The Big Picture
SHANKS, HERSHEL
PERSPECTIVE Editor's Viewpoint The Big Picture Hershel Shanks LET'S LOOK AT THE BIG picture. Not just how to stop the violence, but how to reach a peace agreement. The road to an...
...Can the United States, when the Afghan war winds down, wring these concessions from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan...
...On the other hand, many small settlements sprinkled through the West Bank (and yes, the Jordan Valley) will have to go...
...Until now these three countries have been cheerleaders for Arafat, egging him on to ever-tougher forms of Palestinian "resistance" (translation: violence...
...This will include, for example, Orient House and the Muslim quarter of the Old City and, I say it with pain in my heart, the surface of the Temple Mount, what the Arabs call the Haram...
...The road to an IsraeH-Pdestinian peace agreement runs not through Gaza City, but through Cairo, Riyadh, and Amman...
...In these ways, corrupt, oppressive governments swept their domestic problems under an oriental rug and united their countries under a banner of hate for Israel and the West...
...to recast the international system...
...11 and our reaction to it, Henry Kissinger has said, provides an "opportunity...
...America is in the unique position of being able to enunciate obvious and necessary provisions of a settlement that the parties (and Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan) dare not utter...
...Next read Ori Nir's discussion of Israeli Arabs and then read Pogrebin's column...
...He was not analyzing the situation in the Middle East, but the same opportunity may exist with respect to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict...
...The truth is that the major terms of an Israeli/Palestinian peace agreement are obvious and incontestable...
...This may seem surprising from two countries, Egypt and Jordan, that have themselves made peace with Israel...
...Jerusalem is the toughest issue...
...Israel has never been willing to say this openly, and rightly so...
...T h e Arabs (and I deliberately do not limit this to Palestinians) have refused to recognize that these big-issue concessions must be made...
...Read Jack Riemer's article about the deceased Lubavitcher Rebbe's being the Messiah and then read Prager's column on the same subject...
...Take, for example, a Palestinian state...
...You've got to be insane to think that Israel will agree to take back 2 or 3 million Palestinian refugees...
...But the final peace process cannot begin without some concessions by both sides...
...Oh, you can jiggle a bit here and there, but the basic plan is obvious and incontestable...
...Our columnists, of course, have no idea of the articles we are running...
...Another example: the return of the refugees...
...You've got to be insane to think that Israel will ever abandon places like Gilo, a part of Jewish Jerusalem, or Maaien Adumim, a bedroom community just over the Green Line with a population of more than 25,000...
...The complicated relations between the United States and these three Arab countries after 9-11 cannot be analyzed here, except to say that we may ultimately be sterner with our Middle Eastern friends, conditioning our support on their being part of the solution instead of part of the problem...
...Hey—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are supposed to be America's great friends and allies in the Middle East...
...Were this part of Jerusalem to become Israeli, Israel would have more than 200,000 additional Arab citizens...
...Israel sensibly refused to make this concession until the Palestinians made a similarly obvious concession on their side...
...If there is ever to be a peace settlement, the Palestinians must have their capital in Jerusalem...
...In the Gulf War, by the by, Jordan and the Palestinians sided with Iraq...
...This would only compound an already existing demographic problem...
...It is almost as if we orchestrated the debate, but we didn't...
...If that begins to sound like America should impose a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so be it...
...What will happen to the settlements in a final peace agreement is also plain...
...In short, Israel has already given away the surface of the Temple Mount...
...That must change...
...The exercise will give you a lot to think about...
...But the Arabs have never even inched toward accepting the basic premise that the refugees cannot return...
...And the first places that support for Palestinian concessions must come are from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan...
...They will have the contiguous part of the city that has been traditionally theirs (and in which there are no Jews or, today, even Jewish visitors...
...The obvious resolution of this issue is that a few thousand face-saving family reunifications will be allowed, plus monetary compensation for the others (perhaps with similar compensation for Jews effectively expelled from neighboring Arab countries, including Egypt...
...As for the surface of the Temple Mount, the Arabs have had this since 1967 anyway (as a practical concession by every Israeli government since then...
...Which brings us back to Camp David...
...SOMETHING HAPPENED AS WE WERE PREparing this issue that is vintage MOMENT, and I want to call it to your attention...
...Again, the Arabs have never really spelled out what they would accept (except the whole thing...
...But it's not simply a cold peace— it's a hostile peace...
...But Israel is being pushed toward it anyway...
...Today, no Jews (or other non-Muslims) are, by Arab decree, permitted on the Temple Mount...
...That is where a peace agreement must begin...
...PERSPECTIVE Editor's Viewpoint The Big Picture Hershel Shanks LET'S LOOK AT THE BIG picture...
...If there is ever to be a settlement, it must be very painful to both sides...
...They are free to express themselves on any subject and to take any position that seems convincing to them...
...It has long been plain that Israel was willing to make this concession in a final agreement...
...This is an Israeli concession in principle— a divided Jerusalem—but it also has practical advantages...
...You've got to be insane to think that there can be a peace agreement without some form of Palestinian state...
...Yasser Arafat could not make peace, even if he wanted to, without the support of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan...
...Egyptian and Jordanian journalists, for example, are expelled from their professional associations, effectively losing their licenses, if they report from Israel...
...There is of course much left to argue about, especially the demilitarized nature of the new sovereign state of Palestine...
...The first step is to get Egypt, Saudia Arabia, and Jordan to support the minimum concessions necessary for any peace agreement between the warring parties...
...In this issue, Dennis Prager and Letty Cottin Pogrebin take positions that are diametrically opposed to articles in the feature section of the issue...
...Only then will Arafat have the backing he needs to himself make these concessions...
...And that's what we like to think MOMENT is all about...
...Argue about the details, but not about the basic premise...
...For Saudi oil— and permission to protect that oil in the Gulf War and after—we looked the other way and let Saudi leaders spew their venom at Israel and, not so incidentally, at the West...
...Given the either/or nature of the issue, I would prefer that these Arabs become part of Palestine than of Israel...
...And he was right...
...There is always one conversation-stopping answer to any defense of Arafat at Camp David and at Taba: Regardless of what dissatisfaction Arafat may have had with the Israeli or American proposals, he absolutely refused, and to this day refuses, to make any counter-proposal that anyone would consider reasonable...
...At Taba, Bill Clinton was quite specific about the settlements...
...Not only is it an internally divisive issue, but the Arabs have never come close to recognizing the concessions they will necessarily have to make...
...Until 9-11, the United States accepted this situation...
...But this much is, again, obvious...
...To compensate them for the "less than 100 percent" return, the Palestinians might just get a sliver of the Negev (and a few more billion dollars in American support...
...Sept...
...We poured $2 billion a year into Egypt, while Mubarak's newspapers enflamed "the street" against Israel and, incidentally, the United States...
...And it was, after all, Egypt and Saudia Arabia who "demanded" (the Washington Post) and "insisted" on (former ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk) the current American intervention in the peace process...
...Distasteful as it may be to the Bush administration (and to some Israelis and American Jews), the Clinton peace plan is going to be the basis for any ultimate settlement, even if it goes by another name...
Vol. 27 • February 2002 • No. 1
