Walter Ruby
|
TWO
STATES, ONE COMMON LAND (April 2000) by Walter Ruby  The idea seemed like such a no-brainer that after the light bulb went on in my head I felt stunned I hadn't seen it before. As I reflected upon the crashing obviousness of the concept, I was even more amazed to reflect that throughout the 100 year course of the bloody conflict between Jews and Palestinians over the land both peoples insist belongs to them, very few other people on either side seem to have 'gotten it.' Since I am neither particularly brilliant or insightful, I must assume that better heads than mine have stumbled onto the idea over the years and quickly decided that anything so blindingly obvious must have something fundamentally wrong with it. But I'll be damned if I can see what it is. Forthwith my idea: If two peoples have been fighting with bullets, bombs and missiles for the same small piece of land for 100 years, all the while trying to outshout each other in expressing undying love and devotion for the place, might they not reverse course and learn to share their mutual love for the common Land that both revere? Why can't the shared enthusiasm of Israelis and Palestinians for the same hills, valleys and ancient cities and for many of the same sounds and smells become a positive force for drawing closer to each other and celebrating together, rather than a negative one driving the two peoples to fear and hate each other? In the year 2000, 52 years after the creation of the Statre of Israel and the dispersion of the Palestinians, we are close to taking a huge stride step toward sharing our common Land; namely, the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. This is indeed a momentous event, but its very imminence begs an urgent question. Why have so few Israelis and Palestinians taken the next logical step and asked, 'If we are fated to be two peoples in two states sharing the same tiny Land, why not choose to share the abiding love of both peoples for that common Land that some of us call Palestine and others Eretz Israel? Why not rejoice together in a common feeling of connectedness and belonging to the place'? Why not a formula of ‘Two States, One Common Land?’ If that sounds at first hearing more than a bit like romantic 'New Agey' gobbledegook with little relevance to the hard realities of the Middle East in the Year 2000, think again. For without the creation of such a consciousness of joint stewardship of the common Land, any Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty is probably doomed to failure. It is clear that one evident reason for the inability of the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships to sell important constituencies in their respective polities on the need for territorial compromise is that such a agreement, as presently contemplated, has been accurately portrayed by rejectionists on both sides as necessitating a cutting of primal ties to those portions of 'Palestine' or 'Eretz Yisrael' to be located within the borders of the state of the 'Other.' And that entails psychic costs neither side is fully prepared to pay. For the Palestinians, signing such an agreement would mean finally having to cut abiding emotional and physical ties to the cities and villages they fled or were driven from in 1948; Yaffa, Haifa, Akka, Beisan, Ramlah, Lid, and so many others. Even Palestinians prepared to endorse a political deal with Israel creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem nevertheless find unacceptable the notion of being forced to renounce any connection to the 77 percent of mandate Palestine inside Israel's pre-1967 boundaries; areas where the great majority of Palestinians resided prior to 1948. It is simply asking too much to expect Palestinians to relate only to the West Bank and Gaza as "Palestine." For their part, Israelis and Jews everywhere would have to sever their emotional and physical connection to many places inside the West Bank to which we feel profound spiritual and historical ties; Hebron, Shilo, Bet-El, Bet Lechem and many others. While the cause of Eretz Yisrael Hashlema has waned in recent years, are even supporters of Oslo ready for a return to the pre-1967 days when Israelis were barred from all or most of the Jewish biblical homeland? Clearly, then, the profound feelings of connectedness to the whole Land by large portions of both populations have so far prevented advocates of territorial compromise on either side from fully winning the day. Indeed, the rejectionists are correct that Israel-Palestine is organically one Land. Where they are wrong is their insistence that the whole of the Land can be united only under the dominion of their own side. 100 years of conflict has proven that neither side has the power to force the other to accept such a solution. Therefore, the only one sensible course is to divide the Land into two states while promoting a love of the common Land transcending both states. As a prerequisite for achieving that, the Israeli leadership must drop forthwith its espousal of a peace based on 'separation' of the two peoples. Instead of attempting to carry out a doomed-from-the-start effort to seal the two peoples off from each other with an electrified fence (a strategy which, fails to take into account the million Palestinian Arabs inside Israel and Jews who may be left inside Palestine), we should advocate a policy of open borders and open hearts predicated upon a massive effort by both governments to build human ties between grass roots Palestinians and Israelis. Imagine a campaign to get Palestinians and Israelis from twinned cities or from similar professions or interests talking to each other on a sustained basis via telephone, the Internet and regular face-to-face meetings on both sides of the new border. Imagine Israeli and Palestinian scout troops hiking together along the old ‘green line’; tabulating together the plant and animal species they find along the way, and comparing notes on the historical, religious or folkloric associations each side attaches to the same hidden spring, ancient village or crumbling ruin. Such a shared and jointly nurtured ahavath ha aretz (love of the land) would quickly become an important element in an ideology of mutual belonging to the common Land and would strongly buttress efforts to strengthen reconciliation and trust between the two peoples. Virtually unrestricted and hassle- free travel of Palestinians to Israel and Israelis to Palestine would be a key element in the implementation of a ‘warm peace’ based on the concept of ‘Two States, One Common Land, . Imagine that a citizen of the new Palestinian state residing in Ramallah, whose family fled Jaffa in 1948, is able to travel freely to Jaffa whenever he wants and is made to feel by both Israeli and Palestinian governments that he retains an abiding connection to Jaffa even though it remains inside Israel. With such policies buttressing an ideology of mutual belonging to the Common Land, I believe that the insistence of many Palestinian refugees to return to the exact building in the exact village inside Israel where their parents or grandparents lived before 1948 might lessen considerably. This would especially be the case if Israel’s prime minister were to express contrition for the dispersion of the Palestinians in 1948 and if the majority of Palestinian refugees were to receive generous financial compensation to resettle inside the new Palestinian state or where they reside today, with a mutually agreed-upon number to be repatriated inside Israel as Israeli citizens. The Ramallah resident in question would, thus, be able to feel that Jaffa is still ‘home’ because all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea, would be his home. Under these circumstances, Israelis would no longer need to construe the public expression by Palestinians of that quite natural sense of belonging to all of historic Palestine to be a mortal threat to the survival of Israel. By the same token, an Israeli Jew who may have been dislocated from his home in Hebron as a result of the peace settlement, would, under the terms of a warm peace, be able to return to the city whenever he wished to pray in the Machpelah or stroll through the market. He could still feel an organic connection with Hebron despite having moved back to Israel, for though the city would be inside the State of Palestine, it would still be part of Eretz Israel. In such a case, the term 'Eretz Yisrael' would no longer be widely seen as a codeword for an annexionist political agenda, but would return to its original meaning of describing the Land between the river and the sea. Over the decades following the implementation of a warm peace based on the principle of ‘Two States, One Common Land,’ the exact location of the border between Israel and Palestine would become less and less important as goods and people move easily across it in both directions, and would be increasingly superceded on both sides by a feeling of belonging to the common Land as a birthright. If that sounds far-fetched, who would have imagined 50 years ago being able to pass from France to Germany without so much as having a passport checked? Citizens of France still feel French and Germans feel German, and yet where sizable constituencies in both countries have come to feel an overarching loyalty to the concept of Europe. Still, before getting carried away with such sublime visions, we should be clear that "Two States, One Common Land" cannot be a substitute for a fair peace settlement between Israel and Palestine, but must instead go hand in hand with one. Such a settlement must, to my mind, hew as close as possible to a division of the Land along the 1967 border, and must include a formula for the sharing of Jerusalem. Understandably, Palestinians will look at visionary approaches like ‘Two States, One Common Land’ with an understandably jaundiced eye as long as Israel continues to expand settlements and access roads in the West Bank. Conversely, however, even the fairest possible political settlement will probably not survive in the Palestinian street or among the Israeli amcha unless we find a common vocabulary that allows both peoples to feel increasingly safe and secure in their common Land. I am convinced that the concept of ‘Two States, One Common Land’ is indeed the missing link that both sides need to embrace if there is to be lasting reconciliation after 100 years of bitter strife.
Oy, Jerusalem The Rich Boys and I
I must have a Jewish screw loose. Or maybe I souled out my neshama somewhere along the way. But as far as the Jewish world's outsized Jerusalem complex--well, I just don't get it. Virtually all Israeli and American Jewish leaders insist that Israel must retain every bit of Jerusalem in a final peace settlement with the Palestinians. That means holding all of a swollen Greater Jerusalem that stretches nearly to Ramallah in the north, to the edge of Bethlehem in the south, and to the desert suburb of Ma'aleh Adumim in the east. Despite their courageous and far-sighted agreement to withdraw from most of the West Bank in the interest of peace, both the late Yitzhak Rabin and Israel's new Prime Minister Shimon Peres have vehemently insisted that Israel's maximalist position on the Holy City is unalterable and set in (Jerusalem) stone. When I asked Peres during a press conference in New York two months ago about the possibility of compromise over Jerusalem, he curtly responded that Israel will never give up a millimeter of its undivided capital. End of discussion. The then-Foreign Minister did not appear to appreciate it when I reminded him that he had also repeatedly vowed during the 1980's that Israel would never talk to the PLO. Indeed, it is time for Israelis and Diaspora Jews alike to put aside willful self-delusion concerning Jerusalem and face some unpalatable facts. Despite the massive Jewish settlement of East Jerusalem over the past 27 years, the Arab sections of the city remain the political, cultural and religious heart of the West Bank. The estimated 170,000 Arab residents of these neighborhoods are as Palestinian as the inhabitants of Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron. Any attempt to cut the Palestinians of Jerusalem off from the rest of the Palestinian nation is doomed to failure. This is not to say that Israel need withdraw exactly to the pre-1967 border in Jerusalem, or that Israelis should ever accept a re-sealing of the two sides of the city from each other. I personally support retaining as part of Israel the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and the Western Wall, as well as some all-Jewish areas built across the old border since 1967. A final peace agreement should specify that the two sides of the city would remain within one united municipality, and that citizens of both Israel and a demilitarized Palestinian state would have access to both parts of the city. Why is it so difficult for many Jews to entertain the notion of Arab areas of Jerusalem linking up with a future Palestinian state? The response is vociferously emotional. We Jews were separated from our Holy City for 2000 years and took a vow in 1967 never to lose control of it again. "If I forsake thee, oh Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning." The fervor behind that position cannot be doubted, but it is less compelling when examined rationally. After all, we Jews can still proclaim Jerusalem as our holy city, now and forever, even if sections of the city inhabited almost exclusively by non-Jews lie outside Israel's political jurisdiction. That was, after all, the case between 1948 and 1967. Most Israelis learned to live with that situation, despite the undoubted pain of being separated from the Western Wall and other Jewish shrines; something that will, in any event, not be allowed to happen again. We can trumpet our unique religious attachment to Jerusalem, but cannot change the reality that the city's population is a volatile mix of Jews, Muslims and Christians. The present Israeli government has courageously rejected the premise that the Jewish state has a theological charge to hold onto every rocky hillside in the West Bank, even at the cost of permanently repressing the area's Palestinian inhabitants. Can anyone explain how it is any different to insist that Israel must retain every white-stoned building in Greater Jerusalem, even though parts of the city are purely Palestinian? We Jews constantly offer heartfelt
prayers for the "peace of Jerusalem." It is time to acknowledge that the only
way to ensure the permanent peace of Jerusalem is to reach a settlement with the
Palestinians guaranteeing self-determination to all of the city's inhabitants. |
||||
The Rich Boys and I
What do the people in the left column have in common? They are the Jewish billionaires and multimillionaires who give lavishly to Jewish philanthropies, the folks who are honored at glittering dinners at the Pierre, standing on the dais beaming inanely while holding up their plaques. They are the people who endlessly honor Elie Wiesel, who kisses their tucheses right back on the theory that the primary role of a late 20th Century Jewish prophet is to comfort the comfortable. They are the Jewish names near the top of the annual Forbes 400 list; the folks that give us Jews the rep of being fantastically rich and powerful. Well, it is undeniable that their wealth buys a great deal of support and protection for Israel in the corridors of Washington and commands respect and deference in capitals throughout the world. So, should I feel pride in the prioress of our rich and famous, or should I acknowledge that they make me cringe? To be honest, I feel a little of both. I love to sneer at the vulgar macherocracy that dominates American Jewish life, but in reality these very people have made my own career possible. It is said that the rich are different than you and me. Boy, is that true in my case! At the moment, I am flat broke. Anti-Semites are convinced that all Jews are rich and powerful, but if so, what about me? I'm still waiting for my piece of the action. Maybe the "Elders of Zion" have cleverly connived to keep me poor and powerless so as to disprove the anti-Semitic canard. Actually, I have to acknowledge that my present poverty is my own fault. Three years ago, I quit my long-time day job as a reporter for American Jewish newspapers in the interest of creative growth. I was sick of working in a forum mainly dedicated to the care and feeding of those very wealthy Jews who are the biggest supporters of Jewish newspapers and organizations. It turns out that the Jewish media is a slightly more subtle version of the old "Pravda" and "Izvestia." I had been a maverick within that system, sometimes going after our esteemed Jewish leaders when they blundered or said something particularly stupid. Yet I knew there were limits as to how far I could go in expressing my true feelings. So I decided to quit the game, figuring I'd be able to turn myself into a successful book writer before my money ran out. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out that way, so I am facing the reality of taking a real job again in order to keep my wife, son and myself off the streets while the weather is still cold. But what kind of job can I get? Given my work experience, I'd be most likely to find a position back at a Jewish newspaper or in the public relations department of some national Jewish organization. The second option actually sounds more enticing, because it would probably pay better, and if I'm going to be a whore, I might as well go all the way. No more self-delusion about being an honest journalist. For, in reality, all that I accomplished during my 11-year career as a reporter and occasional travel writer for American Jewish publications was on the backs of those very opulent Jews I so enjoyed sneering at. When I managed to get myself all-expense-paid junkets to India, Greece, Chile, and Costa Rica, it was because the tourist boards of those countries truly believe that all Jews are rich and powerful. They figured that by indulging me, they would be tapping an endless source of Jewish tourist dollars. When I traveled to locales as varied as Moscow, Vilnius, Reykjavik, Berlin, Cairo and Algiers to interview heads of state and opposition leaders of wildly divergent ideological positions, I found that left, right, and center shared one common belief -- that the Jews run the world. It turns out that most of the world avidly believes in the "Elders of Zion" theory, although different groups of goyim respond to it differently. For some, that belief leads to a hatred of Jews and a propensity for terrorism and pogroms. The other, more rational group, says, "Well, the Jews may be a repulsive life- form, but as long as they are so all-powerful, we had better be nice to this little journalist nudnik Walter Ruby, who is, after all, a representative of the great Zionist-Mason conspiracy." Needless to say, I like the second group better. It was incredible to me that the Russians, Palestinians and Germans could be so stupid as to conceive of a flaming mediocrity like Edgar Bronfman as an all-powerful force. Still, to paraphrase a point Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League has made more than once: "If the goyim are dumb enough to believe the Jews run the world, who am I to disabuse them of that notion?" In fact, most of Foxman's own considerable strategic throw weight is based on the perpetuation of the myth that our machers are the masters of the universe. That was true in my case too. I was no Abe Foxman, but I made a decent living and did some wonderful globetrotting on the backs of the Tisches and Tishmans. Then I made the mistake of thinking I didn't need them any more, that I had become a large enough presence to make it on my own. Wrong! Now I may have to crawl back, if they'll have me. The strange thing is that all those years I was sneering at both the rich Jews and the stupid gentiles, the thought never crossed my mind that maybe the goyim are right, maybe the rich Jews really do run the world. What if it really is true? Well, actually, that would be great, because it means Israel's survival is assured. It would also mean that if I can get up enough chutzpah that I am in a position to go to Laurence Tisch and Edgar Bronfman and say, "I'm going to expose you for the ruthless world-dominating schemers you really are unless you give me a more generous cut of the pie. For starters, there is this island off Thailand, I've had my eye on for a while..."
|
