Below, an example of another unhinged Israeli academic, with a plan to resolve the conflict – remove all political and representational rights from the Palestinian population, making them citizens of other countries, in what seems to be a prelude to ethnic cleansing. That, on top of calling them the occupiers of Israel…
End the Arab occupation of Israel: Ha’aretz
By Prof. Ron Breiman
From Gideon Levy to Barack Obama, from Yariv Oppenheimer to Ismail Haniyeh, from Zahava Gal-On to Tzipi Livni – they all recite the same phrase: It’s time to put an end to the “occupation.” Once the “occupation” ends, peace will be sealed. Once the Jews are expelled from the heart of their country, redemption will come to Zion. From here emerges “the solution” – two states within the tiny piece of prized property that remains, the western Land of Israel, not the Greater Land of Israel.
We would do well to recall that the PLO – the (all of!) Palestine Liberation Organization – was founded in 1964 before there was an “occupation,” “the West Bank,” “territories,” and the other political terms that were designed to disinherit the Jewish people from the heart of their country, those swaths of land that were occupied – without quotation marks – by the Jordanian army in 1948, an occupation that lasted just 19 years. The PLO’s goal was not to liberate the territories from Jordan, because those lands were in Arab hands. Rather, it aimed to liberate the “occupied” territories from the State of Israel, which lay within “the Green Line.”
We would do well to recall that the PLO never changed its spots. It failed to do so when it signed for “peace” with the naive Yitzhak Rabin, who was lured into the trap sprung for him by the Osloites. And it failed to do so when it allegedly abrogated its charter. Even the recent Fatah conference and the statements by the “moderate” Holocaust denier, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, can attest to this. The goal was and remains to this day: the liberation of the “occupied” territories from Israel, namely the State of Israel within the confines of the Green Line. On the other hand, when the Osloites let Yasser Arafat and his gang of henchmen come into the heart of the country with his army of terrorists, they brought with them their own army of occupation. As things went, thanks to the shock after the Rabin assassination, the Osloites quickly handed the cities of Judea and Samaria over to the occupier, an error that the slain prime minister apparently did not intend to commit. This is how liberated territories became occupied territories, without quotation marks. In Operation Defensive Shield, the Israel Defense Forces was compelled to pay a steep price in blood to liberate the heart of the country from Arab occupation.
Most of the Arabs in the Land of Israel immigrated here after our waves of aliyah. In other words, Zionism and the prosperity it engendered spawned “the Palestinian people.” Since the Arab occupation of the Land of Israel in the seventh century, and throughout the centuries of Muslim occupation, not one of the occupiers viewed this land as anything more than a distant imperial outpost.
The demand to grant a state to Arab immigrants to this country and their army, which is stationed here thanks to the blindness of certain Jews and the nations of the world, is without foundation. It is tantamount to legitimizing a reality that was created here after the criminal act that allowed an occupying army to enter this country.
The critics’ responses are predictable: What do you propose, that the Arabs just evaporate into thin air? In contrast with the critics who espouse a racist transfer of Jews from Judea and Samaria, I reject any forcible transfer of any population group. Perhaps there is no solution to the problem. There is certainly no solution at this point. But this is no reason to commit suicide or sacrifice the Zionist vision on the altar of “peace.”
I do not want a binational state. If there is a solution, it cannot be found within the confines of just the western Land of Israel. In the long term, the solution will be a regional one that combines democracy, demography and geography. The Arabs of the Land of Israel will continue to live in their present homes and will hold Jordanian and Egyptian (for Gazans) citizenship, voting for their respective parliaments. In the long term, citizens of Jordan who comprise an overwhelming majority in eastern Transjordan will gain power in Amman. It is there that a solution will be found for their brothers who live west of the Jordan River.
But in the meantime, we must end the occupation. The Arab occupation in the Land of Israel.
The writer was the chairman of Professors for a Strong Israel from 2001 to 2005.
And a very different professor, below, in today’s Ha’arertz. It is interesting to note, that despite the liberal critique of Netanyahu, coming from the traditional Labour Zionist position, there is also a whiff of anti-semitism – the Jew is presented here as the opposite and the inferior straw man of Zionism. Old habits die hard…
Netanyahu’s UN speech was that of a Jew, not an Israeli: Ha’arettz
By Prof. Yaron Ezrahi
Benjamin Netanyahu’s address at the United Nations General Assembly last month was the speech of a proud Jew and not that of a liberal and sober Israeli. It was the speech of a victim reopening the wounds in order to again stir support, and not the speech of a brave and daring Israeli striving to solve the largest threat to the future of Israel and its citizens – a speech in which the drama was reserved for a reference to the tragedies of the past and not to processes that stir hope for the future. It was a speech that moved Netanyahu’s supporters abroad and among the Israeli right wing and made them stand tall, and contributed nothing to dealing with the dangerous rift between us and our neighbors.
As Nachum Barnea wrote, Netanyahu “was at his best” during his speech; but really it was only Netanyahu at his best, not in our best interests and not an Israeli prime minister at his best. It was a speech that exposed the Diaspora mentality of the prime minister, a speech from the school of Golda Meir (who also talked with Jewish pride and in fluent English) and not that of a leader with a vision and real goals intended to advance the well being of the Israeli public. It is no coincidence that the problematic analogy between Iran and Nazi Germany appeared at the beginning of his speech and the part about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was left for a brief appendix at the end. Can one suspect that Netanyahu used the conflict with the dictator from Iran to distract attention from his responsibility to freeze construction in the settlements as an effective means for progress toward an arrangement?
But even when he appealed to the Arab world with a call to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, Netanyahu erred, perhaps not by chance. As may be recalled, every time Yasser Arafat wanted to intensify the conflict and flee from negotiations, he wore a kaffiyeh and turned to religious symbols such as the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Hamas turned the collective Muslim identity into the fundamental element of the Palestinian rejectionist position. Against this backdrop it seems that Netanyahu’s decision to wear a skullcap was meant to spark Muslim zealotry and rejectionist views and weaken the Palestinian Authority in the face of Hamas opposition. The responses from the Palestinian side were predictable.
Is it not obvious that the attempt to replace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians with an interreligious conflict between Jews and Muslims is the cherished goal of the extremist enemies of peace on both sides?
Therefore it seems the demand for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is an ostensibly sophisticated distraction on the part of a veteran peace rejectionist.
Furthermore, is there a single Muslim anymore who today could recognize a Jewish state that occupies a Muslim population? Recognize a Jewish state where a group of law-breaking Jewish extremists leads the elected government by the nose, in order to expand the borders of the country, against the wishes of most of the population in the country and the world?
Can the Palestinians be expected to recognize a country where the right-wing leaders in the government announce every morning that the battle of the settlements is the continuation of the War of Independence, that Israel is still a country in formation with no constitution and no borders?
In light of all this, Netanyahu’s rhetoric victory on the world stage is a Pyrrhic victory that does not auger well for the Israeli public that he is supposed to represent. It was an emotional speech by a public relations minister that focused on Holocaust deniers, and not by an Israeli prime minister looking out for Israelis yearning for quiet and stability. Netanyahu, “at his best,” missed the rare opportunity to promote the burning Israeli interest to reach an agreement that will prevent the next wave of violence.
The writer is a professor of political science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.