{"id":9998,"date":"2012-09-24T10:20:56","date_gmt":"2012-09-24T10:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gaza.haimbresheeth.com\/?p=9998"},"modified":"2012-09-26T11:09:12","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T11:09:12","slug":"september-24-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/haimbresheeth.com\/gaza\/2012\/09\/24\/september-24-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"September 24, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDITOR<\/strong>: Benny Morris barks again…<\/span><\/p>\n

The darling of the Israeli right, the once ‘new historian’ now spouts the old message. Benny Morris, who told the world that Palestinians were ‘barbarians’ and needed to be ‘locked down in cages’ is at it again, apparently not satisfied with the 2004 interview where he said those things to Haaretz<\/a>. So here he is, with his dog, again being the voice of Israeli propaganda… It is saddening and disturbing, to read he recanting his past sins and ‘misunderstandings’. Morris is trulya Jeckyl and Hyde character, oscillating between his two states of mind. If Shamir, Begin, Sharon or Netanyahu said these things, no one would blink, but here is Bennt Morris, the New Historian, being an unreflective mouthpiece of Israeli propaganda, It is painful to behold.
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Due to its interest, I publish the whole long interview here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Benny Morris on why he’s written his last word on the Israel-Arab conflict<\/a>: haaretz<\/h3>\n

The historian, best known for exposing IDF atrocities from 1948, now says it’s the Palestinians who are not interested in a two-state solution.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Coby Ben-Simhon<\/a> |\u00a0Sep.20, 2012 | 2:22 PM\u00a0|\u00a0\"\"\u00a08<\/div>\n
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\"Benny<\/p>\n

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Benny Morris at his home in the Elah Valley.\u00a0Photo by Yanai Yechiel<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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After 30 years, he\u2019s giving up. \u201cThis is the last book I will write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,\u201d declares historian Benny Morris, sitting on the balcony of his home, overlooking distant lush hilltops covered with cypresses and pines. A pioneer in researching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and one of the most prominent Israeli historians of his generation, he has had his fill of the exhausting and bloody cycle that he has documented for the past three decades. \u201cThe decades of studying the conflict, which led to nine books, left me with a feeling of deep despair. I\u2019ve done all I can,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve written enough about a conflict that has no solution, mainly due to the Palestinians\u2019 consistent rejection of a solution of two states for two peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n

This weary feeling about the bitter encounter between the two sparring peoples is given profound expression in the new Hebrew edition of his book, \u201cOne State, Two States: Resolving the Israel\/Palestine Conflict\u201d \u200f(first published in English in 2009\u200f). In the book, Morris describes \u2212 for what he says is the last time \u2212 another chapter in the history of relations between Israel and the Palestinians. Given the circumstances, he concludes his research with an incisive political essay that could be read as an indictment. \u201cIt\u2019s a historical essay that has a political purpose and a political explanation,\u201d he admits. \u201cMy aim is to open readers\u2019 eyes to the truth. The objective is to expose the goals of the Palestinian national movement to extinguish the Jewish national project and to inherit all of Palestine for the Arabs and Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Morris, a professor of history in the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, his book is akin to a dead-end journey. Rather than sketch a way out, he seeks to entrench himself within a sober-eyed view of a hopeless reality. \u201cThe book deals with the various objectives and solutions that have been proposed throughout the history of the conflict,\u201d he explains. While at the start, the two movements \u2212 Zionist and Palestinian \u2212 sought to establish their own state on the entire territory, a shift occurred at a certain point. The movements followed different trajectories in terms of their intentions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Zionist movement started out calling for the establishment of a Jewish state on all the territory of the Land of Israel, but from 1937 on, its leaders gradually abandoned the claim of ‘it\u2019s all mine\u2019 and adhered to the ambition to form a sovereign Jewish state in part of the territory of the Land of Israel. Thus it changed its approach and consented to territorial compromise: that is, to the idea of two states for two peoples, a decision that derived in part from the logic of dividing the land between the two peoples living in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hands resting on a wooden table, Morris cites venom-filled quotes from the Palestinian National Charter, the Fatah constitution and the Hamas charter. He asserts that, unlike the Zionists, since its inception the Palestinian national movement has never retreated from its demand to establish a single state in the disputed territory.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Palestinian national movement has remained unchanged, throughout the different periods of the struggle, whether under the leadership of Hajj Amin al-Husayni or his successor, Yasser Arafat,\u201d says Morris with near-palpable disgust. \u201cIt did not even change during the years of the Oslo process. In the end, both sides of the Palestinian movement \u2212 the fundamentalists led by Hamas and the secular bloc led by Fatah \u2212 are interested in Muslim rule over all of Palestine, with no Jewish state and no partition.\u201d<\/p>\n

A couple of charming dogs scamper about in the shade of the fig and olive trees. After Morris gets the two to calm down, he goes back to making his argument: \u201cIn the Zionist movement, they understood \u2212 under the impress of Hitler\u2019s deeds and rising anti-Semitism in Europe \u2212 that the Jewish people needed a refuge and a state. Because of the urgency, and because they had to save the nation, the Zionists were prepared to abandon the dream of Greater Israel and to make do with part of it. The same policy was supported by the major powers that also strove for compromise. This impact \u2212 the Holocaust, the demand of the major powers and even a sense of justice \u2212 led the Zionists to conclude that two states for two peoples should be established here. This conclusion was manifested, of course, in the acceptance of the UN Partition Plan in 1947.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Zionist movement didn\u2019t always support the idea of compromise.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the guiding line of the Zionist movement in the years 1948-1977, and has been again since 1992. Aside from a few years of euphoria in which the right held power and propounded the idea of Greater Israel, the Israeli position was one of compromise. The brief euphoria dissipated very quickly. Since the first intifada in 1988, about two-thirds of Israelis support territorial compromise. The Palestinians, no. They have consistently \u2212 even if outwardly they seemed ready for compromise \u2212 never accepted the legitimacy and the claims of the Zionists. The Palestinian movement doesn\u2019t care about Jewish history. They deny the connection between the Jews and the Land of Israel. The Jewish narrative is completely foreign to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

You write in the book that the Palestinians\u2019 basic claim is that the land belongs to the original inhabitants who were here before 1882. In other words, before the first aliyah. For this reason, they view the Jews as thieves with whom there can be no compromise. But some would say you are describing a monolithic Palestinian voice, as if all Palestinians are radical Islamists.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s true there\u2019s a difference between the extremists, who say directly that they want to wipe out the State of Israel, and the secular nationalists, who outwardly say they\u2019re ready for a compromise accord. But actually, both of them, if you read their words very carefully, want all of Palestine. The secular leaders \u2212 if you can call them that \u2212 like Yasser Arafat and President Mahmoud Abbas, are not prepared to accept a formula of two states for two peoples. So as not to scare the goyim, they project a vagueness about it, but they think in terms of expulsion and elimination.\u201d<\/p>\n

What do you mean exactly when you say \u201cin terms of expulsion and elimination\u201d?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cArafat, since the \u201870s, after Fatah\u2019s guerrilla warfare failed to yield results, concluded that the liberation of the homeland would be accomplished through a \u2018policy of stages.\u2019 The idea of the \u2018struggle in stages\u2019 was meant to achieve the gradual elimination of Israel and a solution of a single Arab state. In other words, the Palestinian Liberation Organization leaders continually put on a conciliatory face in order to please the West, but actually their goal was to eliminate Israel in stages, since they couldn\u2019t do it in one blow.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same staggered strategy, which sees the establishment of a state in the occupied territories as the first stage in the conquest of the entire land, was, in their view, better than a direct strategy of endless military confrontation. Abbas says it day in and day out, and continues to demand the right of return.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t it legitimate for the Palestinians to demand the right of return for some of the refugees?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe realization of the right of return essentially requires the destruction of the Jewish state. For the same reason, Abbas currently refuses to hold negotiations with the Israelis. Because negotiations could lead to a resolution to the conflict. He has no desire or intention of reaching a solution of two states for two peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book was first published in English in 2009. The general spirit of the book, as you yourself describe it, has been echoed repeatedly by Israeli politicians and journalists, who fixed the image of the Palestinian side as \u201cno partner,\u201d while the Israeli side was making a maximum effort to reach an accord. In this regard, do your arguments add anything to the public discourse?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe book was written several years after the end of the second intifada [in 2005], under the impression that it [had] left. The book is relevant to the extent that the Palestinian discourse and the Palestinian objectives have not changed, and their actions, i.e. terror, are continuing by means of the rockets that are being launched almost daily, and could also return when circumstances warrant by means of suicide bombers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this context, it is vital to show the continuous, historical line of thinking that characterizes the Palestinians \u2212 which, at its base, does not give Jews any legitimate right to this place. The first section of the Hamas charter says, \u2018In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate … Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.\u2019 It is important that we recognize who we are facing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The public debate about the conflict is mired in prejudices. Don\u2019t you feel you\u2019re adding fuel to the fire with such a demonic depiction of the Palestinians? After all, we, too, like the Palestinians, outwardly talk about compromise, but meanwhile settle in their territory with the clear intention of preventing a solution to the conflict. Some of our people torch mosques, and shoot at innocents. We\u2019re not exactly saints.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe demonization is not equal on the two sides. In the Israeli education system, in general, there is no demonization of the Arab. He might not be described positively, but he\u2019s not the Devil. There, the Jews are completely demonized. The Palestinian authorities are busy deeply implanting the demonization. The Palestinian people think we can be made extinct. We don\u2019t think that about the Palestinians. What I am doing is describing the history; I\u2019m not demonizing. The book describes the Palestinian position. If there\u2019s demonization in it, it simply derives from the things that they themselves say and do. I\u2019m only letting them express themselves. What they say is what has adhered to their image.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morris, the preeminent Israeli historian writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was born in Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh in 1948 to parents who were immigrants from England \u2212 \u201cpassionate Zionists,\u201d as he describes them. His father was the first secretary of the Hashomer Hatzair movement in England, and later served as Israel\u2019s ambassador to New Zealand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey came here just before the founding of the state,\u201d says their son, at his home in Srigim Li On, in the Elah Valley. \u201cAfter a brief time on Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh, my parents were part of a group that founded Kibbutz Yasur, which was built on the ruins of the village of Al-Birwa, the birthplace of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. That\u2019s why I feel a certain connection with Darwish,\u201d he notes casually and laughs.<\/p>\n

His childhood was spent between Jerusalem and New York. \u201cA year after I was born, my parents left the kibbutz and moved to Jerusalem. My father, who\u2019d been the kibbutz driver, got a job with the Jewish Agency. Later on he joined the Foreign Ministry and worked in information [hasbara]. When I was 9, he was sent as a consul to New York. I remember very little from my childhood there,\u201d says Morris, without any noticeable regret. \u201cI remember getting mugged in the park and having my chessboard stolen. I remember that at Ramaz, the school I went to, they mixed together Talmud, Bible, Jewish history and general studies. It was a private school, one of the best in New York. Most of the graduates went on to top universities like Harvard and Columbia.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Morris took a different path. Although he thought about continuing his studies in the United States, after high school he returned to Israel and enlisted in the Nahal, serving in the 50th \u200f(Paratroop\u200f) Battalion. \u201cThe period of my military service was relatively quiet. They shot at us a little bit in the Jordan Rift Valley, there were a few ambushes, but not the experience of real combat. The only event possibly worth noting was in \u201867, at the start of the Six-Day War, when I took part in an operation that\u2019s recorded as a footnote in the history books. While Golani and the 8th Brigade breached the Syrian lines in the northern Golan Heights, we new recruits carried out a diversionary action in the southern Golan Heights. Our battalion commander was killed by a Syrian bombardment.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the War of Attrition, Morris took a more significant part in the fighting and was sent to an outpost on the Suez Canal. There, in 1969, he was wounded by Egyptian shelling, which led to his early discharge from military service. After that, he began studying history and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t think about becoming a doctor or lawyer, or a historian for that matter,\u201d he says, taking a piece of watermelon from a bowl. \u201cHistory simply interested me. After three years I saw that philosophy didn\u2019t interest me, so I decided to pursue a doctorate in history. I studied in Jerusalem for another year and then I continued at Cambridge University.\u201d<\/p>\n

He returned to Israel in 1977. When he was unable to find a teaching position, he began working as a translator and for the classified ads section of the Jerusalem Post. Not long afterward, when he was 28, he moved from the classified section to the news pages and began a new career, first as an education reporter and later as the diplomatic correspondent. But Morris soon found that journalism didn\u2019t satisfy him. \u201cAs a journalist, I felt a need to do something \u2018more serious,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cI thought about writing a book that would tell the story of the Palmach [the elite strike force of the Haganah, the prestate underground Jewish militia]. I contacted the Palmach Generation Association and they gave me access to their archive, which was still classified at the time in the IDF Archive [where there was a copy of everything]. I got down to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

But his Palmach book \u2212 which he started working on at the end of 1982, just as the first Lebanon war was unfolding \u2212 did not reach fruition. \u201cI\u2019d started working on the Palmach archive, but after about two months of work, when I was sitting one day in the library in Efal, this Palmach political commissar \u2212 a man called Sini, Yisrael Galili\u2019s former aide \u2212 came up to me and said: \u2018You know what, Benny, we\u2019ve decided that one of our people will write the history of the Palmach. You\u2019re fired.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But Morris wasn\u2019t ready to give up on his ambition of publishing a book. \u201cIronically, while working in the Palmach archive, I was exposed to material that dealt with the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. For example, I came across the expulsion order for the residents of Lod and Ramle, issued by Yitzhak Rabin on behalf of Yigal Allon. These materials were linked somehow to the war in Lebanon, when for the first time I saw refugees from the Al-Rashidiya camp \u2212 some of whom I interviewed. The Lebanese refugees captured my imagination. I felt that the Palestinian refugee phenomenon could be a good subject for a book. In fact, if I hadn\u2019t been prevented from finishing the book on the Palmach, I probably would have spent years writing a totally different book.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to his journalistic work, in the early 1980s Morris began writing \u201cThe Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem.\u201d The book, which caused a sensation, made mincemeat of the official Israeli version of events that said Palestinian refugees had fled their homes of their own accord, and put Morris at the center of a raucous public debate. Relying on a range of documents, Morris showed that the Palestinians who fled their homes between 1947 and 1949 did so largely due to Israeli military attacks, undermining the official story. He also noted that there was no deliberate policy of expulsion, but says now that \u201cthe senior Israeli command did carry out expulsions in certain areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book contained harsh findings that stained the image of the 1948 Israeli soldier. Morris described incidents of rape and slaughter that occurred in the shadow of the War of Independence, including an incident in Acre in which four soldiers raped a woman and then killed her and her father. In another incident, a female captive in the village of Abu Shusha, near Gezer, was raped repeatedly. Morris described, in chilling detail, massacres that included the arbitrary killing of hundreds of innocents \u2212 old men walking in a field; a woman in an abandoned village \u2212 and orderly executions carried out against a wall or next to a well. \u201cI felt then, while I was writing it, that this was a volatile subject,\u201d he says. \u201cI realized that I was going to publish a different depiction than the usual depiction, than the familiar Zionist narrative. I felt that this was something different that broke with convention. And, in fact, there was a lot of anger when the book was published. Some were saying quietly that it was too early to publish what I wrote, since it would blacken Israel\u2019s image while it was still in a struggle with the Arab world. They said the kind of things I described could give ammunition to our enemies. Today I see that there is something to that. I understood it then, too, but at the time when I was writing, Israel seemed secure. In the 1980s, it appeared as if Israeli society could weather such \u200fhistorical\u200f criticism.\u201d<\/p>\n

That pioneering research also defied the historians who\u2019d chosen to refrain from describing the harsh facts. From this standpoint, your writing caused a real earthquake in academia, because you undermined the familiar basic knowledge.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a paradox. On the one hand, the academic world quite quickly related very positively to the book. But there were also people who were discomfited by it. The research exposed the work of many scholars as whitewashing and lies. It exposed the \u2018old\u2019 Israeli historians, as I referred to them, as not having done serious history. About the same time my book appeared, works in the same vein came out, written by others \u2212 including Avi Shlaim, of Reading and then Oxford University; Tom Segev of Haaretz; and Simha Flapan, a Mapam activist. None of them emerged from or worked in the Israeli academic establishment. But subsequently, it became far more difficult for Israelis to write \u2018scientific\u2019 history \u2212 that is, history not based on archival material and suppressing unpleasant elements of the historical truth. Historians felt they had to fall in line with this \u2018New Historiography\u2019 in terms of modus operandi, and it became far harder to evade or distort the past. In subsequent years, even books published by the Defense Ministry included descriptions of massacres by Israeli troops.\u201d<\/p>\n

But your work proved to be a double-edged sword for you. While it made you a star, all the doors were closed to you.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI was treated like an enemy of the state. This image stuck. I was ostracized. I wasn\u2019t invited to conferences and, of course, I wasn\u2019t offered a university position. It was a tough time. I couldn\u2019t support myself and my family. For six years I had no job, until \u2212 with the intervention of President Ezer Weizman \u2212 I was hired at Ben-Gurion University in 1997. I lived off loans from friends. I had no money. In 1991 I was fired by the Jerusalem Post, which was taken over by right-wing millionaires \u200f(including Conrad Black\u200f), who dismissed all the paper\u2019s left-leaning veteran staff. I spent the years writing further histories, published by Oxford University Press and Am Oved. But I had no job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today you say you were stuck with an image that was inaccurate. But in fact, during the first intifada, just months after the publication of \u201cThe Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,\u201d you refused to serve in the territories. In those years, that was a highly controversial act.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cTrue. I saw the first intifada that erupted in the winter of 1987 as an effort of a people to throw off a 20-year military occupation. This effort, in the main, was not lethal, and the protesters did not use live-fire weapons. They\u2019d simply had enough; they wanted to be rid of the yoke of occupation \u2212 that is how I saw it. I did not feel it right to take part in the suppression of this nonlethal uprising, and I refused to do reserve duty in the Nablus Casbah. I felt that the Palestinian struggle for independence was legitimate and that the oppression was fundamentally illegitimate. The second intifada was a totally different story. Against the backdrop of the waves of terror attacks, the Palestinian uprising certainly looked like it was geared to destroying Israel. Therefore, today I am opposed to refusal to serve in the territories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the repeated terror attacks and the failure of the July 2000 Camp David summit, Morris\u2019 positions in relation to the conflict changed sharply. In a 2004 interview with Haaretz Magazine, he claimed that in certain conditions, expulsion was not a war crime, and that there were circumstances in history when expulsions were justified \u2212 such as when the alternative was someone killing you.<\/p>\n

You said that people were mistaken when they labeled you a post-Zionist, and you described Palestinian society as being like a \u201cserial killer\u201d whose people should be locked up \u201cin a cage.\u201d You called Arafat a \u201cliar\u201d and the Arabs \u201cbarbarians.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI may have gone a little overboard. I think that I wasn\u2019t careful enough in choosing my words, although I still stand behind what I said. I said that the Palestinians should be put in a cage so they won\u2019t be able to get here to place bombs in buses and restaurants. The word \u2018cage\u2019 did not go over well and perhaps it was the wrong word to use. Of course, I meant fenced off. As for the refugee situation, I still maintain that it was a requirement of the reality. Since the Palestinians tried and intended to destroy us, and their villages and towns served as bases in wartime, the winning side had to take over villages and expel populations. This situation was built into the nature of the war, even if people from the left have a hard time swallowing it. Massacres are always reprehensible, but the Jews behaved much better than other nations in similar circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

You pointed out the dichotomy between the \u201cnew historians\u201d who did not adopt the Zionist narrative, and the \u201cold historians\u201d who wrote from an establishment perspective. But your book and the general approach with which you wrote this essay definitely express the Israeli consensus, and perhaps an even more right-wing view than that. Some will say your historical analysis is more characteristic of the old historians.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see myself as an \u2018old historian\u2019 or as someone who is taking back any of his words. All of my writing, both before and after 2000, is faithful to the truth that comes out of the historical documents. I did not change the facts or the way of looking at the past, although I did learn to appreciate the depth of the Arabs\u2019 rejection of Zionism and the idea of territorial compromise. I definitely accept the Israeli narrative about Camp David, which says that the Palestinians were made \u2212 both by Ehud Barak and President Bill Clinton \u2212 unprecedented offers, and that they turned them down. In my book I argue that this is essentially their consistent, perpetual line since the dawn of the Palestinian national movement. Just as they rejected the two-state offers in \u201837, \u201847 and \u201877, they rejected the offer in 2000.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Morris\u2019 most striking conclusions is that, regarding the past, there was no point at which the Israelis could have acted differently. \u201cThere are people who believe that we blew an opportunity here or there,\u201d he says. \u201cThere is even a hint of this, perhaps, in my book \u2018Border Wars,\u2019 about the peace talks between Israel and its neighbors after \u201848. But a more thoughtful look back shows that no opportunity appears to have been missed. There simply was no readiness for peace on the other side. They didn\u2019t want to accept us here. As long as the Jews wanted a state of their own, under their control, no acceptable accord could be reached with the Arabs. Not before \u201848 and certainly not afterward, when the Arab side was also prompted by vengefulness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Revenge is one of the explanations that Morris places on the table to explain the intransigence of the Palestinian national movement. \u201cAside from revenge, the Palestinians have absolute faith in the justice of their side, which derives in part from religious faith. What God commands, and what his interpreters on Earth say that God commands, is the definite truth. While the Jews are much more skeptical about this sort of interpretation, the Palestinians feel that justice is on their side and that God doesn\u2019t want the Holy Land to be shared with another people. Another thing: They absolutely believe that time is working in their favor. And the Palestinians feel that they have the backing of 400 million \u200f(or so\u200f) Arabs and another billion-odd Muslims around the world. So why compromise?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the second chapter of \u201cOne State, Two States…\u201d you discuss the two main accepted models for a resolution of the conflict: two states for two peoples, or a single binational state of some kind in which Jews and Arabs live together. The problem is that neither of these models is realistic, in your view. At the end of the book you propose as a solution a federation between Jordan and Palestine.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI say that the compromise proposals that have been continually put forward since \u201867, that are based on a Jewish state on about 80 percent of the territory of Mandatory Palestine and a Palestinian state on about 20 percent of the territory, are not realistic. The Palestinian leadership and people will not be satisfied with 20 percent of the territory of Palestine. A state composed of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem will not satisfy them. They will want to expand \u2212 to Jordan, to Israel, to Sinai, or in all three directions at once. In order to satisfy the need for growth and territorial expansion, a merging of the West Bank, Gaza and Transjordan might satisfy the Palestinian urge for more territory and constitute a more reasonable and durable accord.\u201d<\/p>\n

MK Aryeh Eldad \u200f(National Union\u200f) may be the most vocal proponent nowadays of such a confederation.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cBut this was essentially the \u2018Allon Plan,\u2019 and the concept of the Labor Party in the \u201870s and \u201880s. Although never officially adopted by the party institutions, it was accepted by most of its leaders. According to this plan, Palestine would be divided into Israel \u2212 more or less along the pre-\u201967 borders \u2212 and an Arab state that could be called a Palestinian-Jordanian state, that would combine most of the territory of the West Bank and East Jerusalem with the East Bank i.e., the kingdom of Jordan.<\/p>\n

\u201cAriel Sharon once talked about turning Jordan into Palestine \u2212 in other words, ousting the kings, putting the Palestinians in charge in their place and thereby solving the Palestinian demand for a state. But I am talking about something different: The bulk of the West Bank united with Transjordan in one state.\u201d<\/p>\n

But from the moment Jordan washed its hands of the West Bank in the late 1980s, and said it viewed this as Palestinian territory, the rug was pulled from under the advocates of the Allon Plan, and since then the plan has rightly been gathering dust. Today as well, it is unreasonable to expect to convince the Jordanians, or the other nations of the world, to support this move, that would necessarily lead to a situation in which the royal family was ousted. If it\u2019s impossible to convince anyone to go along with this idea, what\u2019s the point of discussing it?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause it is still more logical than an accord between us and the Palestinians that is based on a division of Mandatory Palestine. The logic of a large Palestinian-Jordanian state is more valid than any partition plan \u2212 which I support, by the way. Justice and logic say that the Palestinians should have a state alongside Israel, but the portion of the land that is designated for them in a simple partition will not satisfy them. And so the territory east of the Jordan River also has to be inserted into the equation in order to give the Palestinians a vision of space. The West Bank, even without the Jewish settlers who are there now, is a very constricted space. Gaza is one big slum. Jordan-Palestine could be the basis for an accord that will last, even if it cannot be achieved in our time. For now it is impractical and unrealistic. So the message is certainly pessimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you see any signs of light?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe only optimistic thing I can say is that the history of the Zionist movement and of Israel is so unusual and unpredictable that the end of the story, or the next part of the story, could yet surprise us in a good way. Maybe. I yearn for such a surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since you\u2019ve decided to quit researching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, what do you plan to focus on now?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve already begun to write a history of Turkish-Armenian relations from 1876-1924, together with Prof. Dror Zeevi, an Ottomanist. The Armenian genocide will, of course, figure large in it. It\u2019s a whole new story.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Benny<\/div>\n
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Benny Morris.Yanai Yechiel<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EDITOR: Benny Morris barks again… The darling of the Israeli right, the once ‘new historian’ now spouts the old message. Benny Morris, who told the world that Palestinians were ‘barbarians’ and needed to be ‘locked down in cages’ is at it again, apparently not satisfied with the 2004 interview where he said those things to … Continue reading September 24, 2012<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimbresheeth.com\/gaza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9998"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimbresheeth.com\/gaza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimbresheeth.com\/gaza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimbresheeth.com\/gaza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimbresheeth.com\/gaza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9998"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/haimbresheeth.com\/gaza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10001,"href":"https:\/\/haimbresheeth.com\/gaza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9998\/revisions\/10001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimbresheeth.com\/gaza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimbresheeth.com\/gaza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimbresheeth.com\/gaza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}