WHO IS A PALESTINIAN?
Rejwan, Nissim
Winning a war can prove as taxing as losing one. The swift 1967 Israeli conquest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—all that had remained of Palestinian non-Israeli territory after the first...
...They now live inour midst and around our borders...
...He asks, first, who knows what the world —and particularly the Middle East—will be like in 100 or 200 years...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS 21...
...NEITHER Sapir nor Eban—nor Premier Golda Meir, who once declared that she did not want the occupied areas to become part of Israel because she did not want to find herself regretting the birth of an Arab baby—seems to give much thought to the ultimate political fate of the West Bank and Gaza Strip inhabitants, the 1 million Palestinians now living under Israeli rule...
...Dayan's approach is far from clear —though he has always given the impression that his policy of coexistence and economic integration with the administered territories stops short only of formal annexation...
...The Arabs, he writes, now tend to view the present events in the context of "a Crusaders scenario"— which implies that, like the Christians of the 11th and 12th centuries who invaded Palestine and ruled it for a considerable time, the Jews will in turn be defeated by a new Salah ed-Din...
...I spent six months touring the territories, three months in the West Bank territory and three in the Gaza Strip, talking to the most articulate spokesmen of the population, including those in the refugee camps...
...Eban has also been worried about demography...
...Eliav admits that the subject of the Palestinians—" Who are they...
...Eliav takes strong exception to the current argument that "there is no one to talk with...
...Now that the process of stabilization of the present state of affairs seemed irreversible, many viewed it a fearful prospect to envision the State of Israel with a non-Jewish minority of some 35 percent of the population...
...Those Arabs of Palestine, the argument goes, who are willing to speak are afraid to do so, while those who do speak demand the whole of Palestine...
...We are duty-bound to speak up and say what, in principle, is our wish...
...We are called upon to educate our young genera tion to understand the Arabs in general and the Palestinian Arabs in particular...
...But while Eliav shows a measure of understanding vis-h-vis their plight, he minces no words about what he calls their "Crusaders complex...
...He seems to suggest that the failure of the Palestinians to set up a state of their own in what remained of Palestine after the War of 1948 was not their fault...
...Here he shows a rare insight when he writes that, even more than hatred, scorn toward the Arabs is highly dangerous...
...Eliav finds no difficulty in refuting this notion...
...18 Israel's relation to the "administered areas" is not merely a diplomatic one: it involves her whole future...
...If we began to talk of principles among ourselves we would evoke a discussion among the Arabs and, later, between them and ourselves...
...In this interview Peres said that Eliav wants to produce a kind of `Balfour Declaration of the Palestinians...
...After 18 years of subjugation and dispersion, the Arabs of Palestine, most of whom had been living in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, now were becoming somewhat of an internal Israeli problem...
...It appears that, as long as the Palestinians remain unable to give a less violent and more systematic expression to their personality, it will continue to be difficult to provide a satisfactory answer to those Israelis who argue that "the Palestinian personality" is "a typical Jewish invention...
...We have to realize," he writes, "that the social values we craved are now mingled inextricably with the PalestinianArab problem and with the problem of the territories...
...is emotionally and politically explosive: It is difficult, nay impossible, for us to be objective about this problem...
...After all, our whole enterprise was built on principles...
...The Davar report was neither denied nor confirmed by the authorities concerned, and the next day the independent daily Haaretz carried an editorial that flatly rejected both the proposal and the tactics...
...This attitude, Eliav argues, is a fatal error...
...Nor does Eliav have much respect for the arguments advanced by Premier Meir, among others, that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people...
...I shall take the liberty of saying that the majority that voted for the 'oral doctrine' at the 1969 Convention has grown in the meantime...
...The Jews of Israel, however, are beginning to feel scorn toward the Arabs, without hating them: We are called upon to combat this ugly mani festation with all our educational means...
...The pre-1967 percentage was 12 percent —with 2.6 million Jews and 452,000 Arabs...
...On the same day that Haaretz carried this editorial, Israeli newspapers reported a speech by Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon in which he expressed apprehension about the prospect of "Arab labor replacing Jewish labor in manual occupations"—with all its concomitant social discontents and inequalities...
...That these two aims may prove well-nigh irreconcilable was illustrated in a report published in the well-informed Tel Aviv labor paper Davar on August 22, 1972...
...Eban is also reported to have made the pessimistic observation that even a 40 percent Arab minority would really be a majority, since the 60 percent Jewish majority would be deadlocked in internal divisions...
...Administration publicly to disown the Rogers Plan of December 1969 that envisages only "minor rectifications" of the pre-1967 borders—but they suggested instead that Israel should hasten to establish "permanent settlement facts" aimed at invalidating the terms of that Plan...
...Indeed, had things been allowed to take their course, Jordan would eventually have become a Palestinian state...
...In an interview he relates that he had reached his conclusion regarding the existence of the Palestinian people and the need for Israel to come to terms with them back in 1968...
...This "oral doctrine," approved in '69 at a Labor party Convention, spoke of the Jordan river as Israel's "security border," of a land link to Sharm el-Sheikh, and of the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights as under Israeli control...
...There would be economic ties, he believes—without freedom for labour to seek jobs, apparently...
...Israel has not answered the questions that bother these Palestinians: 'What is our fate?' `What national options are open to us?' `What does Israel want of us?'" THE DEFEATS the Arabs have suffered in Palestine since 1948, the refugee problem, the strengthening of the Jewish state, and the politicalmilitary escalation that terminated in the Six-Day War—all these have created deep wounds in the Arab psyche...
...Arye Eliav—member of the Knesset (parliament), former Labor party secretary-general and former deputy minister of Immigrant Absorption— believes that it is impossible to discuss any of these subjects in isolation...
...They want Israel, which is for them Palestine, and they want all of it...
...presidential elections...
...At the time few people seemed to grasp what was happening...
...Why should she start a domestic controversy to no good purpose...
...To put any of them aside would be to make nonsense of Zionism...
...According to Eliav, Israel should issue a declaration saying that she is willing to return to the Palestinians the bulk of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip so that they may establish there, and on the East Bank of the Jordan, an independent, sovereign state of their own...
...They were simply unable to do so: the Egyptians occupied the Gaza Strip and the Jordanians annexed the West Bank, while a minority of the Palestinians remained within Israel...
...These Arabs would willy-nilly find a way to express their presence in political terms even if Israel were to decide to disenfranchise them...
...Eliav reaches the conclusion that the Palestinians, with half of them reduced to being refugees and scattered across the Arab world, have shown that they cannot be "absorbed" in 20 Arab lands...
...I have yet to hear of any Palestinian putting forward such a request...
...Though not specified as such, Allon's statement came as a rejoinder to Moshe Dayan's policy of "integration" of the two economies...
...Because of the delicacy of the subject and the lack of clarity as to "official" Labor party policy, few party leaders have come out either for or against Eliav's ideas...
...Eliav admits that such far-reaching steps would take a great deal of courage—and not only in the international arena...
...Haaretz rejected the proposed settlement plans for two reasons: First, these plans would show the world that Israel is not sincere in saying she is willing to enter peace negotiations "without any prior conditions...
...We areconfronted by an entirely different state ofaffairs...
...Sapir—in the words of a Jerusalem Post commentator—" wants a production-oriented Westernstyle economy...
...For Eliav, these three goals are as one...
...And the Jews—who have never let the world forget their problem or ignore their tragedy— are the last people in the world who should or could try to do so...
...In a book published last month in Tel Aviv—Eretz Hatzvi, "The Splendid Land: An Evaluation of the Prospects before Israel"—Eliav presents three main goals for Israel: (1) Concentrating a majority of the Jewish people in its homeland...
...But, to quote again from the Jerusalem Post, the sheer impossibility of getting it policed and the vision of the smuggling that would go on may have caused him to abandon the idea...
...He points to this paradox: In the past the Arabs scorned the Jews but did not hate them, now they hate the Israelis though they no longer scorn them...
...Emphasis added.] The italicized part of Peres's statement refers, of course, to the stand of the Palestinian guerrilla organizations—which, however, neither Israelis nor Palestinians would equate with the stand of all the Palestinians...
...Why then should Israel make herself vulnerable by speaking of principles and concessions...
...Eliav's book has created a stir, precisely because it came from the ranks of the Establishment...
...Either way, a substantial section of the Labor party's leadership seems now to advocate a return to the pre-1967 boundaries—with certain changes—because of what they see as the impossibility of building a Jewish state with so large an Arab minority...
...To ignore it would be of no avail, since the tragedy is of a scope and a volume that no one can dismiss...
...Where are they heading...
...This accounts for the fact that, while attending a Party policy discussion at Beit Berl on July 29, Dayan urged that the government draw up a clear policy on Arabs under Israeli rule— pointing out that any political, social, or economic discussion that overlooks the fact that 1.35 million Arabs now live under Israeli rule is divorced from reality...
...Nor is there much anyone can do about it, since along with the desire to remain a Jewish state, Israel also seeks to establish "secure and defensible borders" entailing large-scale territorial changes...
...3) Peace with the Arabs...
...The most influential opponents of Dayan's policy have been Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir and Foreign Minister Abba Eban...
...but the activities of the guerrillas and the war in 1967 again turned the Palestinians into an Israeli problem...
...We are duty-bound to live with this problem, with these Palestinian Arabs...
...Minister of Communications and Transport Shimon Peres, who recently had spoken out for favoring a "federative arrangement" between Israel and the Palestinians, has now asserted that all talk about "a Palestinian personality" was "a typical Jewish invention...
...By 1990, he argues, Israel will have an Arab minority of 43 percent within the present boundaries—but within the Green Line COMMENTS AND OPINIONS borders this minority will comprise only 20 percent...
...The thrust of the argument against Dayan's "integrationist" policy has been mainly ideological, based on the concept of Israel as a Jewish state...
...Eliav believes that this sort of argument "has a most terrible echo, which reminds us of our past in the Diaspora where the same things used to be said about the Jews...
...He who writesor talks about the problem and does not try tosweep it under the carpet ("there is no such aproblem," "there are no Palestinians," "the problem will take care of itself," and so on) is seen by some Jews as a man inhabited by a dybbuk [a spirit]—or even worse than that, asan enemy of Israel...
...Do they even exist...
...We have to open our minds to arguments—otherwise we are doomed to becoming pragmatic functionaries...
...Arab labor" everywhere was visibly replacing unskilled "Jewish labor"—for 50,000 largely unskilled Arab laborers from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip now were working in Israel...
...But he still wants the border, some border, to keep the Jewish State separate and secure...
...He cites with total disapproval the argument advanced by "the pragmatists," who say that the Palestinians living under Israeli rule have nothing to complain about...
...Second, while the Crusaders had somewhere to go, neither the Jewish immigrants nor their Israeli-born offspring have a place "to go back to...
...They have money, they have work, their living standard has risen—in fact they enjoy a better life than their brethren in the neighboring Arab countries...
...I believe thatmany, many people will be ready to go alongwith him a good part of the way, if not thewhole way...
...We shall not reach real peace, and theIsraeli-Arab conflict will not be resolved, unless we find, together with them, a solution to theirproblem—which is ours as well...
...In World War One the Jews asked Lord Balfour to make the Declaration...
...principles came first, action second...
...He criticizes the government for failing to provide a clear-cut answer as to the solutions it proposes for those Palestinian Arabs living under Israeli rule...
...But I would like to point out the difference between the situationthen and what he offers now...
...One Labor party personality, however, has made it his business to worry about just that subject—and also about such topics as Zionism, the future shape of Israeli society, and the Arab-Israeli conflict...
...Going even further, Eliav counters the there-is-no-one-to-talk-with argument by saying: It is likely that just because we do not say clear things on the Palestinian problem, and befog the issue of the territories, there is no one to talk with...
...These circles, the report added, did not see much point in asking the U.S...
...The only exception to this rule was the Kingdom of Jordan, which could not help absorbing the Palestinians living within its boundaries...
...Without leaving open to the Palestinians what the author calls "a national option" COMMENTS AND OPINIONS —without following the principle of "two people, two states"—the positive work being done by the Israelis in the administered territories loses its moral justification...
...Considering the Arabs' very high birth rate, even a sizable Jewish immigration in the coming decades would leave the country with a "national minority" of a size only slightly smaller than the Jewish majority...
...Scorn is generally the result of lack of understanding and of ignorance...
...The swift 1967 Israeli conquest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—all that had remained of Palestinian non-Israeli territory after the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948—placed Israel into the position of a man who has just managed to catch a bear...
...Such equations become possible precisely as a result of actions carried out by an activist minority among the Palestinians and in the absence of any move by "the silent majority...
...Mr...
...In an interview in the Jerusalem Post Peres said, "I think that instead of trying to win a Cabinet seat on the strength of his book, Eliav should go to the Party Convention and see whether he has a majority backing him...
...This may take 100 or 200 years, but in the end it must come...
...It is original and very daring...
...The thrill of a decisive victory, the subsequent economic boom, and the new better-paying and more prestigious jobs to which the influx of a huge non-Jewish proletariat had released Jewish workers—all these factors tended to relegate the crucial issue to the background...
...And, last, while the defeat of the Zionists would have been conceivable 100 years ago by what were then conventional weapons, now and in the future, in such a total war, there would be neither victors nor vanquished, only a heap of dust...
...The problem of the Arabs of Palestine is at the root of the Israeli-Arab conflict...
...Convinced that the key to Israel's future lies in making peace with the Arabs—and first and COMMENTS AND OPINIONS foremost with the Palestinians—Eliav argues that Israel should issue a declaration that she is prepared to return to the Palestinian Arabs the bulk of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which, combined with Transjordan, will provide them with their own sovereign and independent state...
...In its essence, Eliav's thesis is very simple...
...THE moral aspect of the problem agitates Eliav no less than the practical one...
...The Palestinians do not seek Jewish recognition of their entity...
...But Dayan also is aware that his own party— Israel's Labor party—is becoming a focal point of opposition to a "creeping expansionism...
...Histadrut (labor federation) Secretary-General Yitzhak Ben-Aharon was one of these: Eliav's book [he said] is close to my heart, andhas given voice to the whispers of many...
...2) Creating a Jewish society based on equality, social justice, and freedom...
...This Davar report stated that certain highlevel official circles in Jerusalem were beginning to feel the need for the decision to set up a number of Jewish settlements in the areas of Jerusalem, Hebron, Raphiah, and the Gaza Strip...
...Such an "Arab Balfour Declaration" will have a tremendous psychological impact and, in due course, an equally significant practical one...
...Haaretz maintained that the reported decisions—which the paper assumed had already been taken—had resulted from the fact that Washington was not likely either to dissociate itself from the Rogers Plan or to engage in a controversy with Jerusalem before the U.S...
...Responsibility for the lives and fortunes of over a million of them is now ours...
...Even should we reach, through some miracle, either interim orpermanent settlements with the Arab statesto the south, the north, and the east of us, the problem of the Palestinians would still not besolved...
...For the Six-Day War had brought some 1.5 million Palestinian Arabs under various kinds of Israeli rule...
...Originally, Sapir had wanted the Green Line border (the cease-fire border of 1948) between Israel and the territories to become a customs barrier...
...Eliav maintains that, even if today "there is no one to talk with," Israel must speak her own truth—"if this is indeed her truth"—and say that she does not need the West Bank or the Gaza Strip in order to settle Jews there—and that she is prepared to see a sovereign Palestinian Arab state set up in the administered areas...
...Eliav sharply criticizes the current, and predominant, attitude that Israel ought not to speak of "principles," since "there is no one to speak to anyway...
...What is our attitude toward them...
...First of all, he argues, the Israelis should embark on a carnpaign of "self-education...
...Second, they would involve a gradual increase in the number of Arabs within Israeli borders...
Vol. 20 • January 1973 • No. 1
