This modified version of unilateralism will no doubt be unsatisfying to many supporters of Israel. It places a huge burden on the state in terms of resettling tens of thousands of people without producing true peace. But Zionism has reached a point where the traditional left and right ideologies have failed to produce realistic strategic options and where continued inaction will lead to the end of Israel as we know it. A unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank—which denies the Palestinians a veto on Israel’s future—is the only realistic method of resolving the Jewish state’s strategic dilemma.
Under the suggested paradigm, the security Israelis deserve will be preserved while the threat posed by the one-state solution will be abjured. Some conflict will continue, but it will be the type of conflict that Israel knows how to manage. And without Jewish settlers confiscating land, torching mosques and carving up the West Bank with Jewish-only bypass roads, much of the justified moral consternation over Israel’s colonial enterprise there will evaporate.
One day, if and when Israelis and Palestinians both learn to truly accept each other and the fact that they are destined to share this land together in perpetuity, peace may be achieved. Until then, modified unilateralism, while not ideal, is the best course to pursue.
Rafael D. Frankel is a former Middle East correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and The Boston Globe and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Georgetown University. You can follow him on Twitter @rafaeldfrankel or on the web at www.rafaeldfrankel.com.
Image: Jamie Lynn Ross
Comments
Any move regarding the Arab Israeli conflct and an attempt to bring about an accommodation of peaceful coexistence between Arab and Jew, between the Muslim-Arab world, local and regional, and the sovereign nation-state of the Jewish people, Israel, must be made based on the fundamental elements of international law as they are related to the conflict: 1) The San Remo conference decisions of 1920; 2) The League of Nations decisions and the partition of "Palestine" - the name of a territory, never a nationality or a state of course - between Arabs and Jews of 1922; 3) United Nations Charter, Article 80, of 1945 which enshrines the League of Nations decisions 1922 as an irrevocable act; and, 4) UN Security Council Resoluiton, 242, of 1967. Mr. Yitzhaq Rabin, based on these very elements, made his Contour for Peace speech at the Knesset in October 1995, the following points are as follows: a) Jerusalem will remain united under Israel's sovereignty and will also include Giv'at Zeev and Ma'aleh Adumim; b) All major Jewish settlement blocs (including Gush Qatif, JBI) will be incorporate into Israel's sovereign territory; c) The Jordan Valley must be viewed in the widest sense of the term and it too will remain under Israel's rule; and, d) The future Palestinian state will not be a regular one in that it will be totally demilitarized, its airspace will be controlled by Israel, as will its boundaries and all of its border passes: land, sea and air. Mr. Rabin, a pragmatic man of peace and a one who looked after Israel's national and security interests provided us, during his very last speech at the Knesset, with a roadmap which peace loving people anywhere should follow. It appears the present prime minister of Israel, Mr. Binjamin Netanjahu, has adopted the same approach as Rabin's. The only missing piece are the Arabs who have categorically objected to the existence of a sovereign nation-state of the Jewish people on ANY parcel of land between the Jordan River and the Med. Sea, the very same area designated by internaitonal law to be "the national home for the Jewish people", i.e. the Jewish people's nation-state.
Mr. Naphtali Bennet of Habayit Hayehudi (the Jewish Home) party, now part of the coalition government of Israel, has proposed a unilateral move that resembles closest Mr. Rabin's vision: The unilateral annexation of Area C to Israel's sovereign territory. It is worth examining Mr. Bennet's proposal.
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Jehudah Ben-Israel, the short version: The only peace Israel will and should agree to must be based on giving Israel (A) all the rights and benefits international law says it *should* have, and (B) all the additional rights and benefits Israel wants too even if same *violate* international law and indeed even if they constitute war crimes. That's all.