Securing Israel: A MOMENT Symposium
SECURING ISRAEL A MOMENT SYMPOSIUM Last Month, moment convened a panel of distinguished Israelis to discuss the current political situation and prospects for the future. The participants: Arie...
...Not even the right to exist...
...I'm not talking now about whether he's more liberal or less liberal...
...I mean only that he, too, attacked this very principle...
...I said it's the issue—I didn't say anything about a solution—it's the issue...
...What I say is, forget about the possibility of living in peace with your Arab neighbors as of tomorrow...
...I'll give you an example...
...There is no people like that, because / am a Palestinian...
...I agree about Arafat...
...Whether the Arab world decides to follow a policy of compromise is, of course, very important, but it is of secondary importance, at least from the moral point of view—and in this case, the basic moral question has real political consequence...
...They rent or give their land to effendis from Hebron, and the people who work on it are refugees from Gaza...
...If it is sooner rather than later, it seems to me that Israel can still have an important effect on the terms, the conditions under which that something-or-other is brought into being...
...morale is very low...
...These are very important...
...But the very insistence that the final status should be discussed in three years is a catastrophe...
...This is not Zionism...
...Self-determination was mentioned, with respect to the Palestinians...
...But we also have to reinforce our own convictions, and we have to do our own labor...
...It's not a first stage, not a second stage...
...If there is to be coexistence between Israel and an Arab entity, Arab workers probably will come to Israel...
...Eliav: But Khalidi does...
...these are nice, easy places to solve, but the displacement of 60 or 70,000 Jews...
...And then we will be able to explain, which we are not able to do now...
...The problem of Lachish is not a problem that will be solved by peace...
...Fine...
...They will not have an independent army, although I don't mind discussing with Professor Khalidi some sort of symbolic military presence—if they want a national presidential guard, with the most beautiful red hats, they won't have any trouble from me...
...And one of the reasons for that is the question of leadership: If we talk about Israeli leadership, I must say that earlier governments did not rise to the situation, did not make tremendous efforts to unearth, to dig up, wherever possible, some kind of a beginning of a solution...
...Whatever we shall agree to today can have only the character of an interim solution, some sort of modus vivendi, acceptable to us and acceptable to the other side as a way to go on living together for an indefinite period—20 or 40 or 50 years— until there is a different kind of practical Middle East...
...It has always been against us, and it still is...
...There is a moral problem of the right of human beings, of national movements, to self-determination...
...Lachish was one of the models of Jewish farming for newcomers, Moroccans, Kurdistanis, a multi-ethnic area...
...But I must say that Rabin, too, before he became Prime Minister and when he was Prime Minister, used a formulation which was very unrealistic and unfortunate...
...Begin is now living in a dreamland, in an Alice-in-Wonder-land land, in a bunker...
...And we don't need, not for the sake of security, to antagonize the local population and the whole world...
...But, in any case, the empirical consideration which actually defines security has to this day not been elaborated...
...And no one was interested in them...
...Ploni Almoni is the pseudonym for an Israeli with extensive government experience at a senior level...
...1 am ready to concede a token, but not to create a military threat...
...With which they disagree...
...we appear to be running against the main current of history...
...And if it cannot, it will have to go, and another government will have to spell it out...
...This isn't our case...
...But I'm talking about the principle of self-determination...
...And we'll come crawling to a solution with a broken backbone...
...Self-determination does not mean self-interpretation...
...She held office from some time in 1969 to her resignation in 1974...
...But that is one thing, and the justice of the case is another...
...However, I am fed up with Arafat, because Arafat hasn't got it in him to make a decision—an historic decision...
...Rotenstreich: In the first place, every criticism has got to be restrained...
...The easiest things for me to grant to the Arabs are the symbolic things...
...It was not only Golda Meir who said that for us, the question is "Who is a Palestinian...
...We keep missing the boat, and another boat, and another boat...
...The whole meaning of the State of Israel is in this dimension...
...and a very dangerous one...
...The world has not recognized or acknowledged an absolute principle of self-determination...
...It is from this point of view—and this is where I disagreed with you when you intervened—I do not see an impasse...
...I think this is unfair, because in regard to this particular problem, now called the problem of Judea and Samaria, he was the most consistent man imaginable, from '67 onwards...
...But this doesn't mean that from such an interim agreement there will be more that will develop right away...
...Oh, they're flourishing, making money, although Sharon may be ruining that, too—but on the whole they're flourishing economically and agriculturally...
...Gazit: The trend in Europe has obviously been bad, from our point of view, although we should bear in mind that Europe did not...
...You go to Ashkelon and see my Jewish farmers touching the muscles of little boys to see whether they'll be good workers...
...That is how it was foreseen at Camp David, although the span of time involved in the agreement is five years, and in the third year a negotiation must start for the final status...
...If they want the highest flagpole in the world, anywhere in the West Bank, I would grant it...
...But neither this government nor the previous government has done it, has done what must be done...
...He even acknowledges the security problem, and he is ready for a token army of two regiments, though not a demilitarization...
...And as long as this continues, there is no prospect for basic change...
...When I told Golda ?eir, may she rest in peace, that we were creating, in 1970, not an Uncle Tom phenomenon, but a Cousin Ahmed phenomenon, in our midst, she was horrified, and she said, "How can you talk like that...
...A Jordanian-Palestinian something-or-other, or a Palestinian-Palestinian something-or-other...
...That is how to give moral justification again to Zionism and to its realpolitik...
...And Jews in other countries as well...
...Normally, this would be the answer I would give, and it's an answer I believe in sincerely...
...You're quenching them...
...It is unacceptable...
...I'm the one who collided with her head on...
...Let's keep some perspective here...
...Whether this has a chance or doesn't have a chance we don't know, because the negotiations have not even seriously begun...
...The principle of self-determination has never been promulgated as an absolute principle...
...There's a war going on, and he's in a cellar somewhere, or in an ivory tower...
...He said, "Partition is impossible between Judea and Samaria and the State of Israel...
...the situation is bad...
...So, what can I offer instead...
...Each of you has done a good deal of talking to American Jews, and you've witnessed the current confusion and distress...
...Maybe you can't do anything with him...
...Any place in the world where you put two societies and two economies with a very wide gap in the standard of living next to each other, no ministers of labor can organize illegal labor...
...Our genuine security case is beiqg compromised internationally by our behavior...
...He is the author of numerous articles and books, including Between Hammer and Sickle and Land of the Hart...
...So we should really abbreviate the period when criticism may be warranted...
...Such labor must be managed in a proper way...
...And with all the criticism I have of the former government, mainly after the Six Day War, for its rigidity and its inflexibility and its inability to read the international situation and the human situation and the Israeli situation accurately, it did not ever renounce the principle of partition...
...And there is somebody now living in the Sabra refugee (Jam ? in Beirut who says, "What do you mean, up to the Green Line...
...The PLO was not a factor then...
...I never said we haven't made mistakes...
...I think it was mishandled all the way around, and American mediation during that period was badly conducted, and so we are really talking about a rather brief period of 1972, which was the year when, in theory at least, Golda had some time to make statements of principle about this or that...
...The idea of autonomy is grounded in the notion that it replaces national right...
...Unfortunately, very few people know the facts, are interested in the facts, understand the facts, and most of the people— and I'm not only speaking about Israelis—Americans, Arabs, what have you, just repeat slogans...
...But I insist that since Jerusalem is now united as a municipality with 70,000 Arabs, that will not be changed...
...But I must first say that I don't think that an impasse of 30 or 40 years is possible...
...And we'll see what happens later...
...Security is an empirical consideration...
...But today you have a slave · market, a slave market at four o'clock in the morning...
...I think we're dealing with different issues, and we're mixing the issues...
...And we have not even convinced the Israeli public that it has to be open to empirical data, and to see this as part of a dynamic process, related to the human situation, the military situation, the security situation, and so forth...
...So whoever is a Palestinian will say, "What do you mean by defining my right to self-determination...
...And I'm not saying this only because he said it again recently...
...And you can't control it, unless you control it with machine guns and barbed wire and mines...
...Rotenstreich: May I make a scholastic comment...
...about the Palestinians—I do not mean this at all...
...And this is the major issue which we, from our point of view, are facing...
...And if it cannot, is it ready to make the requisite statement...
...We have a problem of Jerusalem...
...And they are divided: They are in Iraq, and they are in Iran, and they are in Syria, and of course in Turkey...
...I don't enjoy it, and maybe they will develop economically, with petrodollars, with oil money, with all sorts of other resources, so very quickly that we will have Uncle Moishe's Cabin on the other side...
...the Labor government has to come, and to spell it all out...
...As high as the highest structure in Toronto today...
...It's an unfortunate result of the present situation which opened the borders in '67r But if this is the only calamity of '67, nisht geferlach...
...From the moral and ideological point of view of the Palestinians, they'll say, "Self-determination...
...If security permits us to promote a settlement, fine...
...Yet I think there is a very, very strong interrelationship between the goyim and the yehudim...
...Eliav: But in an organized way...
...It is not a solution leading to national right, but replacing it...
...Nobody accepts the partition of 1967...
...there are no Palestinians...
...That will be in a peace treaty, and that's it...
...If you want, I could call it almost an independent sovereign entity with certain restrictions on their so-called security rights, which will not be changed in three years, which will not be negotiated in three years...
...This is still, I'm afraid, the truth of the day...
...but now we shouldn't miss the boat—that's what men like Khalidi say now...
...We have some of the best labor laws in the world, and we have-Arab children of 10 who are not protected...
...There are situations in history when we find ourselves at an historical impasse, a deadlock...
...And this is the horror...
...To sum up: I believe that the only basis for negotiation, if we exclude the Labor party and the ideology of the Allon plan, is the full autonomy specified by Camp David...
...Israel will still exist in 30 or 40 years...
...I can be sorry 10 times over that we annexed Jerusalem in 1967 and put 60 or 70,000 Israelis in the Eastern part of it...
...That is why I speak of an interim solution...
...From this point of view, even if we face an impasse, the question is first about ourselves—the Jewish people, the Israeli youth—about what kind of Jewish nationalism we ourselves embody...
...Historically, it wouldn't have been there if not for Zionism, but it is there...
...moment: We meet at a time when Europe has decided to intrude itself into the Middle East negotiations, which appears to be still another symptom of a general deterioration of Israel's situation...
...We are left with—and, in theory at least, this is the position of the present government —Camp David and autonomy as defined therein, namely, full autonomy...
...Galili was right when he defined the Israeli-Arab conflict as an agrarian problem...
...The zeal of the Kibbutz movement was also responsible for Labor's settlement policy...
...Ought they feel free of constraint...
...The empirical consideration has not been elaborated by the government...
...They were good farmers, and now it's in ruins...
...I agree that right now, the problem cannot be solved...
...There is no solution to the Jerusalem problem just now...
...Because these are the right positions, and the world is against us...
...But there is also a second layer, and its most important element is that the nations of the world have accepted the principle of national self-determination as a universal principle...
...as people thought it might, grant recognition to the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people...
...But our mistake was that we gave up to Egypt in order not to give up to the Palestinians...
...to flexibility and maneuverability, and not on security grounds at all, but vis-a-vis the Palestinian problem...
...We are speaking about a formulation of our own attitude...
...Move back to the '67 line and you will have peace from me tomorrow morning...
...Before retiring from Israeli government service, he was Director General of the Foreign Ministry (1972— 73), Director General of the Prime Minister's Office (1973-75), and, from 1975 to 1979, Israel's Ambassador to France...
...And from the French point of view, they not only felt we lacked gratitude, but also that they had made unnecessary gestures and were therefore free to go their own way, to act on the basis of their own understanding of the issue, what was best for their interest...
...We have a problem of the Golan Heights...
...Eliav: I totally disagree with this analogy...
...This costs a lot of money, but it would be covered in the press, and if the criticism is voiced in Israel, it expresses a certain kind of solidarity with us...
...Ploni: Yes, but there are some more elements...
...Ploni: I agree with Eliav that just now the most important thing is what the Jews in Israel are doing and will be doing...
...We have to say it like a Jew says prayers: three times a day—Shachrit, ? inch a and Ma'ariv—and wait...
...Ploni: I enjoy them...
...Ploni: Lova, I didn't say that I liked it, but let me speak...
...Now, as for self-determination, what we are talking about is self-determination for the Palestinian national Arab movement...
...Because we have our own existence at stake...
...If they want to have the longest anthem in the world, let them go ahead...
...However, the fact is that the Palestinians are not the only ones who claim the right to self-determination...
...But we have to say the magic word, and then wait...
...This brings me to my second point...
...Now we come to other elements which account for the complexity of the problem...
...But the French have very carefully avoided identifying themselves with the Rabat doctrine that the PLO is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians...
...I don't want to defend Golda but to put things right...
...if not, at least we've done what we can do...
...But she said, "There is no issue like that...
...Our mistake is that we negate that right altogether...
...Second, and this is related, there are no rights which are absolutely unequivocal...
...My second word of caution is that we shouldn't identify Arab leaders or prominent people or writers or professors who are responsive, because these things change...
...But if I make my home such a noisy and polluted place that nobody else can live in it, the right becomes meaningless...
...Not just Shiloh, and Ma'aleh Adumim and Eilon Moreh...
...Can we begin with the specific and move on to the general...
...They're a minority, and neither this government, which doesn't want any partition, nor the previous government, which didn't want to recognize the problem, gave any encouragement to that minority...
...But at least we'll be able to explain...
...I don't see how you don't understand...
...He has served as Fellow and Visiting Professor at several major American institutions, and is the author of many books on Jewish philosophy, history and Zionism, as well as major studies on Kant and Hegel, in Hebrew and English...
...He is very respected, very prestigious, respected by the PLO and the Palestinians, and by the intellectual community here, and he thinks and he says the unthinkable—a sovereign Palestinian state is, for him, the solution...
...For example, the Kurdish problem: You have the Kurds, fighting for over 10 years against the Iraqi army...
...It's a monstrosity...
...It was not the fault of Israel that the negotiations in 1970 failed...
...moment: We appear to have two votes so far for impasse, and one abstention, a vote which says the empirical data may or may not point to an impasse but that in any case we should make our moral statement and segregate the two questions...
...Israeli diplomacy, which should have encouraged the French, ignored their shift...
...is not the Israeli position...
...In other words, for Khalidi, if you want to talk to him seriously, you must talk about 100 percent withdrawal, and I say that this, fortunately or unfortunately...
...So, to my mind, we cannot afford an impasse...
...Begin quit in August 1970...
...Actually, it was the Labor Party that traditionally indentified security with settlements...
...And I don't say that what we are doing now is the right approach...
...And I have a feeling that if you add this component of Jewish criticism directed against Israel, you might bring the breaking point a little bit closer...
...Now, my interim solution is very simple: I am totally for autonomy, but it has to be real autonomy...
...But I know it's unrealistic...
...One can come up with other modalities of this kind, and they are needed because of the danger of this type of global and total criticism by Jews directed against Israel...
...Now let's go to the real problem...
...It seems to me that the only test of Hussein in 1980 is»does he respond to a statement that says "yes, there are certain conditions under which we would be prepared to relinquish our claim...
...Ploni: But this is not what they want or what the world wants...
...Therefore, we are not promoting compromise in order to gain ground in world public relations...
...The basic moral question, which is of primary importance, is the position of the State of Israel...
...And the last point I want to make, and I have to insist on it, is that we cannot proceed according to the Camp David agreement which says that after three years we start negotiating the final status...
...And I do not see any situation just now which permits a solution or an agreement by which we can say we are really a Luxembourg surrounded by the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany...
...Only then can a final agreement be reached and accepted...
...Let me say what the normal answer would be...
...The only hope is that they will restart and that they will succeed...
...As I've listened to you today, it seems that to the frequently asked question "What can we do to improve Israel's image...
...And, to my mind, she made a horrible mistake, and that's an understatement...
...Eliav: Of slave labor...
...And he'll fall, and if Peres or Rabin do not come to this kind of declaration there will be a continuation of the calamity, and we don't have 40 years...
...And now, let us look at the security issue...
...We cannot afford it...
...And the stronger the pressure, the stronger the extremists in Israel become, and life is much easier for them...
...I don't mind...
...But any pure self-determination would mean evacuating 60 or 70,000 people...
...But they exist as mountain Turks, not even as Kurds...
...I'll tell you why I so disagree...
...Take just one illustration: When, after a great amount of effort, the French government was persuaded, back in January of 1977, to be more careful in its positions regarding these matters, and actually came almost to the position that was later reached at Camp David, we behaved as if nothing had happened...
...But that is what happened...
...Eliav says that he is ready to withdraw 100 percent...
...What are the best guarantees of security...
...It will exist, but not as an Uncle Ahmed's Cabin...
...At the rate at which things are going, it seems that Israel loses control fairly rapidly over the conditions...
...Even the principle that they have to be negotiated in three years is a calamity...
...But he's there, and others are there...
...Not that I'm against self-determination for the Palestinians, but it has to be put in a certain perspective, and this has to be done because of the complexity of the problem, and not because we don't all want the world to be beautiful and just...
...And that's another explanation of why we must prepare ourselves for a deadlock...
...to every American—the farmer in Iowa, or whomever—we'll be able to explain to them that we have security needs, and very harsh ones...
...And then there was our blindness to a monster called the Palestinian national movement, blindness to the fact that a monster like that even exists and has to be dealt with...
...Eliav: But then we don't disagree...
...What do the rest of you have to say about that...
...It's going to happen...
...Zionism and the achievements of the State of Israel intensified Arab nationalism, and actually created Palestinian nationalism, as if Arabs were disciples of the famous adage of Herzl: "a people is a group of human beings having a common enemy...
...We have to spell it out...
...She said it to me...
...This is what we are suffering from now...
...If you want that for 40 years, your children and my children will not be there...
...First, I do not believe that there are final solutions to problems...
...Number one, there is a position which for moral purposes and for internal purposes it would be terribly useful for Israel to articulate...
...You are talking about the continuation of slave labor...
...Because we still carry with us the pre-State attitude or ambiance—wherever we are, that is security...
...We are experiencing an erosion of ideological convictions...
...The present Palestinian leadership is not prepared to draw any lessons from the past and say, "and therefore today we are ready to do A and B." In Paris there is a man, whom I shall not mention—he is well known to some of us in this room—who really made a tremendous effort to get to know the PLO people, and at a certain moment, a year and a half or two years ago, this man Finally said, "I'm all in favor of the Palestinians...
...World Jewry has to maintain a position of total identification, total support— and criticism...
...We are talking about an interim solution, something that can be acceptable to me, and something that can be acceptable to the other side...
...He's no leader...
...Take the whole controversy in Israel and in America about abortion...
...In 1971, there was another attempt made to reach an interim agreement with Egypt which also failed...
...Eliav: I could not agree more, because I think that when the Israeli government, after the many mistakes we've made, will make a declaration that it recognizes the right of the Palestinians to self-determination, and accept a partition, agree to half the loaf, even if there is no answer or echo from the other side, this will change our own inner psychological, moral core, and will give American Jews, again, a reason not to be totally confused the way they are now...
...moment: I feel no need to establish a consensus if there is none, but it seems to me that I hear one which says, whatever the process, and autonomy certainly seems to be the handiest process at the moment, the development of" a serious capability for Palestinian self government on the West Bank, albeit restricted in certain key ways, is a point of departure, which may lead to subsequent departures, even if the later steps take many decades...
...It cannot go on...
...We are not taken seriously anymore, which is a very big danger, because we do have a real security problem...
...Furthermore, as I understand the policy of the present government, it is engaged in a continuing attempt to negate the principle of partition...
...The participants: Arie (Lova) Eliav, who has just completed two years as a Fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, served from 1970 to 1972 as Secretary General of the Labor party in Israel and is one of the leaders of the Israeli peace movement...
...After '69, Golda was like a ton of cement...
...I think this gives us moral strength, and a political weapon, and, I would say, wisdom...
...Such pressure can determine when, and how, we will have elections in Israel, and the result of these elections...
...I'm afraid that everything would not be fine...
...moment: What is your response to the question which Begin was asked many times...
...Mordecai Gazit came to the United States at the invitation of Brandeis University's International Fellowship Program and, beginning this month, is affiliated with the Center for International Affairs at Harvard...
...My whole resistance movement, my national liberation movement, the PLO, Palestine Liberation Organization, has been fighting for the last 50 years not for Nablus, but for my return to Haifa...
...It is our behavior that will make the real difference...
...Forget about the possibility of living in peace with your Arab neighbors as of tomorrow...
...They can very easily utilize it and say, "If you don't vote for us, you vote for those who want the destruction of Israel...
...I think this is what we face here...
...Here I must introduce a certain discordant note...
...Ploni: My point is not in formalities...
...There is, after all, an Alfonso's Cabin in Mexico...
...It's not absolutely unequivocal...
...This Cousin Ahmed phenomenon has ruined Lachish...
...It is not a question of coexistence with the Arab world...
...And I agree that the consequence is a deadlocked situation...
...And people do know it, even if they resist it...
...This is just one example...
...Eliav: Who's talking about barbed wire...
...If we look around us, we see that there are problems of self-determination in many places, and I think the world is duty-bound to mention the other problems, too...
...Number two, that position might or might not...
...What I'm saying is, of course, applicable to the Labor Party...
...The biggest legislative council, let them have it...
...And unfortunately, what Eliav is prepared to grant to the Palestinians is unacceptable to a majority of the Arab parties, to the Palestinians, and not only to the Palestinians...
...So, to my mind, this government has got to fall, the sooner the better, they have to go...
...My home is my castle...
...Please, don't put conditions on it...
...What are you talking about...
...And Sar-tawi accepts it...
...Now, especially in the wake of Sadat's visit, which recognized Israel's "validity," things have their own momentum...
...There is a Cousin Ahmed in every household in Lachish, and the Jewish newcomers from Morocco and Kurdistan—it took 25 years for us to help them to be Jewish farmers—are now caught...
...A member of the International Institute of Philosophy and of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, he was Dean of the Faculty of Humanities (1959-61) and Rector of The Hebrew University (1965-69...
...Of Gaza...
...If only the other Arabs knew what a good Arab patriot he has always been, before Rabat, I think they would give him some sort of Arab Nobel prize...
...And my Jews—and I can say that, in this case, because I settled them—are cashing in, are making their money from the small feudal man from Hebron, working with cheap labor from Gaza...
...You cannot say that if tomorrow you had an Israeli government willing to come out with some of these ideas with which we now like to toy so very much, then everything would be fine...
...Finally, and unfortunately, I don't believe there is a solution...
...The whole world rejects it...
...What is the kind of self-determination that politically you are prepared to grant...
...You can attack him on the ground of what he's saying, or what he's doing, but you do have to be very, very restrained...
...And this I think will explain why we must prepare ourselves for a deadlock, which is very unfortunate...
...It is not self-determination...
...Then there was the problem of negotiation with the Nixon administration, and there were the Egyptian missiles, and the Soviets were still in Egypt...
...Gazit: When I used the term impasse, when I said there are historical situations where there are impasses, I meant that to negotiate a settlement between us and an eastern neighbor, or between us and the Palestinians, is out of the question right now...
...It's the tip of an iceberg...
...But if they can do it, let them do it...
...The result, of course, has been that King Hussein made it abundantly clear in the past, and again in recent weeks, that if Israel is not prepared to withdraw 100 percent and then leave all the options open with regard to what would happen beyond the old lines of'67, there cannot be an agreement with him...
...And it ended in a rather tragic manner...
...There is this principle of self-determination going back at least . . . well, for a while...
...Ploni: My major political point— not a moral point—is that this possibility of self-determination is unacceptable—totally—to us Israelis...
...Israel is attacked from every angle and from every side...
...So he proposed other possibilities...
...moment: If I understand you correctly, what you're saying is that an arrangement that might be acceptable to both sides is implicit in the autonomy proposal, seriously implemented, and that's exactly what Eliav is calling for...
...The great sin of the Labor party government was not just the sin of Dayan...
...If we take France as an example—and France is a good example, being the worst of the lot from Israel's point of view—the French have long held that the PLO will have to participate in any negotiation concerning the future of the PLO...
...Eliav: What the Europeans and the Americans do in this explosive situation is not the central issue...
...it is a question of the erosion of the convictions of the Labor ideology...
...Rotenstreich: We have to distinguish between two layers of the current problem...
...And I wouldn't be so Utopian as to say that if we solve one problem, the other is automatically solved...
...He was the one who would never really seriously agree that a territorial compromise or some minor border adjustments would satisfy him...
...moment: The principle of self-determination—and perhaps Professor Rotenstreich can help here—has never been promulgated as an absolute principle...
...Unless and until we solve these questions which are plainly ideological, I'm afraid we cannot come to grips with the day-to-day situation...
...In 1963, he was awarded the Israel Prize for Humanities...
...In our own consciousness, there are other components on which our statehood is based, but the commonly accepted vocabulary of the West is the vocabulary of self-determination, and it was that vocabulary which provided the argument for a State of Israel—and now we reject that vocabulary...
...Golda Meir, it's true, said it several times, although she also made a statement once in the spring of 1973 in which she was much more realistic...
...But we must be fair with ourselves, and mention the fact that the world does not approach the problem of self-determination in the most even-handed manner...
...they don't want a state, OK...
...I'm not talking here about where the boundaries should be drawn, but about an underlying principle, and unless we return to that principle, and make it an explicit, guiding basis for our policy, our situation will grow worse and worse, both outside and inside Israel...
...But there are others...
...He has not—and this is his right—fully developed his ideas about Jerusalem, although this is the crux of the problem, but let us assume that some formula can be found by which there is total withdrawal everywhere and also from Jerusalem, yet in a manner which would make our presence in Jerusalem livable, nevertheless...
...What is needed is that all parties, and first of all the United States, should understand that we are not talking about a solution...
...moment: The question, I suppose, is whether the circumstances that led Zionism to accept the principle of partition are still relevant, or whether the present security situation stands in opposition to the moral and political considerations which led to the acceptance of partition in earlier times...
...And we have only one ally: the Jews...
...Eventually, reality will fell them, too...
...It is not an impasse...
...Gazit said, rightfully, that there probably won't be an agreement after that and the autonomy will stay...
...And finally, in this given situation, where you cannot say we should base our solution on partition, changed borders, security, on a partner like Hussein, what are we left with...
...Ploni: But I don't call it self-determination...
...This applies to criticism expressed in Israel too...
...I presume, and if anyone disagrees I'd be happy to hear the disagreement, that everyone here acknowledges that sooner or later there will be a Palestinian some-thing-or-other on the West Bank...
...And the world is not excited...
...Sooner or later...
...He wrote an article in Foreign Affairs...
...Just as King Hussein didn't accept our partition plan, because he always said, "OK, I am for the partition plan...
...You can easily attack a Prime Minister of Israel by referring to his biography or whatever...
...Not many, but to these few we don't even give a piece of rope to say, "Yes, you will have something...
...There is, definitely, a security problem...
...I'm going to decide if it is self-determination up to the Green Line, or perhaps to Haifa, Jaffa, Lydda, Ramleh, Beersheva, et cetera...
...I see a process, I see an evolution, and I think it's of utmost importance to have this evolution...
...There is no scarcity of criticism directed at Israel...
...There are only steps taken—in this particular context, not to aggravate, steps to make the coexistence between the Jewish people in Israel and the Arab world and the Palestinians more agreeable than it has been until now...
...And these are wonderful ideas...
...That may not be the answer people want to hear, but there it is...
...What will the solution of East Jerusalem be...
...Ploni: I'm not so sure we agree on that position...
...And this is the problem...
...For example, not changing the present status quo in Jerusalem...
...But if no final status can be devised, probably a status quo arrived at as a result of the negotiations would be accepted, and then we would have a de facto interim solution...
...50 years from now, perhaps 100 years from now, it can be different...
...This happens to be a fact...
...I don't mean unilateral retreat...
...A Minister of Labor, a Palestinian or Jordanian Minister of Labor will have to sit with an Israeli Minister of Labor and decide each year how many will come...
...But Zionism, as I understand it, hasn't got 30 or 40 years...
...And your children and my children will run from it...
...There is a Palestinian national Arab movement...
...moment: What you imply is the possibility of a very interesting tradeoff, in which the degree of autonomy that has been contemplated by Israel so far would be increased in return for a very long extension of the timetable for an ultimate solution...
...Isn't this negating the right to exist...
...Because there is a process, an international political process, in which the so-called western European initiative is one element, but there are many other elements as well, which we in Israel can very easily read in the most convenient way for us...
...Professor Khalidi is very close to the leadership of the PLO...
...I must say a word nevertheless with regard to the past governments...
...Eliav: I want to return to the question of self-determination which, as Rotenstreich says, is crucial...
...And two more things: One was the establishment of settlements, mainly, but not only, because of security...
...I'm not discussing the details...
...What are the elements of security...
...And that is the best we can hope for today...
...Eliav: She said it to me...
...And the difficulty is that we appear to stand in opposition to that principle...
...Now, if this could, seriously, be the basis for a negotiation and for a solution, even an interim solution, it would be very fine...
...I would say the settlements are a security liability, because we need so many more men to protect each settlement...
...Ploni: Not because I like it...
...To begin with, I agree totally with Professor Rotenstreich when he said that Ahmed's Cabin has very little, if at all, to do with the overall problem of us and our Arab neighbors...
...For example, there was a very important person in the Israeli government in '67—the Defense Minister, Dayan—about whom people say that he easily shifts his position...
...Because if it doesn't exist with any future political solution that we have, that will mean that we went back to barbed wire separating us from the rest of the Arab world...
...We constantly stress the importance of an Arab readiness for compromise, but we ourselves are not ready to compromise...
...And we have hen objectively a very good ground...
...This is the only real-politik...
...Golda Meir and Yisrael Galili were great obstacles Neither this government nor the preceding government has done what must be done...
...And this created the misgivings and the difficulties in the first place, though America played, unfortunately, a very cruel role immediately after Camp David— the visit of Saunders to the West Bank was a terrible mistake, even a misdeed...
...Ploni: Yes...
...If you talk about what the world has come to understand by self-determination, the State of Israel accepted that formulation, which was inherent in a program called the partition program...
...The only thing I can offer is to arrange, in Israel, many meetings between American Jews and Israeli Jews...
...Ploni: The person you meet on the street here, if you ask him what it means to give the Palestinians the right of self-determination, will answer, "That they will decide their own future, period...
...The problem, however, is that the only valid principle for the policy of Zionism and of the State of Israel is partition...
...he was the one who, in 1969, dictated to the Labor Party the so-called Oral Platform...
...But I'm not so sure that what we have defined as selfdetermination really is self-determination...
...we'll not dismantle one gun...
...That's number one...
...Let us look for a moment at the Palestinian leadership, because I'm talking about the present impasse, and trying to explain why there will continue to be an impasse...
...If you are speaking about self-determination, as you said, it is self-determination for a Palestinian national movement, period...
...Because we are not speaking—and I listened carefully to what Eliav said—of self-determination for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza...
...And then, eventually, the negotiations resumed, and Golda made her contribution when she agreed to the breakup of the national government...
...Whenever he goes to Beirut they accuse him of having sold out to Zionism, that he's being paid by the Jewish community of America, that he's a traitor, and so on...
...I believe the Israeli policy is wrong...
...Once you say, "The West Bank and Gaza," it's only because it is convenient to you...
...But it is also a sad fact that even this approach is totally rejected by the most moderate elements in the Arab world, namely King Hussein...
...Ploni: There are so-called problems of cheap labor, illegal labor, all over the world, and I hate it...
...I'd like to add, as someone who has been involved in these matters, that I'm not so sure that our European diplomacy, whether under the present government or the former government, was handled in the most professional, imaginative and successful manner...
...they make the news, they have their impact on day-to-day developments and responses...
...It is so critical that it really has to determine the character of any agreement, unless we want a solution, an agreement, that compromises Israel's very existence...
...And the criticism is justified because the State of Israel is of the Jewish people, and not only of the Israelis...
...You're telling me that my self-determination is that I stay in Sabra...
...I don't see any possible agreement that can be accepted by both parties...
...Rotenstreich: May I say a few words now...
...That may sound very egocentric, but while what the British and the French and the others say or do in the next couple of months will have some effect, it will not change the course of things to a great extent...
...Rotenstreich: I agree with that...
...And you don't want to speak with them...
...We haven't yet realized that the creation of a State, of a government, of a military force, changes all that...
...I want a solution with them...
...Let me conclude, if I may, with one more question, which has become almost a ritual for us when we talk with Israelis...
...Therefore, if we grant the right to the Palestinian Arabs to determine their future, their national entity, this is not an absolute right...
...What happens if, the morning after autonomy, the mayors of the West Bank meet together in the museum in Ramallah and there declare their independence as a state and invite recognition from the nations of the world...
...Partition is a compromise that Zionism made...
...You say, up to the Green Line, not one inch more...
...These are the facts, these are the parties...
...And you are blind to those who agree...
...And it's wonderful for everybody to admit the right of anybody to self-determination...
...What is happening inside Israel was mentioned here, but was not fully analyzed...
...To the best of my knowledge, the government has not made this clear...
...Now, I have a presence of many Israeli troops, and while I don't mind discussing what kind of presence this should be and where they should be, the troops will not leave, and if they want to make them leave, there will be war...
...The guns and the tanks are holding the territories, even though the settlements are a security hindrance...
...Terrible things are happening...
...He headed the regional development projects of Lachish and Arad as well as the Israeli aid mission to the earthquake-stricken areas of Iran and Nicaragua...
...moment: Let me see if I can summarize where I think we are now and see whether there's any disagreement...
...Then we shall have an interim agreement...
...And blindness to the inner consideration, the question of what this monster does to us...
...Of poor children 10 years old...
...I wonder, going back to the comment on Hussein, whether there is any particular reason to suppose that Hussein of 1980 is Hussein of 1970 or 1975, and I have the following specific example in mind: Given a government which will not say explicitly that there are conditions—difficult conditions, perhaps even intolerable conditions, but nonetheless definable conditions— under which Israel would be prepared to relinquish its claim to sovereignty over the West Bank, what has Hussein to enter the negotiations about...
...He's not living in the real world...
...the borders will be open...
...Now that is especially unfortunate because we ourselves became a state on the basis of the principle of national self-determination...
...Gazit: Normally, 1 would answer this question in a manner which would not please you...
...He wrote it, he's on record, he has suffered for it...
...Ought American Jews to debate these issues publicly...
...It would be a blessing for the present government to face some sort of pressure...
...And only in 1972 was there a breathing spell...
...Because it's not the Turks going to Germany, it's not the Moroccans going to France, it's not the Mexicans coming here...
...Why not...
...These are not words that we are used ti, but,we have to get used to them...
...If anybody despaired as a result of contacts with the PLO, I did...
...I don't think that this is so...
...Rotenstreich: With all my sensitivity about Arab labor in Jewish settlements, let us not confuse two things...
...It is an outcome of Zionism, I fully agree...
...wejiave created a unionistic Labor movement, not a movement grounded in ideology...
...your answer is that it's not an image problem we face...
...You see, the Labor Party approach is all very well: the Allon Plan, the principle of partition, with the decisive element being security...
...Worse yet, the settlement policy even raises a very big question mark concerning whether we really have got a security case...
...moment: Can we establish, for the record, whether Golda did or did not say the words—there seems to be some debate—"there is no Palestine...
...I think we're lying to ourselves...
...Let me ask a second and related question...
...This has been his position since 1967...
...King Hussein will not negotiate on the basis of the Labor Party approach...
...moment: But you made it clear that for that to work, the agreement has to be based on the notion of full autonomy, in which, at least these days, Begin apparently has no interest...
...I'll give you one example, because it's close to me...
...We have to make a declaration which says that in exchange for full-fledged peace with the Palestinians, with all the security arrangements that we can list, from A to Z, with very harsh arrangements, we are ready to grant them the right of self-determination in the West Bank and Gaza...
...Within the context of the current confusion, a continuing issue, of course, is the nature of the obligation of an American Jew who loves Israel, who loves the people of Israel and the land of Israel...
...You are dealing with a minority, a small minority that agrees, but you are blind to them...
...What is there to negotiate...
...no— partition is impossible, in his consistent view...
...And that is why we cannot talk of something other than what I call an historical impasse...
...What happened, when you look at these things historically...
...it will be solved by conviction...
...This is the most-important thing...
...We are projecting our own experience, our own historical achievement, and asking the other side to do something parallel...
...No,, no, it will not go on...
...His long association with the United States began in 1960 when he was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Israel's Embassy in Washington, D.C...
...So from the ideological point of view, we impose a very clear condition: Up to this line...
...Now, one thing that's stable in the Middle East is change...
...They want a state, OK...
...I do not grant them the theoretical right to decide that they may have a state, that they may kick us out, that they may want to return, and all the rest...
...What is absolute is only the right to have rights...
...He applied this to the Jews, but it's applicable to the Arabs, and they accept it...
...The problem is a reality problem, a policy problem...
...Eliav: Some do, some don't...
...Maybe in 50 years, we'll look at it totally differently...
...They want to put us "in der erd...
...Eliav has already said his piece on that question in moment's pages some time ago...
...moment: Thank you...
...And it is clear to me that if the Arabs had no oil, and if the Arabs had no petrodollars, the world would not be so excited about the Palestinian issue...
...He's speaking, of course, for himself, but the same probably holds for the Palestinians, for the best of them, for the Khalidis, not for the Arafats...
...But there are others...
...Ploni: Whoever says here, and really believes, that whatever agreement we can sign now with any Arab leader—Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, Saudi, Palestinian, or, for the same good cause, Iranian—is a valid agreement which we can trust to last from now through the next SO years, is super naive...
...We'll look for ten just men, maybe three, maybe one...
...The world should also be excited about issues other than the Palestinians...
...But if you speak purely from the security point of view, and not from an historical, or emotional, or religious claim to the whole of Israel, to the whole of Eretz Yisrael, we don't need the settlements...
...Golda Meir tried to negotiate, and she failed, and it was not only her fault...
...Only the present government denies that principle, overtly, both in its statements and in its behavior...
...Can Israel afford 10 more years of the kind of deterioration it has experienced in the last 10...
...That's what you say...
...Ought they, where there is disagreement, try to mute it and become the defenders of whatever the policy of the day is...
...moment: But the man on the street, for these purposes, is irrelevant...
...Ploni: That was '47...
...We are right, we are the just, it is a cynical world, interested only in oil, that is putting pressure on us, and whoever cares for the future of Israel, or the security of Israel, should join hands together and not give on one single inch on our positions...
...Now, I'm not expressing my position, which may be identical with Eliav's, but I am trying to express a majority consensus of Israelis when I say that since 1967—and there is no sign of this changing—no one has been prepared to contemplate seriously a 100 percent withdrawal...
...Eliav: You want children of Gaza to work in Lachish...
...Our denial of that principle was one great sin of the previous Labor party, headed by Golda, with Galili giving her the so-called socialist backing for this horror...
...It goes with the mentality which we referred to earlier—"the whole world is against us...
...But if it is later rather than sooner, then it seems that Israel loses control...
...Gazit: I would make a distinction between two things: First is the question of how Israel should behave from the spiritual and moral point of view, on which there is unanimity in this room...
...This is Lachish in 1980...
...Anything that is acceptable only to me won't work...
...Nathan Rotenstreich is Ahad Ha'am Professor of Philosophy at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem and, currently, Visiting Professor at Harvard University...
...But this has nothing to do with the central problem...
...Of course they said, condescendingly, that they were acting in our best interest...
...And yet I sincerely hope that Ahmed's Cabin will exist with any political solution that we'll have...
...Eliav: You're blind to those little signs of life...
...Ploni: I'm not discussing it now with them, but with us...
...When she became Prime Minister there was a War of Attrition, and this was certainly not the moment to give priority to the Palestinian question, and the War of Attrition came to an end in August 1970...
...Eliav: You insult them...
...The central issue is what we do, what the Jews do...
...We are today intensifying their hostility, and thus intensifying their nationalism, their rejection...
...There is, first, a layer of topical development—statements of the European community, statements by American politicians or by the Secretary of State, things like that...
...This doesn't mean that we should say that because the world is not excited about the Kurds, therefore they should not be excited Unless we return to the principle of partition, our situation will grow worseand worse...
...But it isn't convenient to the Palestinian national movement...
...He used to say that the Palestinian problem was not the most important problem in this situation, that there are other problems of much greater importance...
Vol. 5 • July 1980 • No. 7
