Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Ira Forman, NJDC executive director (photo: Philadelphia Jewish Voice)

The NJDC just e mailed me one of their periodic alerts. This one announced that Ira Forman, the group’s executive director, had attacked a Jimmy Carter USA Today column about Ehud Olmert’s West Bank “realignment” plan. Forman himself had penned his own objections in a column in Washington Jewish Week.

I am a good Jewish Democrat who often finds myself in agreement with the work of the NJDC. But Ira Forman’s column is so wrong-headed and so ignores the facts of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict that I could not allow it to go uncontested.

First, Forman gets really exercised by Carter’s statement:

[Olmert's] plan, as described during the recent Israeli election and the formation of a new governing coalition, would take about half of the Palestinian West Bank and encapsulate the urban areas within a huge concrete wall and the more rural parts of Palestine within a high fence.

Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin sign Camp David accord (photo: Carter Library)

He counters:

[Carter] describes Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s unilateral withdrawal plan as one “which would take about half of the Palestinian West Bank and encapsulates the urban areas within a huge concrete wall … .”

Where does he get this stuff? Olmert’s government has not produced any definitive unilateral withdrawal plan. However, every report of possible plans assumes that if there continues to be no Palestinian peace partner, then Israel will withdraw its population behind the security fence — taking in about 8 percent of the West Bank.

While Israel may only be retaining 8% of Palestinian territory for its settlements–with the Maaleh Adumim project & by retaining control of the Jordan Valley the actual amount of territory that is rendered inaccessible to the Palestinians is much greater than that 8%. I don’t know whether Carter’s 50% figure is correct, but I have no doubt that it is a realistic one.

Forman continues his diatribe against Carter’s comments about the nature of the Separation Wall:

it is astonishingly disingenuous to talk about concrete wall encapsulating Palestinian urban areas. Of the seven cities that the Palestinian Authority lists as having more than 100,000 people, only in Jerusalem will concrete barriers run through the middle of urbanized land.

Even in Jerusalem, it is misleading to say that the fence “encapsulates” the urban population. He further claims that the Olmert plan “would effectively divide it [the West Bank] into three portions.” This echoes the Palestinian Authority’s rhetoric about bantustans. While the convergence plan envisions creating strips of land that reach into the West Bank in a few areas, a review of the security fence maps belies charges of chopping the area up into three separate portions.

A combination of the Separation Wall running through the middle of East Jerusalem (Abu Dis) and the Maaleh Adumim project will effectively wall off the 250,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem from the West Bank. The majority of Israeli analysts, journalists and politicians accept this formulation. A reading of any number of posts on this subject in this blog will take you to some of their views. Yet Forman is so blinded by his slavish adherence to Olmert’s vision that he must deny reality readily accepted by knowledgeable Israelis.

Why Forman’s miserable pilpul/casuistry over the word “encapsulate?” The exclusion barrier is a structure that imprisons the Palestinians. Let me ask Forman this: has he ever visited a Palestinian village next to the wall? He brings Dem bigwigs on Israel tours all the time. Have they ever once visited with common Palestinian folk affected by the Wall. If not, how in heaven’s name does he know what that experience is like and whether “encapsulated” is the proper word to describe it?

Unbelievably, Forman denies the internationally accepted norm of the Green Line. Like other hardline pro-Israel ideologues he must argue that the Green Line is a fiction that was never embraced by Israel or the international community. His argument has the ring of many other circular arguments which divorce themselves from reality. The Green Line IS universally accepted. It is the 1967 border. It will be the basis for any final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians (though the final border may diverge from it slightly by mutual agreement). Arguing otherwise as Forman does is a useless exercise in blowing smoke.

Second, regarding Palestinian willingness to negotiate: Abbas has continually spoken of his willingness to enter into final status negotiations with Israel. Only Olmert refuses to do so citing the demand that Hamas meet preconditions before he will negotiate with Abbas.

Now let’s talk about the Road Map. Forman reminds us:

Has President Carter totally forgotten that a central requirement of the Phase I portion of the road map is that the P.A. bring a halt to violence, terrorism and incitement?

But what he and other hardline pro-Israel folk always neglect to add is that the Road Map was a MUTUAL document that called for simultaneous actions by both sides. And while the Palestinians were supposed to stop terror Israel was supposed to stop new settlement activity. Israel has not done so and new building is happening in the West Bank as I write this. Why does Forman believe that only the Palestinians are subject to the provisions of the Road Map while Israel isn’t?

While Forman fulminates on Carter’s perfidy toward Israel, events on the ground both in Palestine and Israel will render the former’s views completely obsolescent. In the coming months, possibly in a year, Israel will be negotiating with Abbas and Hamas. In the end, Israel’s Exclusion Wall will be dismantled in whole or in part. The final border will run very close to the Green Line with only a few diversions to incorporate those settlement blocs which both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators designate as Israeli territory (in exchange for Negev territory per Clinton’s Camp David proposals). All argument to the contrary is mere hackery and a distraction from reality.

In fact, one wonders why the NJDC and Aipac’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are more hardline than those of the Bush Administration? Hell, they’re even more hardline than some ministers in the current Israeli government. Now, why might that be?

As a Jewish liberal Democrat, I can see that the NJDC does not represent me when it comes to Israel. I’m much more comfortable with Brit Tzedek, the Israel Policy Forum and American Friends of Peace Now. That NJDC appears to be in the pocket of Aipac irks me no end.

I value Jimmy Carter’s contribution to the Israel-Palestine discussion. NJDC should too. President Carter has done more to advance the cause of Israeli-Arab peace than most Americans. What has Ira Forman done on that score? I wonder why Aipac & NJDC both detest him so & what this says about relations between these two ostensibly independent groups?

The Jerusalem Post published a rather interesting poll result saying that Israelis are surprisingly flexible (much more flexible than Kadima and Likud leaders) on the issue of Jerusalem territorial concessions:

63 percent of Israelis are willing to make concessions on the borders of Jerusalem in exchange for “real peace” with the Palestinians. Of them, 54% are willing to relinquish Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, but not in the Old City, the Jewish Quarter or the Western Wall, according to the study by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

Seventy-five percent of those who said they would be willing to make concessions for peace admitted they did not believe that real peace with the Palestinians was a possibility.

That’s a solid majority in favor of returning Arab neighborhoods to Palestinian control. Personally, I don’t believe that retaining Israeli control over Arab neighborhoods in the Old City can work as a long term solution. There will have to be some flexible solution to this conflict that allows Jewish neighborhoods in the Old City to rest under Israeli control and Arab neighborhoods under Palestinian. That’s not an easy problem to resolve, but I firmly believe that there is a way to do so.

And the fact that 75% of respondents don’t believe real peace is possible doesn’t bother me. I read that number differently than some would. What interests me about it is that while a vast majority of Israelis believe that peace isn’t possible, a sizable majority of those naysayers STILL are willing to return Arab land and population to Palestinian control in the quest for such a real peace. In other words, their hope is trumping their cynicism. That is a good thing. A sign that peace is possible despite the dangerous and damaging bellicosity of their leaders.