Intimate Enemies by Meron Benvenisti

...there unbearable things happened...

...According to Benvenisti, Israel has, like many other nations, moved into a postideological phase...

...This tone is an unfortunate flaw in a valuable book...

...Think tanks, journals, dialogue groups, and meetings are being born as a direct result of the ongoing peace process...

...Too often, his persona in this book comes across as if he were a party of one, exploiting the luxury of the intellectual to rise above politics to critique the peace process and the Israeli peace movement...

...Benvenisti is quite critical of the incremental peace that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is implementing, even as he appears baffled by its relative success...

...Conflict, according to Benvenisti, can't be contained outside of the Green Line comprising the pre-1967 border...

...This communal battle is beyond borders...

...No prominent Israeli dove has stated that the ending of the Israeli occupation will solve all the problems of relations between Jews and Arabs within and without the pre-1967 Israeli borders...

...One of the ironies of the emergence of a Palestinian state is that Israel will be forced to come to terms with those Israeli Arabs who live within the internationally recognized borders of the new state...

...Indeed, as Israelis' links with the Arab world expand, there will be more of a spotlight placed on Israel's own Arab citizens...

...Personal security is an issue resolved by politicians and their police forces, not by philosophers, no matter how moral their argument may be...

...Yet, the years in which Benvenisti was a mainstay on the Israeli left and a respected expert on Israeli-Arab affairs appear to have left him with a grudge against forces in the peace camp that taints his writing...

...Benvenisti goes on to chronicle the vast injustices done to the Arab population within Israel proper as more evidence of interethnic warfare...

...Unlike most commentators who saw the 1992 election of Rabin and his center-left coalition as a mandate for peace, Benvenisti says that the election was not about the territories, which had been "stripped of ideology" for most Israelis except for the hard-core minority who live in the West Bank...

...Benvenisti's thesis was dubbed "five minutes to midnight" when he put it forward in the 1980s...

...But if that is true, the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict becomes one of satisfying Israeli Jews that they are more secure without the West Bank territories than with them...

...Benvenisti, who once ran the valuable West Bank DataBase Project, is now a professor and a columnist for Israel's leading newspaper, Ha'aretz...

...That may happen, but not in the manner he envisions, which is a veiled binational state...

...Benvenisti argues for a federated Israel/Palestine state...

...Benvenisti hammers away at the injustices against Israeli Arabs, which are serious and a challenge to Israel's democracy...

...Indeed, the intifada helped highlight the inequalities because so many Arab citizens within Israel showed sympathy for the West Bank uprising...

...In fact, Israeli doves are among the only people in Israel who are building bridges to Palestinians, both within and without the pre-1967 borders...

...But there are fundamental differences between an occupied people, as are the West Bank Palestinians, and the Israeli Arabs, who are citizens of a state, albeit second-class citizens...

...Benvenisti argues that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is an intertribal conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, not a geopolitical battle, as it has been seen by most commentators...

...He laces his argument for a federated state with vitriol against those Israeli doves who "wish to detach themselves from an alien civilization and attach themselves to the 'Western World.'" Again, Benvenisti raises himself above the fray, attacking name less activists and intellectuals...

...Under such circumstances, Rabin's caution is understandable...

...He faults the Peace Now movement, the major extraparliamen-tary peace force in Israel, for posing the issue as one of getting rid of West Bank territories that are not part of Israel...

...Rather, he urges all involved to acknowledge the intricate interlocking of the Jews and Palestinians throughout the entire region of Israel and the occupied territories...

...He criticizes those in the peace movement who speak of "disentanglement" with the West Bank Palestinians, using the aforementioned incidents within Israel to prop up his arguments...

...For Benvenisti, because of the inter-communal nature of the fight between Jews and Palestinians, the problems now on the negotiating table will not lead to a resolution, no matter how many documents are signed...

...He cites recent clashes and terrorist incidents like the 1990 riot on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the murders by an Arab laborer of Jews in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Baka-the Upper West Side of Jerusalem, populated by leaders of the Peace Now movement and academics-to prove his thesis...

...Jo-Ann Wort Meron Benvenisti, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem under Teddy Kollek, is best known for a formula he devised concerning Israel's entanglement with the occupied territories...

...He theorized that within moments the clock would tick and the witching hour of midnight would strike, making territorial compromise and a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians impossible...

...The Left fostered a world view that externalized the conflict and focused it on the territories: there, beyond the psychological barrier of the Green Line, the Palestinians fought for their national liberation...

...That would be sheer nonsense...

...While he's critical of Rabin, there's virtually no mention of the strong opposition Rabin faces from ideological, even fanatical, West Bank settlers and their powerful supporters among the Orthodox Jewish community in the United States and Republicans in Congress...

...Luckily for all concerned, his thesis has been proven wrong...