Published by
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Thirty years ago, on Sept. 13, 1993, I sat on a folding chair in the sunshine on the White House lawn, along with 3,000 other witnesses, watching President Bill Clinton nudge a reluctant Israeli prime minister and the ebullient chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization into shaking hands. The occasion for the world-famous clinch between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat capped the signing of the Oslo Accords. Secretly negotiated in Norway, they set out a declaration of principles that mapped a potential pathway to the end of conflict between Israeli Jews and the Palestinians, with self-dete…
First, I am unpleasantly surprised that this site would publish an article by Trudy Rubin. She is no friend of Israel.
Second, there is more than one reason for the failure of the Oslo Accords, but at the basis lies a fundamental difference in how the conflict is viewed.
To American ears, the meaning of “two states” is unambiguously straightforward. The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians, to them, is a struggle between two indigenous peoples fighting over the same space of land in which they share a history. A fair solution, then, would be one in which Israel is the state of the Jewish people, and alongside it will exist a separate Palestinian State.
Nevertheless, according to the Palestinians’ view, this is not a conflict between two national movements but a conflict between one national movement (the Palestinian) and a colonial and imperialistic entity (Israel). Hence, Israel will end like all colonial phenomena — it will perish and disappear. Moreover, according to the Palestinian view, the Jews are not a nation but a religious community, and as such not entitled to national self-determination which is, after all, a universal imperative.
The Palestinians’ idea of a fair “two state solution” is one completely Arab state in the West Bank and one democratic binational State of Israel that allows the right of return for descendants of Palestinian refugees. It is a “two state solution,” but not the one American Jews would recognize or Israel could survive.