Interview

...And I thought this when some of my colleagues were looking at the Palestinians as a rational liberal partner—I thought there were many in the PLO who favored things this way...

...Dissent: The fear of many friends of Israel is that it's more likely pressure would be put on Israel...

...Israel can demand some corrections of the borders, especially in connection with the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and some of the suburbs developed around Jerusalem, while the Arab part of Jerusalem would go back to either a Palestinian-Jordanian federation or a Palestinian state...

...Dissent: But the way it is now, only those who support the doves and the left are really told, within the Jewish community, to shut up...

...And this is so partly because of the Israeli educational system...

...We know that Israeli youth are polarized about the issue: some of them hesitate whether to vote for the radical right or the radical left...

...We know there's been a rise in strength of Jihad, the Islamic fundamentalists, as well as of rejectionist groups such as Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine...

...That seems to render the idea of a Palestinian state implausible...

...Of course, these critics should make it clear that at the same time they demand equal pressure on the Palestinians...

...When FALL • 1988 • 393 Comments and Opinions asked if this meant recognizing Israel, he said: If I say I'm going to make peace, does it not imply that I'm ready to recognize Israel...

...Even the most dovish Israeli government would have to convince its population that withdrawal would not mean a rerun of May 1967...

...Democracy, pluralism, liberalism, are not strongly entrenched values for the majority of Israelis...

...What are its options...

...But given the history of the PLO's war with Israel, and of the PLO's relationship with Jordan, it's hard to imagine Arafat accepting a demilitarized Palestinian state sandwiched between a militarized Israel and a militarized Jordan...

...Brinker: Of course...

...Since almost all the Arabs voting in Israel choose the Labor party or parties to its left, it follows that only a minority of Jews, about 40 percent, favors moderate or dovish policies...

...But this is not certain...

...Dissent: The Israelis rather than the Palestinians have to take the initiative...

...If one looks at the attitude of West Bank Arabs, it also looks implausible...

...We are in a desperate race to preserve the democratic norms integral to the founding of Israel but which now are threatened within Israel...

...For us the moment has never been more grave...

...And what is of the utmost importance—youth in Israel would feel much better about their country's position...

...And then we can see...

...They want a radical solution, but they can't make up their minds whether the radical solution should be an independent Palestinian state or "transfer...

...The sad thing is that any rational commonsensical move that we might envisage looks all but utopian when you consider the dominant mood and actors in Israel...

...Walid Khalidi, a man very close to Arafat, a professor in Beirut and at Harvard, who has been mentioned as a possible prime minister of a future Palestinian government, wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs called "Thinking the Unthinkable," calling for the establishment of a partially demilitarized Palestinian state...

...they don't give any indication of thinking in terms of a political resolution...

...Brinker: To recognize Israel, to stop terrorism, to declare its willingness to negotiate with Israel, and to accept even if only de facto the existence of Israel as a Zionist state, a state in which most of its citizens are Jews...

...But as I said, Walid Khalidi, who is quite close to Arafat, suggested it...

...This is the minimum that would be acceptable, I think, to moderate Palestinians...

...The difficulties are real...

...About a quarter of Israeli youth are exempt from learning anything about Western culture, democracy, liberalism, the French revolution, the rights of man, etc., because in their religious schools they learn the Bible, the Talmud, and the technological sciences...

...Dissent: When listening to you, it's hard to avoid a certain pessimism...

...It's very difficult to reach this quarter of the Israeli population...

...Brinker: At least in the West there is not much danger of one-sided pressure on Israel...

...And the Palestinians do not have the means...

...Yet Egypt did make peace with Israel...

...But even if this didn't happen, Israel would still gain a lot in public opinion...

...Some 20.7 percent justified placing bombs on civilian airliners...

...Brinker: Either they would be able to stay in a Palestinian state or there would be a kind of Israeli enclave, with Israeli rule...

...Brinker: It would be a diminution of sovereignty...

...Brinker: In 1966, Herut, the daily organ of Shamir's and Begin's party, removed from its front page a map of Israel showing both sides of the Jordan united in an Israeli state...

...There were declarations of this kind by Issam Sartawi and he was killed...

...We are in a vicious circle...

...If the uprising continues for a year or two and people keep being killed, a probable reaction within Israel would be to favor a kind of "transfer...

...Given the internal lineup in the PLO, its past history, its organizational imperatives, it might not be able or willing to respond in a way acceptable to even the most dovish Israelis...

...Another, more to my taste, would be for the Israeli government to issue a declaration of principles stating that it is holding the territories only until there is peace or negotiations for peace and that it wishes to negotiate with a representative Palestinian delegation, with no a priori conditions—which means it doesn't exclude discussion of an independent Palestinian state...

...No a priori constraints...

...Of course, the Palestinians would rightly demand some guarantees against Israeli and Jordanian aggression and I think they should get these...

...Prime Minister Thatcher refused to meet with PLO representatives because they stepped back from their willingness to declare that the PLO would ultimately recognize Israel...

...They would need only weapons for policing their country...

...There are several possibilities, all more favorable to Israel than the status quo...

...And they hope for a political leader who resembles King David rather than David Ben Gurion...

...It is not in their power to destroy Israel—not even the whole Arab world can destroy Israel...

...Many Israelis jump immediately from a biblical inspiration to contemporary politics...

...This curious phenomenon emerged even before the uprising and was intensified during it...

...Dissent: One thing it would lose is something we would like it to lose: the claim that it will hold on to the Occupied Territories indefinitely...

...Brinker: But that is why it is very questionable whether a Labor government would be able to move in this way, even if it did have a majority in the Knesset...

...It will always be difficult for a Palestinian, even more than it was for Sadat, to negotiate with Israel...

...The same is true for other countries in the Middle East...

...But it's not enough to declare such a thing...

...Politics is, above all, a matter of timing...

...And Arafat spoke several times— in a very ambiguous way, true—about his wish to make peace and to stop the armed struggle...

...I don't say this has to take place, but I really think it is possible...

...Dissent: It is difficult to imagine any Israeli government withdrawing from most of the West Bank without demilitarization of the West Bank...

...Dissent: Twenty-one years after the 1967 war and the occupation of the West Bank, over half a year after the beginning of the Palestinian uprising, Israel finds itself in difficult political circumstances...

...Since Israel is much more powerful than the Palestinians, Israel has nothing to lose by taking the initiative...

...The uprising has gone on for months and yet there hasn't been one political statement by the PLO leadership saying that they want this or that...

...If that is where public opinion is at in the territories, the PLO leadership, even if inclined to make concessions, would have a difficult time doing so...

...Dissent: In a general way, what would be the terms of a possible peace agreement...

...The tragic situation of Israel can be described as a gap between the decisions it will have to make in the short run and the feasibility of changing the cultural aspirations of Israeli youth through a long process of education...

...For within the Labor party there are people who wouldn't accept such a declaration of principles...

...At least for a generation...

...If I were a Palestinian, I would, like the Palestinian intellectual Elias Toma, recommend this to Arafat...

...It would be clear that Israel was ready for peace...

...and over a third justified the massacres in the Rome and Vienna airports in 1985...

...Dissent: Just as the Israeli right lived with the fantasy of taking over the whole of Jordan on both banks of the river but did not act on it, so if there were peace the Palestinians might hold on to the fantasy of taking over the whole of Israel but would be incapable of doing it...

...Brinker: Let's start with the second question...

...Some leaders on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip might then decide to negotiate with Israel apart from the PLO...

...There is no other way to break the vicious circle...

...But you make peace with hostile parties on the assumption that it will serve their interests to do so rather than go to war...

...but 43.2 percent rejected such an interim solution in favor of continued struggle for a Palestinian state in all of Palestine...

...The PLO charter avowedly calls for the destruction of Israel...

...The following discussion, taped in the spring of 1988, was held between Menachem Brinker, an Israeli writer and activist in the peace camp, and Dissent editors Mitchell Cohen and Irving Howe...

...The third possibility is that the Palestinians would value their inner unity more than the chance of getting an independent state...

...Arafat has maintained silence...

...About a Jordanian option: A purely Jordanian option hasn't existed since the 1974 Rabat conference...

...Not that people object to him—they don't understand what he's talking about...

...Brinker: Before we discuss the possible results of the negotiations, let's discuss the feasibility of holding them at all...

...49.7 percent accepted it as a possible interim solution...

...This would be the split between Arabs in the Occupied Territories and the PLO abroad that many Israeli leaders want...

...It does not even have to follow a political decision of the government...

...This has been especially emphasized in the army, where the value of democracy is taught much more than in any civilian Israeli institution...

...In the long run, I am sure that the majority of Israelis will become more favorable to the values of liberalism and democracy, and more sensitive to the universalistic and humanist aspects of the Jewish tradition...

...There's not much chance of this...

...Let me conclude with something else...

...And I think Israel can defend itself under such an arrangement as long as all the Arab territories west of the Jordan remain demilitarized—free of offensive weapons...

...Dissent: About demilitarization: Wouldn't the Palestinians say this is a violation or diminution of their sovereignty, which they would refuse to accept...

...The majority of the Palestinians, if they could, would like to dismantle the state of Israel...

...If the Palestinians proclaim during peace negotiations that they have no offensive plans against Israel or Jordan, why then would they need tanks and planes...

...Brinker: Yes...

...392 • DISSENT Comments and Opinions Dissent: But what are the theoretical options...

...The educational system in Israel started improving a bit with the efforts of Yitzhak Navon, the current education minister...

...The same holds true of Mitterrand, the Germans, and the Americans...

...Which puts you Israeli doves in an even more difficult position...

...Does this still have any realistic meaning or is it something that has become pointless in view of the increased strength and self-confidence of the Palestinians...

...Over a very long period of time...

...Most of them came back after Israel evacuated Lebanon...

...There were some moves from the PLO in the past...

...When a Labor leader—not to mention a leader of movements to the left of Labor—speaks to these people about the values of a pluralist, open, democratic society, he is simply not understood...

...She said, "Who made you the father of the territories, and who makes you the owner of the Palestinians that live there...

...you must have the means to do it...

...If at least half the Israeli Jewish population has its version of rejectionism and insists on its God-given right to control the West Bank and FALL • 1988 • 395 Comments and Opinions there are equivalent groupings on the Arab side that don't want or are very skeptical of a compromise, then it's hard not to foresee something like Northern Ireland: continuous small-scale struggle, no peace, and terrible consequences...

...60.5 percent if it was an El Al plane...

...Labor, together with all the groups to its left, has the support of less than 50 percent of the voters...

...Classes on democracy and pluralism and parliamentary systems are offered now...

...Brinker: And much worse...

...Brinker: Sadat too was killed, yet Mubarak didn't step back from the peace with Israel...

...But probably the majority of Egyptians would also like to see Israel disappear...

...Israel stands in no real danger from the PLO, except in this war of attrition...

...If this too fails to happen it would then be legitimate for Israel, in the eyes of the world, to negotiate with Hussein...

...More than two hundred and fifty thousand people moved...

...Dissent: If this is the danger on the horizon and if the stakes are now that great—the stakes being the future of Israel as a humane society, in which Israelis like you will feel comfortable and to which Jews in the diaspora will feel committed—doesn't this mean that many of the previous restraints on diaspora Jews, in terms of either criticism of Israel or open partisanship of various forces within Israel, must now be cast aside...

...Brinker: Or remain an ideological relic that does not affect actual policies...

...We're discussing an ultimate Palestinian vision, but nobody has to be afraid of this as long as Israel takes pains to remain the strongest military power in the Middle East...

...Brinker: I agree completely, though you must concede that Jewish opinion in the diaspora is split as much as in Israel...

...There would be open borders among the three participants, which means that Palestinian commodities would go on trafficking to Jordan and Palestinian manpower would be able to work in Israel...

...The last time a purely Jordanian option might have existed was when Hussein offered to his parliament the initiative of creating a federation with the West Bank and Golda Meir vehemently objected...

...Dissent: Let's imagine that an Israeli government did present such a program...

...Brinker: There are several theoretical options, but given the stalemate in Israeli politics, there is not much to do except go on with the status quo, although such a policy is harmful, even disastrous...

...They simply allow the pot to boil...

...Brinker: If Labor had 60 percent of the vote, there would be several possibilities...

...The Israeli army, pursuing terrorists, could shoot so many people and frighten so many others that people would pack their things and cross the border...

...For the moment, this rules out most of the options that someone like myself would favor...

...Saying this she almost accepted Palestinian independence (but at the same time denied that there was a distinctive Palestinian people...

...The right has a great advantage in reaching these people when it creates an atmosphere 396 • DISSENT Comments and Opinions of siege, when it raises paranoiac fears, when it calls for "national unity...

...This winter, in a study of public opinion in the West Bank and Gaza, only 16.9 percent of the Arabs accepted an independent West Bank-Gaza state as a solution...

...Brinker: It is highly conceivable Humans have no brakes...

...So why can't it be done in Palestine...

...Dissent: And that gradually the fantasy of destroying Israel would fade away...

...In the short run, realistically...

...Most recently (May 29, 1988), Bassam Abu Shard, an aide of Arafat, published a statement calling for direct negotiations between the PLO and Israel, the adoption of the two-state solution, and recognition of Israel's legitimate security needs...

...We will never know until an Israeli declaration of principles is put on the table...

...Israel is militarily the superior power...

...So I don't think friends of Israel should be dissuaded from criticizing the policies of its government...

...As with previous declarations of this kind, Abu Sharif's statement floats between public relations and politics, with no decisive endorsement or rejection coming from the highest PLO authority...

...Dissent: How much does the Palestinian leadership really want to establish a Palestinian state...

...The PLO would then remain united on the negative formula that it will never recognize Zionist Israel and won't make peace with it...

...Neither of the national movements involved in the conflict, Zionism or the Palestinian movement, is now ready to think of its right to self-determination in a nonexclusive way, that is, in a way that allows the others their right to self-determination...

...but this may take too long for the atmosphere of compromise and reconciliation we will need if the worst is to be avoided...

...Because I really think that the idea of "transfer"—forcing part of the Arab population under Israeli rule to emigrate to other Arab countries—is becoming more and more acceptable to the political right, and not just the extreme right, in Israel...

...Yet this step will have to be taken one day or another...

...We've seen whole populations in the twentieth century going mad and joining suicidal politics, enthusiastically...

...Dissent: Some argue that such killings seem to be evidence of the impossibility of dealing with the PLO...

...Syria, with its ideology of the Fertile Crescent, claims parts of Iraq and half of Palestine and parts of Lebanon...

...Brinker: That's the saddest thing...

...Or they could come back to Israel...

...And with some European, American, and Egyptian pressure, with some hints from Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Hussein might enter into negotiations with Israel...

...This language is understood...

...Dissent: So you're saying that what they'd accept as an interim solution could very well work itself out as a long range solution...

...I expect not only Jews, but gentiles of good will to join in the debate and to show as much concern for the democratic and humanistic character of Israel as they've shown about other problems in the world...

...Brinker: The Middle East is full of such fantasies...

...Brinker: Both parties should take the initiative...

...There were essays recommending an end to terrorist attacks and the use of political means to achieve Palestinian goals by Said Hammami, the representative of the PLO in London, fifteen years ago, and he was killed...

...Dissent: Just as Shamir's party still theoretically claims that Jordan is part of the land of Israel...

...The Israeli writer David Grossman recently said that it seems both parties are reconciled to the idea of ongoing suffering and are more interested in finding ways for the suffering to enrich their existence rather than in minimizing the suffering...

...And only 8.3 percent thought that diplomacy was the preferred means of pursuing Palestinian goals...

...Dissent: Some American friends of Israel see the threat of extermination coming from the Palestinian side...

...It will take years for this mood to change, if it will ever change...

...One would be to go to an international conference and negotiate with a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation...

...Officially this is still the program of the Ba'ath party in Syria, yet it does nothing to realize this fantasy...

...There are no constraints to what may happen in history...

...In consequence the fantasy would gradually weaken...

...One is that the PLO will accept the offer to negotiate the future of the territories...

...There would then be a chance that the more moderate part of the PLO, backed by the moderate Arab states—Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, perhaps Saudi Arabia—would win and enter into serious negotiations with Israel...

...Brinker: I'm afraid it's true that part of the dovish Israeli left has tended to deny these difficulties...

...This was at a time when the Labor party had a very clear majority, the religious people were more moderate, and we had something like a center in Israeli politics, which we don't have now...

...Dissent: What demands should such friends make of the PLO...

...Since I am an Israeli, I recommend it to Israel...

...Dissent: For many years the Labor party has been putting forward the Jordanian option—negotiating with Jordan or with a Jordanian-Palestinian grouping, without the PLO being formally involved...

...Some leading political figures on the West Bank endorsed Abu Sharif's statement...

...They know that the status quo cannot go on...

...In Lebanon the Israeli army did exactly this kind of thing...

...This is very symptomatic...

...There are serious questions as to what the PLO response would be...

...Then, of course, we hear the opposite from Farouk Kaddoumi...

...Dissent: Is it conceivable that given the traditions of Labor Zionism—to say nothing of the reactions of the world, to which Israel does have to pay some attention—that there could be a large-scale forced expulsion of Arabs from the West Bank or Israel itself...

...Brinker: Yes, the charter calls for the dismantling of the Israeli state and promises equal rights to part of its Jewish population...

...Brinker: Realistically, the bulk of the territories, 80 to 85 percent, at least, would have to be returned to the Arabs, perhaps in a Jordanian-Palestinian federation...

...Since the Arabs didn't accept the original partition plan in 1947, and then started several wars against Israel, Israel is justified in its fears and can demand demilitarization...

...Most 394 • DISSENT Comments and Opinions Palestinians still consider the establishment of Israel as a historical crime against the Palestinian people, a crime that can be undone only by the dismantling of Israel...

...People are free and very often mad in their freedom...

...We are in a desperate race in Israel to develop a foreign policy oriented toward peace, before it is too late— before the other side is swept away by a tide of fundamentalist fanaticism that would make talk of compromise all but meaningless...

...Open borders—but borders...

...Now I would claim that we cannot know the relations of forces within the PLO, how many are willing to entertain the idea of negotiating with Zionists and how many would boycott the negotiations even if they could lead to an independent Palestinian state...

...Israel has nothing to lose from such an initiative—and perhaps much to gain...

...The second is that the offer would cause a split within the PLO resembling the split within the Zionist movement when various partition plans were offered to it by the British...

...Dissent: Under such an arrangement, what would happen to the Israeli settlers on the West Bank...

...two high PLO officials said it was only a personal opinion...

...Israel cannot be exterminated by the PLO while the Palestinians can be exterminated by Israel...

...The question is: What would the acceptance of an interim solution mean...

...Not just the rejectionists, but also others closer to the PLO mainstream—a segment of Palestinian opinion that really thinks the role the PLO is playing in the Arab world is so important they shouldn't sacrifice it for a small state depending on the goodwill of Jordan and Israel...

...Another question: There are people who ask how Israel can even consider negotiating with the PLO as long as its charter proposes abolition of the state of Israel and as long as it practices terrorism...

...We all hope that such fluidity in public opinion (especially among the young) will result in moderation...