Israel Now: A Few Questions
Plastrik, Stanley
IN LAST YEAR'S ARAB-ISRAEL CRISIS most Of US on the democratic Left supported the Israeli cause. Our justification for this had little, if anything, to do with Zionist sentiment. The...
...There were the difficulties created in order to keep these Arabs in the inferior environment (new refugee camps) of the West bank to which they had fled...
...most of all, it changed the relation between Arabs and Israelis within Israel itself...
...This alone gives a new urgency to the need for a permanent solution...
...Here we touch upon human beings long-suffering and victimized...
...camps on the West bank...
...Israel, in other words, as she has been since 1948, will no longer exist, and Palestine, with Arabs and Jews living together, will have been restored...
...THAT SO MANY "SOLUTIONS" are offered (binational state, confederation, independent Arab Palestine, etc...
...If an Israeli government were to accept thebinational state with all its implications it would, in fact, be surrendering its entire historical perspective and would indeed become, sooner or later, "just another Levantine state...
...As far as other occupied territories are concerned—the Gaza strip, Syrian heights, Sinai peninsula, West bank of the Jordan, etc.—the question lies not in whether Israel should temporarily hold them while awaiting a final settlement (at best a tactical problem where Arab rigidity again plays into Israeli hands), but whether or not Israel has any plans for their permanent incorporation...
...At the same time, Israel refused to take back 60,000 refugees who had previously lived in permanent U.N...
...The Red Navy has filled the vacuum created by British withdrawal, American bungling, and a happy merging of Russian expansionist with Arab nationalist needs...
...this annexation has caused bitterness in the Arab world and criticism in the Christian world...
...What is the "regional framework" to which he refers...
...the potential risk of futile involvement in Arab internal strife such as in the Yemenite civil war...
...Israel will no longer be a JewishState, in which, as it does now, full citizenship requires not only membership of the Jewish religion, but Jewish ancestry...
...are sharply divided over proposals for the future...
...The existence of a small democratic state (whose every action we did not necessarily approve) was clearly endangered...
...The proposals held out by some Israelis of divisions within the Arab camp as a consequence of defeat appears to have lessened considerably with the new-found—perhaps temporary— political harmony which has seen King Feisal of Saudi Arabia abandon his Islamic Alliance as a rival to Nasser...
...Those of Israel's supporters who feel that, because of the startling victory, a moral compulsion (largely but not exclusively) rests upon Israel to offer concrete and negotiable proposals, may feel disappointment...
...Within the Israeli leadership there seems to be a sharp division on this matter...
...in closing the Gulf of Aqaba, they had taken warlike actions...
...During the war something like 200,000 refugees crossed over into Jordan to be dumped into make-shift camps...
...only indicates that a real solu COMMENTS AND OPINIONS Lion is as remote today as it was 20 years back...
...And if the Arab community within Israel ultimately achieves parity, and is democratically represented in the organ of government, it is hard to see how an Israeli government could avoidthe curbing of two rights that it is bound toregard as fundamental . . . the right to control both immigration and land-development...
...Only 19,000 applications were approved by Israel and only 14,000 repatriations were carried out by the time Israel's deadline expired on August 31...
...The Jewish state now incorporates about 1 million new Arabs plus the 300,000 already there...
...There is no place fora million Arab refugees within Israel...
...The solution cannot be found within our limited spaceand by us alone, but only within a regionalframework...
...Israel's handling of the Jordanian Arabs has been marked by a disturbing "toughness...
...How can one expect even the beginnings of a settlement and entente when, on the one hand, the Israelis have failed to make clear their basic stand on the issue of territorial aggrandizement, and on the other hand the Arab leadership maintains its intransigent refusal either to recognize Israel or accept its right to exist...
...In Israel, the parties of the Left (Hashomer Hatzair, Mapam, etc...
...If an Israeli Arab community roughly the sizeof the Israeli Jewish community were to befairly represented in government there is . . . no reason to think it would tolerate the promotion of these two cardinal goals of the Zionist movement...
...We ought to agree that a "solution" of the refugee problem does not mean their permanent establishment in U.N...
...Under similar circumstances, we ought to defend the right of any threatened people to exist...
...On both sides, public opinion has hardened...
...First, the episode of the return of Arab refugees who had fled to Jordan...
...About 140,000 of them applied to return, but repatriation did not begin until mid-August of last year...
...First, between Israel and the surrounding Arab states...
...There are two distinct negotiations which must take place...
...Has the Israeli leadership become expansionist...
...But what does Dayan mean by "limited space...
...Hourani suggested that the demographic and social situation within Israel could, within 50 years, lead to a diminution of the gap between Arab and Jew...
...It is a tragic dilemma, and right now no solution seems to be in sight...
...Maurice Zeitlin is obliged to say: In the course of my research since the June war and the re-thinking of my critique of Israel's policies, I have become persuaded that even had the left socialists (in Israel) been in power, and had Israel's Arab citizens been treated with the fullest justice, the policies of the Arab regimes would not have changed significantly, nor would their unmitigated and unrelenting hatred of Israel and commitment toits destruction...
...the cost of the lost armaments plus their replacement...
...General Assembly votes...
...Have they become indifferent to the fate of the Arab refugees...
...General Dayan has said: I am against facile theories according to whichwe have the means to handle by ourselves thisproblem of the refugees...
...At best, they agree among themselves that the ancient land of Palestine will remain in one or another form the co-property of two independent nations and peoples, and that a major effort, compatible with the national interests of each people, must be mounted so that the refugees will cease to be refugees...
...This may be a solid point of departure from which to develop practical proposals, but right now one ought not to delude oneself as to the strength of such influence in Israel...
...This means that the Arabs recognize Israel and its right to exist, and that the Israelis (as proposed by the left socialists of Mapam) declare their willingness to rescind control of the occupied territories once a peace treaty is signed...
...And as long as the Israelis remain ambiguous about the occupied territories, they provide the Arabs with a pretext for refusing to negotiate...
...It will become a Jewish-Arab State in which nationality will bea function of residence or citizenship...
...If, on the other hand, the Israeli authorities refuse to accept the Arabs...
...Carmichael, in turn, has been dealing with a sensational article by Cecil Hourani, a Lebanese Arab intellectual, directed to his fellow Arabs and published in the November 1967 Encounter...
...THERE ARE THREE MATTERS which have brought growing concern to friends of Israel...
...And for all this, the price paid by the Russians is relatively insignificant: a momentary humiliation last June as its client states collapsed...
...The six-day Blitz transformed the Near Eastern picture...
...And are the Israeli proposals narrow and nationalistic, lacking in conciliatory content...
...The Arab nations had announced their intent to "wipe out" Israel...
...Precisely...
...These are the issues of territorial expansion and annexation...
...the Israeli attitude toward Arab refugees...
...Second, between the Israelis and representatives of the Palestinian Arabs of one or another kind (Christians, Muslims, etc...
...Most significant of all has been the Russians' ability to snatch victory from defeat by furthering their penetration in the eastern Mediterranean...
...Shades of Czarist imperialism...
...The altered balance of power in a once Anglo-American sea now seems final COMMENTS AND OPINIONS and, in the end, may prove to hold greater international significance than American efforts in Southeast Asia...
...and in one or another area (West Jordan, Gaza, etc...
...Ramparts, January, 1968) The tragic dilemma in which the most liberalminded and thoughtful Zionists consequently find themselves is expressed by Joel Carmichael in the January Midstream: . . . It must be admitted that from a purely democratic point of view a bi-national state would doubtless emerge from the mere juxtaposition of the two communities...
...Yet, almost a year after the war, there is clearly an impasse...
...As long as the Arabs persist in their refusal to negotiate with an Israel they recognize as a historical reality, there can be no progress...
...camps, but the launching of a process which, with Arab participation, aims to create for the Arab refugees a proper national setting within which they will become permanently integrated —in a word, a program of national rehabilitation...
...and the proposed solutions put forth by Israel...
...The ratio of Jew to Arab has been reduced from 8 to 1 to 2 to 1. Given the substantially higher Arab birthrate, the Arab population could draw even with the Jews within 20 years...
...But any effort to make these conquered areas a part of Israel would be a serious error...
...Writing in a publication which has leaned toward the Arabs, Mr...
...But he nevertheless sharply posed the difficulty thoughtful Zionists such as Carmichael must wrestle with: . • . If the Israeli Government accepts the Arabs within the territories she controls as full Israeli citizens, with equal civil and political rights, the concept of Israel which has hitherto been incorporated into her laws will have to be changed...
...THERE IS NO EASY WAY out of such difficulties...
...Whatever ultimate solution, if any, can be envisaged for the Middle East, the preliminary to serious negotiations is that both sides offer a token of their wish for a pacific settlement...
...aided by the Russians, they had mobilized substantial forces...
...Our justification for this had little, if anything, to do with Zionist sentiment...
...she will have on her hands a large population which she will be unable to liquidate or to govern...
...Further doubt concerning Israel's policy was created by her unilateral annexation of Jerusalem in defiance of two U.N...
...IN LAST YEAR'S ARAB-ISRAEL CRISIS most Of US on the democratic Left supported the Israeli cause...
...The problem of the Arab refugees is still more grave...
...To be sure, the continued intransigence of the Arab leadership and its refusal to engage in direct negotiations makes it difficult to judge fully the Israeli views since they are not being subjected to the test of counter-views...
...With the exception of border kibbutzim once directly under Syrian guns, Israel seems no more secure now than before the war...
...What is his vision of postwar Israel...
...Nevertheless, certain things are known...
...Shortly thereafter began a small but significant movement of Israeli kibutzim into former West-bank Jordanian lands which had been overrun by Arabs back in 1947-48...
Vol. 15 • March 1968 • No. 2
