The Problem with the 'Palestinians'

Marty Peretz:

Netanyahu is not the problem.

The problem is that the Palestinians want to reverse history.

And they can’t.

More than that, their Arab brothers and sisters are otherwise engaged. My guess is that Arab Winter is fast approaching.

(k/p=EH)

And while we are at The New Republic, here's from Yossi Klein Halevi:

Israel is not to blame for the absence of peace...a settlement freeze, however essential for our own integrity, will not bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table...But in truth the question of what Netanyahu would concede is irrelevant. The Palestinians were offered the equivalent of the 1967 borders by former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. Yet Palestinian leaders rejected the offers because they refused to concede the “sacred” right of return, as P.A. head Mahmoud Abbas calls it—that is, the sacred right to destroy the Jewish state through demographic subversion. The Netanyahu government isn’t the cause of the breakdown of the peace process but its result.

The temptation for Jewish self-recrimination is deeply rooted in Zionist psychology. Zionism, after all, was a revolt against Jewish fatalism. If the Jewish situation is untenable, then clearly the fault lies with a lack of Jewish initiative. If you will it, said Zionist founder Theodore Herzl, it is no dream.

Israeli rightists and leftists agree, in effect, that Israel can unilaterally determine its own reality, regardless of outside circumstances. If Israel lacks security, insists the right, that’s because we haven’t projected enough power and deterrence. And if Israel lacks peace, insists the left, that’s because we haven’t been sufficiently forthcoming in offering concessions.

Both right and left, then, implicitly dismiss the Arabs as an independent factor, with their own wills and agendas. But what if the Arab world doesn’t accept Israel’s legitimacy? What if the Middle East is undergoing transformations that have little if anything to do with what Israel wills?

This Rosh Hashanah I will ask forgiveness for my own sins and for the collective sins of Israel, as the liturgy insists. But I will withhold my political apologies for a time when those confessions won’t be manipulated against me. There is no religious obligation to collaborate in my own demonization. I will not be seeking forgiveness from those who deny my right to be.

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