Reuters is reporting that a recent Quartet statement about moving Israeli-Palestinian negotiations forward which was supposed to be a substantive one laying out parameters for a settlement, foundered on U.S. insistence that it must include reference to Israel as a Jewish state:
The issue of whether and how to suggest that Israel should be a Jewish state ultimately sank diplomatic efforts to draft a substantive statement to revive peace talks, sources familiar with the matter said.
…”As well as being wrapped around the settlements freeze axel, we now seem to be wrapped around the ‘Jewish state’ axel too,” said Martin Indyk, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs now at the Brookings Institution think tank.
U.S. officials originally hoped to enshrine a central bargain in the statement: that the borders of a Palestinian state would follow the lines prior to the 1967 war, with mutually agreed swaps, and Israel would be a Jewish state.
Folks, this is pure Dennis Ross. And worse, it’s Barack Obama being led by the nose by Dennis Ross, while Ross is doing the bidding of Israel’s Likud. I’ll say for what seems like the 100th time: the insistence that Palestine accept Israel as a Jewish state is a red herring. It has never been a part of any Israeli condition until the last few years. Before that, it was never heard. There is no reason why Palestine should make any acknowledgement of what sort of state Israel should be. The Palestinians plan to run their own state and define it for themselves. Why do they need to help define Israel?
In fact, the purpose of the Jewish state demand is to compel Palestine to give up the Right of Return on behalf of Nakba refugees. This is not an issue that Palestine should weigh in on. It’s an issue between Israel and those refugees themselves. Now, if Israel made a reasonable offer to resettle refugees along the lines suggested in the Geneva Accords, then Palestine could make a reasonable argument that Israel was attempting to meet the refugees halfway. And possibly it could negotiate that on their behalf.
But what Israel is doing is trying to foreclose the issue entirely by claiming that being a Jewish state means that Palestinian refugees will not be welcome to return. At all. Which is a non-starter for every Palestinian except faux ones like Hussein Ibish.
Note, this finely nuanced articulation of the debate over Israel as a Jewish state in the Reuters report, which provides a number of formulations which could satisfy any reasonable Israeli politician who wasn’t to the right of Jabotinsky:
There are many formulas to address whether Israel should be viewed as a Jewish state, including that it is a homeland for the Jewish people or that it embodies the right of the Jewish people to self-determination or that its status as a Jewish state should not prejudice any Palestinian “right of return.”
None of these formulations contradict my own vision of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people (but not necessarily a state in which Jews enjoy supremacy). Nor do they foreclose the right of Palestinians refugees to return to Israel, which could remain a homeland for two peoples.
If Israel does not want these refugees to return then it needs to argue that point *in* the peace treaty itself e.g.
Article xxx: Palestine agrees to take in all the Arab refugees, and Israel agrees to …… (fill in the dots with an appropriate quid pro quo).
Go ahead.
Argue that case.
But attempting to achieve the same ends by stealth i.e. by insisisting that the PLO recognize Israel as “the Jewish state”?
That is cynicism gone mad, precisely because it involves the Israeli leadership debasing the very concept of “sovereignty” to achieve something that it is too cowardly to espouse in the negotiations.
Has Netanyahu no pride in his country at all?
Israel is a state.
Like all states it can define itself any way that it wants.
But the only thing that it can demand of other states is that they respect Israel’s sovereignty i.e. Israel can defines itself to be anything – or nothing – but either way all it can expect from Abbas is a shrug of the shoulders and a “whatever, dude”.
BEWARE OF “with mutually agreed swaps”. It matters a lot WHEN that mutual agreement occurs. If it is a pre-condition of peace, and if the USA or Quartet sets no boundaries on this ace-in-the-hole, then Israel could use it to prolong negotiations forever.
If, however, we have a two-step process, with Palestinian statehood on 1967 lines (precisely) FIRST, and then a leisurely palaver between states about a subsequent mutual agreement, then Israel would (after Palestinian statehood) have NO PRESENCE in East Jerusalem or elsewhere in West Bank or Gaza, and Palestinians would not have a corridor from Gaza to West Bank. Israel would wish a corridor to the Wailing Wall and, maybe, to place or retain government buildings in East Jerusalem. This provides a solid basis for a trade. there is no reason for the areas traded to be equal; after all, Israel has 78% of Palestine, so the trades could be 4:1 in favor of Palestine in terms of territory. Or anything else that can be mutually agreed to.
Imagine the urgency to get to agreement if the settlement buildings, emptied of settlers, were being dynamited with slow but certain regularity as the negotiations wore on!
Given that the “peace process” is DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, why bother with debate about negotiating points?
Once the US did not force a settlement freeze, it was all over and will never be resurrected.
The focus should now be on the “one-state” and BDS to compel the Israelis to grant equal rights – a very long and arduous fight.
chet-
Problem seems to be that even in return of the most generous offer possible Palestinians are not willing to agree to end of conflict.
This is not an argument. It’s an unsupported statement of opinion. That’s not how the comment threads work here. You advance an argument. You provide proof of yr claim. If you don’t do that you not only won’t be taken seriously, but you may lose yr right to comment. This isn’t a football game where you root for yr side & I root for mine. No cheerleading. You debate. You argue. You support yr claims. Consider yrself warned.
@Richard,
Thanks for bringing this new Israeli government “Jewish State” precondition to the fore.
Consider the logical ArgumentAdAbsurdum applied to an Israel defined qua Israel and recognized as a “Jewish State”:
1. What would happen if in time the majority of Israeli Jews convert to Islam?
2. What would happen if in time the majority of Arab and Muslim Israelis living in Israel proper convert to Judaism?
3. What would happen if in time the majority of Palestinian Westbankers convert to (Reform) Judaism?
I know that as it had previously done with its halachic edict (fatwa) that (American) Reform Jews are not true Jews the Israeli Supreme Rabbinate would prevent such mass conversions by denying them recognition as valid conversions. But, just for the sake of the logical argument suggested above, observe that in such a “Jewish State of Israel” the legally acute question will remain as to how the principle of religious freedom and “freedom to chose one’s own religion” could possibly be applied?