Her Jewish State
nytimes.com
"Just as Israel was established for the Jewish people and gave refuge to them from European and Arab states, so a Palestinian state is the homeland of the Palestinian people, those who live in the territories and those who left in 1948 and are being kept as political cards in refugee camps,” she told me. “This is the national answer. The solution for Palestinians is the Palestinian state. Israel is not part of the solution.
Or, put another way, there can be no “right of return,” a central canon for Palestinians since the war of Israel’s foundation in 1948. That year, the United Nations declared in Resolution 194: “Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.
The Jewish state has been tied to the Livni family with a special bond since zero hour. For Livni, personal history is national history. Her parents were among the first couples to marry in the newborn state, the day after its foundation, on May 15, 1948. Her father, Eitan, served as operations chief for the Irgun, the Zionist guerrillas who used what would today be called terrorist methods to blast the British out of Mandate Palestine. Her mother, Sarah, was also an Irgun fighter; she suckled her daughter on visions of Eretz Israel, the biblical “Land of Israel,” including Judea and Samaria on the West Bank. Territorial compromise for peace had no place in the family lexicon. It was the weak talk of the peaceniks.
There were three ideological goals for families like Livni’s and mine: Greater Israel, a Jewish state and democracy,” says Arye Naor, a political scientist whose father also fought in the Irgun. “Well, it became clear you could have any two of them, but adding a third condemned the enterprise." |
