestinian perspective; to accommodate the settlers Israel was to annex 9 percent of the West Bank, and Palestine would receive the equivalent of one-ninth of the annexed land from Israel proper; how would Arafat defend the 9 to 1 ratio of land swaps? In Jerusalem Palestine would have been given sovereignty over only some Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, but only custody, not sovereignty, over the Haram al-Sharif; no solution was offered for the refugee problem. (3) The Palestinians were accused of offering no concessions, yet they accepted the annexation of West Bank territory to accommodate settlements; they accepted Israeli sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem that were also occupied territory; and they agreed to settle the refugee problem in a manner that protected Israel’s demography by limiting the number of returnees.

Conclusion: if this was the most generous offer ever made to the Palestinians, it was also the most generous set of compromises ever offered to Israel by any Arab interlocutor. Malley concluded that the process at Camp David had its flaws, but that tackling the final status issues came too late, not too soon, and the failure to achieve a major breakthrough at that point guaranteed there would be an escalation of violence—which is, of course, what happened, especially after Sharon came to power.

 

“Arafat Launched the Intifada”

One of the worst more recent myths, propagated by prejudiced pundits and disseminated widely by irresponsible journalists, was that Arafat launched the al-Aqsa intifada for the purpose of wringing additional concessions from the Israelis or creating a situation that would cause the international community to come to his rescue by intervening in the conflict.

The truth is that all along Arafat has simply been trying to get the Israelis to honor the solemn international commitment they undertook in signing the Oslo agreement, namely, and principally, to withdraw from the occupied territories, as Israel is obligated to do. Doing something that one is required to do is not making a concession; it is honoring one’s commitments. The Mitchell Report found absolutely no evidence that Arafat had called for violence after the breakdown of the Camp David talks in 2000.

As for who started the intifada and for what reason, despite the myth that it was Arafat’s doing, everyone should know and admit that its genesis was a spontaneous uprising by the Palestinians to protest the terribly provocative visit to the Haram al-Sharif or Temple Mount by none other than Ariel Sharon. Accompanied by hundreds of heavily armed Israeli police, his visit was designed to assert—or, from the Israeli point of view, to confirm—Israel’s sovereignty over this third most sacred holy site of the Islamic religion. Sharon’s immediate objective may not have been to destroy the peace process, and may have been more in the nature of domestic Israeli politics. It did succeed, however, in Sharon’s long-term aim of destroying the Oslo agreement and the process it entailed. Sporadic violence already existed, but it erupted in scope and severity following Sharon’s visit. That is why the Palestinians label it the al-Aqsa intifada.

 

“West Bank and Gaza Not ‘Occupied’”

Some of us have tried in vain to get journalists to stop describing the West Bank and Gaza as territories “captured” by Israel in the 1967 war. “Capture” implies that the Israelis now possess those territories, that they own them, that they can dispose of them as they wish, keep some or all of them, and even negotiate their eventual sovereignty. No, these are “occupied” territories; their acquisition through war is prohibited by U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, the foundation for all peace efforts since the 1967 war, as well as by much other international law. Nor are these territories “disputed,” as Israel often likes to claim. Only the Israelis are disputing their ownership; the rest of the international community believes they belong to the Palestinians.

 

Saudi Proposal a Generous Offer

Leaving aside all of these myths, what kind of solution is still possible? There is an offer on the table, the one made by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. It is a simple formulation, based on the long-standing “land-for-peace” formula enunciated in Resolution 242. It is full peace with Israel, recognition and normal relations, in return for full withdrawal by Israel from the 22 percent of Palestine left for the Palestinians on which to create a state, and something to be worked out about the refugees.

This offer was endorsed by all 22 members of the Arab League, including some states formerly intransigent about Israel. It has been welcomed by the United States and other outside elements, but mostly ignored by Israel, probably because it says nothing about the settlements or about Jerusalem. But one can infer that full withdrawal means abandonment of the settlements and withdrawal from East Jerusalem, which is occupied territory just as much as the rest of the West Bank.

In contrast with Barak’s so-called most generous offer, I would characterize the Saudi crown prince’s proposal as the most generous final settlement offer that the Arab states can or are ever likely to make to Israel. However, the current government of Israel will hardly see it that way. They have no intention of relinquishing any settlements or sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem.

In a March 8 article in the Jerusalem Post entitled “Money for Peace,” Mark Heller, a distinguished Israeli academic, said that Crown Prince’s Abdullah’s proposal was actually an effort to persuade Israeli public opinion, but that it appealed mostly to those already inclined to be persuaded. Heller made a suggestion to address “those inclined not to be persuaded, of whom the hardest core are the settlers.”

Heller suggested that Abdullah back his words with money, namely by offering to buy the houses of the settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. Of the some 250,000 settlers not in the Jerusalem area he estimated that 80 percent are not religious-nationalist die-hards and would leave if they could buy equivalent homes inside Israel proper. He further estimated that $10 billion could buy them out.

To pre-empt Arab criticism that Arabs shouldn’t be paying Israelis to undo what they shouldn’t have done in the first place, the deal could be that the empty houses would be held in escrow for Palestinian refugees, e.g., from Lebanon, to be resettled in the Palestinian state as part of the peace agreement. “What the Saudis would really be doing was financing the cost of housing for refugees, with Israel contributing the infrastructure (roads, sewage, electricity grid, etc.).” Such imaginative thinking has been rare in this conflict. Heller concluded his article thus: “Abdullah has already shaken up the debate with his words. If he really wants to transform it, he could bring his other main asset to bear. ‘Money for peace’ sounds crass, but maybe that is exactly what’s needed.”

There is a precedent for Heller’s proposal: When the Sinai was returned to Egypt, Uncle Sam provided millions of dollars to buy out some of the Israeli settlers, who then moved to the United States.

The U.S. government continues to advocate the old, discredited way of working toward peace: an end to violence, a cease-fire, a return to negotiations between the two sides. This is the proverbial head-in-the-sand posture. It has become clear that if the two sides were ever capable of reaching a negotiated settlement, that is no longer possible today. The bloodshed has been too great, the hatreds now too inflamed, the extremists on both sides determined not to accept a rational, fair, legal outcome based on necessary compromises and endorsed by the entire international community of nations.

 

Imposed Solution Needed

Today an imposed solution is the only way to peace, a solution imposed by that same international community that in turn would guarantee the security of all states in the region and their right “to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries,” as stated somewhat redundantly in U.N. Resolution 242—given that of course the only secure national borders are those that are recognized by a state’s neighbors.

I believe the world recognizes, but perhaps Washington does not yet, that the disparity in power between the two parties—between a heavily armed Israel backed by the only superpower, and a weak and now further beaten down and demoralized Palestinian people who are only mildly backed by their Arab brothers—is much too great to permit a fair solution, and one that is not fair will not last, will not become permanent. The latter is something Israel must recognize. Israel cannot impose its own preferred solution, just as it cannot choose a leader or leaders for the Palestinians. What will guarantee Israel’s long-term security, which everyone agrees is an American obligation and commitment, is a fair and just solution—nothing less.

Robert V. Keeley, a former U.S. ambassador to Greece, delivered this talk at the April 29 closing dinner of the Council for the National Interest conference in Washington, DC.

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