After Lebanon: a personal reflection on Israel and Palestine

I have supported a two-state solution for over 23 years since I was caught up as a naïve 17-year-old first-year university student in the ill winds and polarisation of the Lebanon War debate at Melbourne University.

Desperately I sought some mid-way compromise between the rigid anti-Zionism of much of the political Left, and the parochial pro-Israel patriotism of much of the Jewish community. After a short but intense investigation I identified two states as the only solution that would potentially meet both the minimum security needs of Israel and the minimum national aspirations of the Palestinians.

For me two states has always meant simply the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign Jewish state within roughly the pre-1967 Green Line borders, and equally the right of the Palestinians to an independent state within the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This means no coerced Jewish settlements within Palestinian territory (no to Greater Israel), and equally no coerced return of Palestinian refugees within Green Line Israel (no to Greater Palestine).

For most of the period from 1982-2000 I was a complete optimist. This optimism was based (with hindsight) on the arguably simplistic assumption that only political barriers on the Israeli side prevented the implementation of the two-state solution, and also on the absence of a complementary critical analysis of internal Palestinian actions, factions and agendas.

In short, I rationalised that a moderate Israeli Government willing to cede significant territory and recognise Palestinian national rights would provoke a corresponding surge of good will among Palestinians.

In contrast, over the last five years I have become convinced that Palestinian political barriers to peace are just as significant, and perhaps more significant than those from the Israeli side. I am unfortunately now a confirmed pessimist.

This pessimism was induced by the sad events of the second half of 2000 which forced me to re-examine my core beliefs. In regard to the failure of the Camp David negotiations in July 2000, I have argued that the Israelis made a reasonable proposal which went some way (but perhaps not quite far enough) to meeting minimum reasonable Palestinian aspirations. It was a proposal which at least deserved a serious counter-offer from the Palestinians.

Most commentators also agree that the Israeli proposals at Taba in January 2001 were more generous than those offered at Camp David, and went far closer to meeting minimum Palestinian aspirations for a contiguous and sovereign state.

Overall, there is no doubt from reading the memoirs of key Israeli negotiators and moderates - Yossi Beilin, Gilead Sher and Shlomo Ben Ami - that the Camp David and Taba proposals went a long way towards defining the parameters of a reasonable two-state solution.

Conversely, the Palestinians seemed unable to separate their justifiable demand for a state from their ideological demand for the return of 1948 refugees to the Jewish state rather than to Palestine.

The failure to find common ground in these negotiations, and particularly the subsequent Palestinian intifada (which is really an undeclared war against Israel) suggests there is a huge cultural gulf between Israeli and Palestinian concepts of peace.

Israel has always viewed peace in highly western terms as the cessation of war and violence following negotiations and mutual compromise. Conflict resolution will be based on a reasonable mid-way point between the conflicting Israeli and Palestinian narratives. Peace is seen as an end in itself.

In contrast, Palestinians seem to define peace not as the absence of war per se, but rather as the restoration of their national, territorial, and political rights. This is not a tangible or concrete concept that is easily resolved via western-style negotiations. The Palestinians view themselves as the victims of an historical wrong (the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the associated Naqba or catastrophe) which can only be resolved by the implementation of a just solution. Justice is defined in absolute rather than relative terms, and all opposing narratives are unequivocally rejected.

In short, while a Palestinian state may be a prerequisite for peace, it is also possible to have a Palestinian state and a continued state of war.

So if I was to summarise my position on the peace process now - given the recent tragic events in Lebanon, and the ongoing concerns around Iranian nuclear ambitions - I would suggest the following:

There is no doubt that the international community has to find some way of convincing the Israelis to permit the establishment of a viable, sustainable Palestinian state leading to a two-state solution, and perhaps the current introduction of an international peacekeeping force into Southern Lebanon also suggests a potential way forward in Gaza and eventually the West Bank that will satisfy both sides.

This is not to deny the obvious barriers to a two-state solution including the Israeli settlements and the reluctance of Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, Palestinian demands for a right of return, the current domination of Palestinian politics by the hardline Hamas party, and the violence from both sides. But there are arguably potentially creative means of overcoming these barriers in the longer term. Having just read former Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Ala’s excellent book From Oslo to Jerusalem, it is possible to see how quickly things can change from conflict to peace making.

And all the alternatives are far worse. On the one hand, the Greater Israel project involves a racist denial of the existence let alone legitimate national aspirations of the Palestinians. And alternatively the so-called one-state solution favoured by some Palestinians can only be called “Genocide with a human face”.

Of course, the two-state solution will never work unless or until the Arab world ends its 58-year-old military, political, trade and intellectual siege of Israel. This siege is not about what Israel has actually done - good or bad - during its existence. It is simply - as noted by the famous French Trotskyist Nathan Weinstock - about what Israel symbolises to the Arab world in terms of the reversal of the traditional role of Jews as an inferior, second class minority (known as dhimmis).

What is required then is a revolution in Arab attitudes so that conflicts with Israel over borders or territory are negotiated as ordinary neighbourly disputes, rather than seen to be reflecting seminal cultural and ideological events. Maybe the current Arab League plan signals some positive movement in that direction, but as a starting point for negotiations rather than as something to be imposed on Israel.

If this change in attitude occurred among both fundamentalist and secular Arabs, I believe we would then see a similar change in attitude within Israel leading to a far greater Israeli willingness to seek non-military solutions to political problems.