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?

Haaretz features a terrific editorial and Ynetnews features a penetrating column by Sever Plocker on very similar topics. Each begins with Ehud Olmert’s recent fulminations about unilaterally marking Israel’s final borders along the route of the Separation Wall without consulting the Palestinians. Both say this concept is dead as a doornail. Plocker writes in There is no chance Israel can set unilateral borders:

There is an absurd, completely unfounded idea making the rounds in Israel’s political establishment, one that has even made its way to Washington: The notion that the Israel government can avoid the Palestinian Authority and unilaterally set its borders.

Recently the Kadima Party has adopted this idea, and acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has talked about it in the media. An Olmert-led government, he says, will give the Palestinians a limited chance to bring their claims back to the negotiating table. If they linger too long, or if they choose a “talks today, terror tomorrow” approach, Israel will take the initiative.

Israel will act alone, Olmert said threateningly, and following a “domestic dialogue” and “international dialogue” – exactly where the new border will run and exactly what parts of Judea and Samaria will be annexed to Israel.

Of course none of this will happen, nor could it ever happen.

Haaretz takes a slightly different approach to the same issue, but focusing on what Israel’s final borders should be. The editorial condemns the various Kadima proposals to appropriate large chunks of Palestinian territory beyond the Green Line (Jezreel Valley, Maale Adumim, etc.):

…There is broad public support for another move, and a major one. The obstacle on the path to carrying out another withdrawal is…the abstract term “settlement blocs,” which has gained too much weight in Israeli discourse and appears to reflect a new mistaken idee fixe. The number of “blocs,” as well as their size, changes constantly, and the appetite for annexing territory has not waned for a moment.

Avi Dichter, one of Kadima’s senior members, talks of the Hebron-Kiryat Arba bloc, the Karnei Shomron-Kedumim bloc, the Ofra-Beit El bloc and three other blocs that would not be evacuated. This is not a withdrawal and it is not even worth discussing: It is merely talk about ending the occupation without ending it.

The editorial writer makes the convincing argument that in Olmert’s proposed West Bank withdrawal Israel should not engage in half-measures by evacuating some settlements while leaving others behind that would only have to be evacuated at some later date. Israel needs to bite the bullet and accept the division of Jerusalem and it needs to return to 1967 borders, not the route of the Separation Wall:

Simple fairness requires presenting a withdrawal plan that does not remove people from their houses in dribs and drabs, but rather makes the 1967 borders its basis, along with those adjustments required by genuine necessity - not by “facts on the ground” established in error. There is no reason to postpone dividing Jerusalem, when every year that passes makes it an even harder demographic mixture to separate. There is no reason to annex the Jordan Valley, which is a vital land reserve for the Palestinian Authority. There is no reason to annex the entire Ma’aleh Adumim bloc, which cuts the West Bank into pieces and makes the division into two states a stingy pretense.

Sever Plocker amplifies on this idea by noting that in all previous instances in which Israel set its borders, without fail it always withdrew to 1949 or 1967 borders:

…From 1977 to 2005 Israel set borders in the south, east and north. In each case, with no exceptions, and whether the moves were made by Labor or Likud governments, several things stick out:

• Israel always pulls back to the 1949 Armistice Line or to the internationally recognized border that preceded the Six Day War.

• Israel has never left IDF soldiers or settlements behind. Settlements have been evacuated to the green line; after all, there is no sense evacuating them twice.

• Israel never had the audacity to set borders or unilaterally annex territories captured in 1967. The borders [were] sketched in agreement with Arab governments and the international community. We signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. The withdrawal from Lebanon was approved (to the last centimeter) by U.N. inspectors. Even the Gaza disengagement was certified by the Arab governments, over the objections of the Palestinian Authority.

If one wonders how Plocker accounts for the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem, one should remember that he’s talking about areas in which Israel has “set borders” and it hasn’t yet done so to the east, that is Jerusalem and the Territories. One could argue that Plocker implies that there may have to be territorial adjustments to the East Jerusalem annexation.

Ynet’s columnist draws some sobering lessons from Israel’s past history regarding setting borders that reflects unfavorably on Olmert’s efforts to do so now:

What can we learn from these examples? We can discern a clear, razor-sharp message. There is no such thing as a permanent border without a permanent status agreement. Therefore, there is no way Israel will be able to unilaterally establish borders with the Palestinian Authority.

In order for such a border to get even minimal international recognition, it will have to take into consideration Palestinian needs and national aspirations, and they will have to agree to the process – and it doesn’t matter who their elected officials are at the time.

Plocker closes his analysis with a story about how Ariel Sharon’s decades-old routines were radically altered by his conversion to the idea that Israel needed to reduce its territorial ambitions in order to preserve itself as a Jewish state:

For years, Ariel Sharon walked around with a set of maps folded under his arm. He would pull them out to show whoever he happened to be talking to, which areas Israel needed to retain forever to maintain its security, ecological and geographic needs.

In 2004 Sharon stopped carrying around the maps. He understood, deep down, that Israel is not in a position that the Allies were in 1945 when they forced Nazi Germany to surrender.

Now, we are not a victorious empire that can create whatever borders it wants on the sands of the Middle East. We never got permission to do it in the past, and we won’t in the future.

Map purveyors are like dream merchants: They try to sell us expired hopes.