The headlines speak for themselves.
Study: Israeli Jews becoming increasingly racist toward Arabs
Poll Shows Most Palestinians Favor Violence Over Talks
My own view is that the primary cause on both sides relates to the parlous state of the peace process. Actions and inaction on each side saps belief on the other side in the possibility of a realistic peace settlement. The US government has failed miserably in building support for negotiating and implementing a peace settlement based on the international consensus of "two states for two peoples," whose outlines have been clear since at least the closing days of the Clinton presidency. The present impasse provides an additional reason for electing Barack Obama over John McCain next November.
Study: Israeli Jews becoming increasingly racist toward Arabs
In today's Ha'aretz, Avirama Golan discusses the results of "a report on racism in Israel, set to be released" today by Mossawa Center: The Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel.
Mossawa is supported by the Human Rights Program of the European Commission and the United Nations Democracy Foundation. The report, written by Mossawa director Jafar Farah and others, mainly examines racism against Arabs in Israel, using criteria taken from the antisemitism reports in Europe.
Apparently, the Mossawa report is not a public opinion survey, but rather is an analysis of events in Israel in recent years. According to Golan, the report
states that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has clearly impacted public opinion, and warns that ideas such as population exchange and racial segregation are gaining ground. It also warns that several Jewish politicians are gaining influence based on a platform of racial hatred.
The information provided does not allow any over-all estimate of the extent to which anti-Arab racism has infected Israeli Jews. But rather than simply dismiss it as (possibly) a minority phenomenon, I take the report to be worrisome evidence of one of the natural consequences of the present conflict and the way it is being conducted. In other words, an additional reason for friends of Israel to seek peace is the corrosive effects of the status quo on Israeli society.
Poll Shows Most Palestinians Favor Violence Over Talks
In today's New York Times, Ethan Bronner reports that "[a] new poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the attack this month on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that killed eight young men, most of them teenagers, an indication of the alarming level of Israeli-Palestinian tension in recent weeks. The survey also shows unprecedented support for the shooting of rockets on Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip and for the end of the peace negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli leaders."
These results are contained in last week's tri-monthly survey of Palestinian public opinion by Khalil Shikaki, head of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.
Shikaki "said he was shocked because the survey, taken last week, showed greater support for violence than any other he had conducted over the past 15 years in the Palestinian areas. Never before, he said, had a majority favored an end to negotiations or the shooting of rockets at Israel." Specifically, 84% support the March 6 attack on the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in west Jerusalem, in which seven teenagers and one young man in his twenties were murdered by a Palestinian resident of east Jerusalem. Also, 64% support the rocket attacks on Ashkelon and Sderot.
Shikaki's "explanation for the shift,
one widely reflected in the Palestinian media, is that recent actions by Israel, especially attacks on Gaza that killed nearly 130 people, an undercover operation in Bethlehem that killed four militants and the announced expansion of several West Bank settlements, have led to despair and rage among average Palestinians who thirst for revenge."
The poll does contain one potentially important ray of sunshine: 66% of Palestinians nevertheless support "normalized relations with Israel if it returned all land won in 1967 and a Palestinian state was established." Reportedly, the poll has a 3% margin of error. My diary on the November 2007 poll is available here.
Moving forward with Barack Obama.
In A More Perfect Union, his historic speech yesterday in Philadelphia, Senator Barack Obama also sought to reassure Americans about his appreciation of Israel, rejecting as both "wrong and divisive" such views as those that see
the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
If that were all we knew about Senator Obama's views, we perhaps might wonder how a President Obama would differ from the current administration or a possible Republican successor president. Fortunately, however, we already knew from his February 24 meeting with members of Cleveland's Jewish community that Barach Obama combines steadfast support for Israel with a keen appreciation that Israel's need for lasting security requires a peace settlement with the Palestinians based on two states for two peoples.
Well here's my starting orientation is A - Israel's security is sacrosanct, is non negotiable. . . . Point number two is that the status quo I believe is unsustainable over time. . . . Number three that Israel has to remain a Jewish state and what I believe that means is that any negotiated peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is going to have to involve the Palestinians relinquishing the right of return as it has been understood in the past. And that doesn't mean that there may not be conversations about compensation issues. It also means the Israelis will have to figure out how do we work with a legitimate Palestinian government to create a Palestinian state that is sustainable. It's going to have to be contiguous, it's going to have to work . . . So those are the starting points of my orientation.
Senator Obama also was audacious enough -- some might say foolhardy, I would say brave enough -- to acknowledge his differences with the hardest-line elements within the American Jewish community:
This is where I get to be honest and I hope I'm not out of school here. I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have a honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we're not going to make progress.
Two Peoples / Two States / One Peace
The question is not whether a two-state solution is attainable. The question is whether Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans will exercise the political will to make it happen.
The map on the left, from the American Task Force on Palestine illustrates the international consensus on a future Palestinian State. Not surprisingly, it is consistent with maps illustrating the Clinton Peace Parameters by Shlomo Ben-Ami, Ehud Barak's dovish Foreign Minister and author of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy, and President Clinton's chief peace negotiator, Dennis Ross; as well as the joint Israeli-Palestinian Geneva Initiative.
As The Economist editorialized on the fortieth anniversary of the Six-Day War, Israel's wasted victory: "For peace to come, Israel must give up the West Bank and share Jerusalem; the Palestinians must give up the dream of return and make Israel feel secure as a Jewish state. All the rest is detail."
The American Task Force on Palestine "advocates the following six principles towards a fair and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
- Two sovereign states—Israel and Palestine—living side by side in peace and security based on the borders of June 4, 1967 with mutually agreed upon territorial adjustments.
- An end to the Israeli occupation and the evacuation of all Israeli settlements, save for equitable arrangements mutually agreed upon by the negotiating parties.
- A just solution for the Palestinian refugee problem, in accordance with international legality and the relevant UN resolutions.
- A shared Jerusalem open to all faiths, serving as the capital of two states, providing for the fulfillment of the political aspirations of both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.
- Full acceptance of Israel by all Arab states, and normalized diplomatic and economic relations throughout the region.
- A 'Marshall Plan' style package of aid and investment for Palestine and the new Middle East."
Regarding the Palestinian refugee issue, ATFP has issued the following Statement of Principles:
- A resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue can only come about through direct negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian officials as an expression of their national policies. No other parties are entitled to negotiate on this issue. However, individuals and organizations are free to express their opinions on this issue in the spirit of free, open and respectful debate.
- There are many parties responsible for the suffering of the Palestinian refugees. Responsible parties include first Israel for displacing the Palestinian refugees, refusing their return and confiscating their property without compensation. Some Arab states also bear varying degrees of responsibility; some for allowing generations of refugees to languish in camps under miserable conditions, or by placing various restrictions in terms of their legal status, employment and travel rights, and others for not having done enough to ease the suffering of refugees. Finally, the Palestinian leadership has been at fault for not communicating honestly and openly with the refugees on what they can expect for their future.
- The right of return is an integral part of international humanitarian law, and cannot be renounced by any parties. There is no Palestinian constituency of consequence that would agree to the renunciation of this right. There is also no Jewish constituency of consequence in Israel that would accept the return of millions of Palestinian refugees.
- Although the right of return cannot be renounced, it should not stand in the way of the only identifiable peaceful prospect for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: a resolution based on a state of Israel living side-by-side with a Palestinian state in the occupied territories with its capital in East Jerusalem. Implementation of the right of return cannot obviate the logic of a resolution based on two states. The challenge for the Israeli and Palestinian national leaderships is to arrive at a formula that recognizes refugee rights but which does not contradict the basis of a two-state solution and an end to the conflict.
- As part of any comprehensive settlement ending the conflict, Israel should accept its moral responsibility to apologize to the Palestinian people for the creation of the refugee problem. Palestinians should accept that this acknowledgment of responsibility does not undermine the legitimacy of the present-day Israeli state.
One need not embrace ATFP's entire understanding of the conflict -- I do not -- to agree with the dovish Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, in its own fortieth anniversary editorial: "without acknowledging the Jewish character of the State of Israel, there is not even a basis for dialogue." And, we might add, the same is true if we fail to acknowledge the plight of the Palestinian refugees and their entitlement to redress.