By Ira Sharkansky
JERUSALEM — It’s still labeled the two-state solution, despite clear evidence that it requires at least three states. With Gaza kept separate from the West Bank, as its leaders seem to desire.
Americans imagine that it’s only the Israeli right that frustrates the creation of a Palestinian State.
Yet the reality is that Palestinians themselves bear equal or even greater responsibility.
Their own fixation–or that of their political leaders–with turning back the clock and creating a state based upon the pre-1967 borders, plus providing “refugees” and their descendants a right of returning to their homes, are the essential blockades.
Some 800,000 Israeli Jews live beyond those lines, about one-half of them in neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
There’s no chance that anything more than a tiny minority can be moved.
Thomas Friedman represents a substantial slice of American Jews, and a recent piece in the New York Times highlights Ehud Barak’s challenge to Bibi. And puts it in the context of saving Israel’s democracy by accommodating Palestinian interests. JStreet has created a program to compete with Birthright, differing in presenting opportunities for young Americans to communicate with Palestinians.
Yet despite Friedman’s column, the reality of Barak’s campaign against Bibi is that it is just that, without any noticeable element of Palestine. And while Birthright may put its emphasis on visiting Israeli sites, that doesn’t bother many people here.
Currently Barak has run afoul of the American Jeffrey Epstein, who invested heavily in a Barak company, after Epstein’s run in with Florida authorities.
The only largely Jewish political party that clearly ascribes to accommodation with the Palestinians is Meretz, and it is fighting to stay in the Knesset. Currently it has four seats, or just over the line to be in or outside of the Knesset.
Without substantial interest in dealing with Palestinians, or other substantial issues, Israeli politics is obsessed with Bibi. Getting rid of him is the essence of Ehud Barak’s campaign, as well as those of Blue White, Labor, and Meretz. Currently all the parties are diddling with issues of settling their boundaries, considering alliances, settling who will be their lists of candidates. Bibi remains the favorite of Likud, the Haredim, and the Orthodox. Polls suggest a close balance of the center and left with the right.
And it’s mostly outsiders who are worrying about Palestinians.
For Israelis, Palestinians remain somewhat outside of major issues, as an insoluble problem, or several of them.
The list is a short one, with the West Bank and Gaza as separate entities.
Both are antagonistic toward Israel, but with substantial differences.
The West Bank is more or less open to Israelis, with a scattering of settlements, family visits to Palestinian areas for Arabs, and shopping for Jews. There are meetings between Palestinian leaders and Jews who favor more accommodation. But the education is tilted sharply against Israelis, and there are frequent indications of hatred and violence from individuals. More than 100,000 West Bankers come to Israel daily to work, and others come for medical care, family visits, and religious observance.
For some years now, Gaza has been closed to anything other than the transfer of fuel and goods from Israel, and a few visits from Gaza for medical care and occasionally religious observance. Hostility is at a high level, both between Gazans and Israelis, and as well between Gazan and West Bank Palestinian leaders.
Most of the time relations with Gaza are quiet, but tensely so. And there have been periods of exchanging rockets and bombs, but no overt ground attacks since 2014.
Currently we’re at a point where Egyptians have brought Hamas and Israel to a kind of accommodation. We hear about 5,000 Gazans allowed to work in Israel. A new beginning?
Political antagonism between West Bankers and Gaza suggest nothing less than a three state solution, assuming that things develop beyond what’s currently imaginable so that either side of Palestine could be recognized as a state.
Israel’s best option–supported by Likud and Blue White together, is to do nothing which upsets wither side of Palestinians. There is no sense in conquering either. What to do with two to four million Palestinians?
This despite Thom Friedman, JStreet, the leadership of the European Union, and many others who continue to ascribe to a two-state solution.
It’s the Israelis who would have to make the concessions to bring Palestinians to agree, and there aren’t many who are prepared to do that. Especially insofar as many of the Palestinians–including Hamas and those further to the left–seem to be demanding the dismantling of Israel and the disappearance of some seven million Jews.
We should never say never. However, the distance between where they are now, and the prospect of major change in the direction of accommodation, seems too great for hope.
And with us are who knows how many Jews who believe that God gave it all to us, and that we should move beyond what the government permits to settle it. And to do what with the Palestinians?
It’s a mess, but meanwhile Israel survives. The economy is strong, as is the military. Politics is currently confusing in the run-up to yet another election. But the politics works,more or less.
Palestine, in contrast, is in the hands of the aged (West Bank) or violent (Gaza), with little prospect of anything like an election to settle one area or the other.
Currently the Jews are muddled by comments from the Rabbi heading one of the religious parties, recently appointed as the Minister of Education, that he believes in the conversion of gays to straights.
Lots of responses from professionals that such programs don’t work, are likely to frustrate gays, and increase their incidence of depression and suicide.
There’s a sharp split between the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Education. The first is Likud, and gay, and outspoken in opposition to his colleague’s claims for conversion.
Parents are threatening to keep their children from schools in September.
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Sharkansky is professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University. He may be contacted via ira.sharkansky@sdjewishworld.com