It Takes Two to Partition

Summary of It Takes Two to Partition - Yossi Klein Halevi (Jerusalem Post) via Daily Alert newsletter of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

What we've learned about the conflict over this last bitter decade is that the Oslo-era notion of a comprehensive peace needs to be wiped from our lexicon. Instead, we should conceive not of resolving the conflict but of managing its intensity. A hudna isn't merely a means to an end but - at least for the foreseeable future, and possibly for this generation - the end itself.

One compelling reason why a comprehensive peace is now unattainable is the near-total absence, among mainstream Palestinians and the Arab world generally, of the notion that Jewish sovereignty over any part of this land is legitimate. In numerous conversations I've had with Palestinians from all levels of society, the consensus is that Israel isn't the expression of a people returning home but of a colonialist intrusion in the Middle East. The problem isn't Israel's policies but its existence.

Consider Gen. Nasser Youssef, arguably the most moderate figure in the Palestinian security apparatus, who recently lost a power struggle with Yasser Arafat. In the late 1990s, I participated in several long conversations between the general and several Israelis in his office in Gaza City. When we asked how he conceived of peace, Youssef replied that the Jewish people would be absorbed into the Arab nation to which it naturally belongs.

Even Gen. Youssef, then, is merely a tactical moderate, offering Jews protected minority status under a benign Muslim Arab majority rule. At best, the Palestinian leadership sees a two-state solution as an interim stage.

At every level of society in the Arab world generally, a "culture of denial" has taken root which denies the most minimal truths of Jewish history, from the existence of the Temple to the existence of gas chambers. In fact, only in the Arab world has Holocaust denial become part of mainstream discourse.

The strategic implications of that culture of denial is that Israel cannot, at this stage, contract itself into the vulnerable 1967 borders. An approximate return to the "green line" is conceivable only in a Middle East that has renounced its longing to eliminate Israel. And that is possible only if Israel receives recognition of its legitimacy - for now, inconceivable.

Centrist Israelis like myself are convinced that no concession will bring us peace, because the issue isn't discovering the precise point on the map that will satisfy Arab claims but the Arab rejection of any place on the map for a Jewish state.