Former Hadassah Editor Calls on Israel to Grant West Bank Unilateral Autonomy
LURIE, JESSE ZEL
ON MY MIND Former Hadassah Editor Calls on Israel to Grant Unilateral Autonomy In the November 1987 issue of MOMENT, Haggai Eshed, a well-known political writer for the Hebrew daily Davar,...
...Jesse Zel Lurie...
...After they kill off half the population, they will begin killing each other in the struggle for power...
...Eshed is right about one thing...
...the Israelis must get out of the West Bank and Gaza...
...ON MY MIND Former Hadassah Editor Calls on Israel to Grant Unilateral Autonomy In the November 1987 issue of MOMENT, Haggai Eshed, a well-known political writer for the Hebrew daily Davar, critically evaluates a powerful and devastating new book about the West Bank by the Israeli writer David Grossman, to be published in this country this spring under the title Yellow Wind* The Hebrew edition of the book is subtitled A Tour of the West Bank Twenty Tears After the Six-Day War...
...The "specified areas" would, of course, include the early warning stations and other technical marvels on the hills of the West Bank, which constitute the major advantage to Israel's security gained by holding on to the West Bank...
...Eshed's suggestion—that King Hussein is a "serious candidate for an arrangement with Israel"—is simply a repetition of the current Labor line propounded by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres...
...If the West Bankers organize a peaceful civilian government, the Jewish settlers will find a way to maintain their Torah-true way of life...
...Eshed agrees with Grossman's portrayal but criticizes his work as "a book of despair, reflecting a view without hope...
...Yet Eshed mounts a vicious attack on Grossman for not seeking a solution and for uncritically reporting the views of a Palestinian moderate...
...If Hussein is toppled by a Nablus-Amman axis, directed by Yasir Arafat, what would happen to Israel's security...
...His assignment was to arouse the Israeli public from its indifference to what was happening nearby under Israeli jurisdiction...
...Hussein has enough trouble with the Palestinians already living in Jordan...
...ister Levi Eshkol's cabinet formally decided to give most of the West Bank back to Jordan "in exchange for peace...
...In short, returning most of the West Bank to Jordan is not a safe way to end the occupation...
...Jordan's 19-year occupation of the West Bank was as much of a headache to Hussein as the following 20 years have been for Israel...
...Each is well-armed and fenced in...
...Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan announced that he was waiting for a phone call from King Hussein...
...As Abba Eban recently told The New York Times, 20 years of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza are "deforming and defacing our society...
...This is an argument commonly made by those Israelis who want to substitute history for action...
...The other possibility is that the Arabs would organize a peaceful civilian government...
...As David Ben-Gurion said, "A Jew can live in Hebron in a peaceful Arab state just as a Jew can live in London...
...Grossman is a novelist, not a political writer like Eshed...
...But Hussein does not now and never did want a deal, as can be seen from his conditions for a public meeting with Israel...
...Grossman's objective was to portray a harsh but accurate picture of the situation on the West Bank...
...They are largely irrelevant, tiny bubbles in a large mass...
...But Israel has never offered to return any part of Jerusalem...
...By unilaterally implementing the military and autonomy provisions of-the Camp David accords, Israel could let the West Bank civilian population fend for itself and "withdraw the Israel Defense Forces to specified areas...
...After the Six-Day War, Prime Min* Yellow Wind was excerpted in the February 8 and February 15 issues of The New Yorker...
...Hussein's interests were twofold: (1) keeping a lid on the Palestinians living in Jordan and (2) entering secret bilateral agreements with Israel dealing with the environment, banking and other economic matters...
...In my opinion, Israel does have a way out—by unilaterally implementing the Camp David accords signed by Mena-chem Begin almost ten years ago...
...They would not be immediately threatened...
...Hussein would, of course, like some form of sovereignty over East Jerusalem...
...According to this argument, because Israel didn't attack Jordan, Israel has no responsibility for rectifying the result of Jordanian aggression in the Six-Day War...
...Eshed agrees that Grossman accurately reports what he has seen and heard on the West Bank...
...A solution must be found...
...For Eshed, the real question is, ' 'How can we get out of the present situation without breaking our necks...
...One of Grossman's Arab informants told him, "There would be a great slaughter...
...The Labor party ministers who have met with the Jordanian monarch frequently since Israel captured the West Bank soon learned that Hussein was not interested in getting back most of the West Bank "in exchange for peace...
...What about the Jewish settlements...
...His prestige in the Moslem world would rise to new heights if he could raise his flag over the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aksa mosque...
...The addition of another million Palestinians on the West Bank could conceivably threaten his throne...
...Anyone that cooperated with Israel, did business with Israel, worked for Israeli intelligence would be killed...
...But first, says Eshed, we must ask, "How did we get ourselves into the mess in the first place...
...It has been said that Israel has more economic agreements with Jordan, with which it is officially at war, than with Egypt, with which it is at peace...
...What would happen if the Israeli army retired to military enclaves and abandoned the rest of the West Bank...
Vol. 13 • March 1988 • No. 1
