TRANSCRIPT:
I spoke to an Orthodox Jewish friend of mine about the Gaza withdrawal this evening, after I’d received an e-mail from him about quote-unquote “heartbreaking” photos of the Gaza withdrawal.
I told him that I don’t find the photos heartbreaking; the people there are not supposed to be there; they know they’re not supposed to be there (on any level other than the divine); and yet, they’ve been moving there since the late 1970s trying to claim the land for their country, while their neighbors, the Gazan Palestinians, are cooped up into sub-ghettos like nearby Gaza City, where over a million of them reside. I just can’t feel bad that they’re being removed.
My friend told me, as I’ve been told several times before, that I can’t possibly understand the situation until I’ve visited Israel myself. This is silly – the only reason they suggest it is because they want me to feel the desire for the land that the Jews do. I don’t need to, or want to, understand the position of either side. I want to understand what’s fair. And if one is looking at the situation from either side here, he’s not being fair.
So, you ask -- what does one see from that perspective?
First, no matter how idealistic we are, a “one state solution” will not work, and neither will a two-state solution which relies on the parties to be friendly to one another.
The two parties will have to maintain a “cold peace” for decades, if not longer. Mediators and/or peacekeeping troops may be necessary. No trade, no travel, and no official talks until a substantial and sufficient cooling period has passed.
The Green Line makes for a simple, sensible, territorial split. As an Orthodox rabbi in Jerusalem whom I know very well puts it, “God put us on one side and then on the other. That’s the reality.” The Palestinians make up nearly all of the people in the territories, and the Jews are a large majority within the line. All Israeli settlers east of the Green Line, save for those in East Jerusalem and its suburbs, will be evacuated, Gaza-style, and will be given housing and paid a relocation and repatriation sum similar to the settlers being expelled from Gaza. The Israeli Arabs are a significant minority in Israel, and will have to make the difficult commitment to either Israel or the Palestinian state. If Israeli Arabs who decide to maintain their Israeli citizenship but would like to travel to the Palestinian state, they will have to do what Cuban-Americans do; fly into another country first.
Israel should maintain its presence as-is in Israel proper, and should withdraw all troops from both the West Bank and Gaza. Israel should be not just allowed, but encouraged to complete the security fence. This will, for now, serve as the much-needed buffer between the two sides. No direct travel between the newly-created Palestinian state and Israel for a set period.
The Palestinian “right of return” should be waived in exchange for an independently, actuarily-calculated sum which represents the revenue and property lost by all Palestinians who have left Israel proper since 1947, and placed into a Palestinian economic development fund that can be withdrawn from annually into the Palestinian Authority’s budget.
A U.N. commission should be set up to determine this amount, to dole it out each year, and to ensure that it reaches the people it needs to reach. We can argue all we want about the capabilities and motivations of the United Nations, but this is something that’s very much up their alley.
The U.N. will be stationed on both sides of the borders to observe the Israeli and Palestinian military obligations. The Palestinian state will not be allowed to have more than a police force – that is, no military equipment such as missiles and rockets until a long set period, say, 50 years, has passed. In exchange, the IAEA will be sent in to supervise the dissolution of Israel’s hush-hush nuclear program.
As for Jerusalem, well, as the Jews say, “If I forget thee, Jerusalem, may I forget my right hand.” Well, I’m a righty, so I’m certainly going to address the issue of the Holiest City. Unified Jerusalem, that is, East and West, plus its suburbs, will become an international territory, run by a council of representatives from each of the interested parties – Jew, Muslim, Christian, Armenian, Druze, and the rest. They will establish a set of rules defining “equal access” to all of the holy sites. As a bit of a motivator, if the council can’t agree on those rules by a certain deadline, nobody gets access until they do.
So, who’s going to pay for all of this? Tens of thousands of Israeli settlers are being moved and the Palestinians are being paid off in exchange for their perceived right of return! Well, one thing that the Gaza withdrawal has taught us is that “unidentified third parties” sure are wealthy and generous. Once the amount of money needed to make all of this happen is defined, the money will come. Even if the U.N. has to engage in National Public Radio style phone drives. We’ll be listening to good ol’ Kofi Annan giving away CDs of Car Talk programs on the floor of the U.N. for months!
The two sides will need to be reminded ad nauseam of their individual wins in this compromise, given that both clearly wanted it all and have for a terribly long time. Israel gets to keep a heck of a lot of land that the 1947 UN Partition plan didn’t allocate to it. And despite getting their and their allies’ butts kicked in several wars, most of which were initiated by them, the Palestinians get an awful lot of land and uninhibited access to Jerusalem.
As with anything else, transparency is key here. Neither side has any faith in anyone else, let alone the United Nations, so the U.N. is going to have to earn the trust of all parties involved. Can they do that? Who knows? But it’s worth a shot. |
