Here is an article by the journalist Khaled Diab, who is a member of our Federation.
I like his expression "non-geographical Israeli and Palestinian community governments":
"I am personally in favour of a single binational state made up of two non-geographical Israeli and Palestinian community governments which oversee the affairs of their peoples, and a joint federal government which manages common issues, such as trade, defence and foreign policy."
It expresses well my concept of non-territorial nation state, which sounds too abstract and technical.
Race against space
By Khaled Diab
Both time and space are running out for the two-state solution. If Israelis wish to preserve the Jewish identity of their state, they need to act now to create a Palestinian state.
The Jerusalem Post
Monday 25 July 2011
Perched on a scenic hilltop named ‘Mont de Joie’ (‘Mountain of Joy’) by the Crusaders for its commanding view of the Jerusalem they were about to conquer, Nabi Samwil’s 250 or so Palestinian inhabitants have little to feel joyous about. They are cut off, by Israeli settlements and the separation wall, from the rest of the West Bank, while the West Bank IDs they carry deprive them of access to Jerusalem, even though Israel considers their village to be within the municipal boundaries of the city.
“We’ve become like a tiny island,” describes Mohammed Barakat, a local lawyer, who lives with three branches of his family, i.e. 13 people, in a small house of about 120m2. “If a child needs a doctor, you have to embark on a very long journey to get to other nearby villages or Ramallah.”
As he speaks, Barakat, who was crippled in a car crash in Amman, is sitting on his bed working on his computer, one of the few connections he has with the outside world. In addition to being a key advocate of the villagers’ rights, Barakat runs an NGO appropriately called, given the confinement of his village, Disabled without Borders.
One practical problem associated with their imposed isolation is getting relatives and friends from other parts of the West Bank into the village. Mohammed’s brother, Rebhi, who is a member of the village council, is somewhat anxious about a local wedding that is due to take place later in the week.
“The Israeli civilian administration insists on knowing the names of everyone who is coming,” he complains. “But you can never know who exactly is coming because each person you invite usually brings along their family and friends.”
The villagers’ woes don’t end there. Owing to draconian Israeli building restrictions, the bride and groom, like many other young people, are forced to abandon the village in search of housing elsewhere. Villagers report that only two houses have been built since Israel took over control in 1967, while numerous homes were demolished near the mosque and the tomb that is believed by some, despite the absence of archaeological or biblical evidence, to house the prophet Samuel.
One of the sad consequences of this inability to build which I witnessed is that some two dozen children have to squeeze into the village’s tiny one-room school, which will soon lack a properly functioning toilet because the one they built has a demolition order on it.
Isolated as Nabi Samwil is, it is not an isolated case – demolitions and displacements are a daily fact of life. This is clearly illustrated in a new report by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) which is due out on 21 July. Entitled Forced Out, the sobering document focuses on displaced communities in Area C, more than three-fifths of the West Bank over which Israel retains full civil and security control under the Oslo Accords.
It documents how local communities – faced with restrictions on their movement, a freeze on building and settler violence and intimidation – are facing severe housing shortages, with many moving to Areas A and B as a result. Among the hardest hit are farming and Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley, some of whom have even resorted to building concrete structures inside their tents to conceal them from the army.
“While the intent behind the various policies applied by Israel to Area C is unclear, their effect is to make it impossible for many Palestinian communities to develop,” says UN Humanitarian Coordinator Maxwell Gaylard who expresses “concerns about demographic shifts and changes to the ethnic make-up of Area C”.
Although Israel’s intentions are indeed unclear, the fact that a sharp increase in demolitions and evictions has taken place this year seems to suggest a bid to “create realities on the ground” before the Palestinian leadership gets a chance to go to the UN to seek recognition for an independent Palestine. OCHA’s records show that over 1,100 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced so far in 2011 in Area C and East Jerusalem.
Area C, which has experienced a massive upsurge in settlement building since the signing of the Oslo Accords, is currently home to twice as many Israeli settlers as Palestinians (300,000 as opposed to 150,000). Nevertheless, it possesses the majority of Palestinian agricultural and grazing land and is the only contiguous territory in the West Bank, which was foreseen to provide, under the ‘land for peace’ formula, the bulk of the space upon which a future Palestinian state would be established.
However, with 70% of Area C currently set aside for settlements or the IDF, there is little room left for the two-state solution. This might partly explain why the Palestinian leadership, caught as it is in a race against space, has desperately resorted to the UN path, despite its slim chances of success.
But it is not just Palestinians who should be worried about the changing reality of Area C and East Jerusalem, ordinary Israelis should be, too. If current policies remain unchecked, most of the Palestinian population will soon be living in a series of disconnected islands that will be impossible to join up into a coherent territory, leading to a de facto single Israeli-Palestinian state.
Once they realise that their dream of an independent state is dead, Palestinians are likely to start focusing their attention on demanding equal civil rights and Israeli citizenship. This will leave Israel with a dilemma: either live up to its democratic credentials and grant Palestinians full rights and dilute the country’s prized Jewish identity, or continue an unsustainable and increasingly oppressive occupation, with all the disenfranchisement it involves, to hold on to this Jewishness.
I am personally in favour of a single binational state made up of two non-geographical Israeli and Palestinian community governments which oversee the affairs of their peoples, and a joint federal government which manages common issues, such as trade, defense and foreign policy.
Although a growing minority of Israelis supports this vision, most favour a state with a clearly Jewish identity which, by implication, makes them supporters of an independent Palestine on the pre-1967 borders. However, the current government, which holds the land to be holier than its people, is unlikely to take any meaningful steps to achieve the two-state vision.
This leaves it up to ordinary Israelis to bring pressure to bear on the government to act now or risk forever holding back peace. Last Friday, some 4,500 protesters, mostly Israelis, marched through East Jerusalem to voice their support for an independent Palestine. The time has come for hundreds of thousands more to join them.
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Showing posts with label Palestine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palestine. Show all posts
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
An Israeli leftist finds glimmer of hope
An Israeli leftist finds glimmer of hope - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
I had the occasion to meet former Knesset member dr. Einat Wilf and professor Mohammed S. Dajani, and have great respect for both. Einat Wilf has a doctorate in Political Sciences, Mohammed Dajani is the founder of Wasatia, a moderate Islamic movement.
Can this common declaration, written by Einat Wilf and Mohammed Dajani, unite Israelis and Palestinians around the divisive issue of Israel as a Jewish state and Palestine as the Palestinian people's homeland?
"The Jewish people around the world and Palestinian people around the world are both indigenous to the Land of Israel/Palestine and therefore have an equal and legitimate right to settle and live anywhere in the Land of Israel/Palestine, but given the desire of both peoples to a sovereign state that would reflect their unique culture and history, we believe in sharing the land between a Jewish state, Israel, and an Arab state, Palestine, that would allow them each to enjoy dignity and sovereignty in their own national home. Neither Israel nor Palestine should be exclusively for the Jewish and Palestinian people respectively and both should accommodate minorities of the other people.
Who else will join us in our journey to find true partners on both sides?"
How can we guaranty the sustainability and safety of the sharing of the Land of Israel/Palestine between two nation states, a Jewish state, Israel, and an Arab state, Palestine, in a sharing allowing everyone to settle and live anywhere in this land? How are we going to prevent religious or nationalist extremists from both side to torpedo any such agreement?
The fact that Prof. Dajani asked to change the word "partition", used by Mrs. Wilf, to "sharing" is very significant in this perspective.
In my view, the solution is to include those two states into a federation, the only sovereign onto the undivided land, having one federal army and Jerusalem as united federal capital. I don't see another possibility.
We propose to get out of the usual partition rationality and try another, a sharing rationality:
This land belongs to God and shouldn't be divided. It should be shared.
Neither Jews nor Arabs should have sovereignty: our common Creator alone is the Sovereign, we can only be independent and free from each other under His supranational rule of Law and Justice. This religious ideal has to be politically translated into the rule of a supranational and secular Federation of the two peoples.
I wouldn't justify the right of either of both peoples to self-determination in this Land by indigeneity:
- the ancestors of many Palestinians, may be most of them, came from diverse regions of the Ottoman Empire when no political borders existed inside the Middle-East.
- the ancestors of most Israeli Jews emigrate from abroad, and none can prove his descent from the Jews of 2000 years ago...
The point is that as Nations, both Jews and Palestinian Arabs don't conceive of any other homeland than this Land of Israel-Palestine. This is the way we both define ourselves. We have to reciprocally recognize this fact, despite its apparent subjectivity, because it is a political and historical fact.
For Wilf, only this recognition by Palestinians will allow a real peace. The problem is that if we wait for Palestinians to understand Jewish identity and Zionism, we might wait for a long time.
The federal model we propose is based on a covenant between the two peoples themselves, and not between states; the constitutional democracy neutralizes the demographic problem. It means that the political frame really embodies the mutual recognition of the peoples and their right to live on the Land of Israel-Palestine.
It can be hoped that this federal frame and the fruit of civil peace will influence individuals to progressively understand the point of view of the other side, but we don't need to wait and reach this stage in order to create the Federation of Israel-Palestine.
Here is the article by Einat Wilf. Emphasis is mine:
An Israeli leftist finds glimmer of hope
I was born into the Israeli left. I grew up in the left. I was always a member of the left. I believed that the day that the Palestinians would have their own sovereign state would be the day when Israel would finally live in peace. But like many Israelis of the left, I lost this certainty I once had.
Why? Over the last 14 years, I have witnessed the inability of the Palestinians to utter the word "yes" when presented with repeated opportunities to attain sovereignty and statehood; I have lived through the bloody massacres by means of suicide bombings in cities within pre-1967 Israel following the Oslo Accords and then again after the failed Camp David negotiations in 2000; and I have experienced firsthand the increasing venom of anti-Israel rhetoric that only, very thinly, masks a deep and visceral hatred for the state and its people that cannot be explained by mere criticism for the policies of some of its elected governments.
But one of the most pronounced moments over the past several years that has made me very skeptical toward the left were a series of meetings I had with young, moderate Palestinian leaders to which I was invited by virtue of being a member of Israel's Labor Party.
I had much in common with these young Palestinian leaders. We could relate to each other. However, through discussion, I soon discovered that the moderation of the young Palestinian leaders was in their acknowledgement that Israel is already a reality and therefore is not likely to disappear. I even heard phrases such as, "You were born here and you are already here, so we will not send you away." (Thank you very much, I thought). But, what shocked and changed my approach to peace was that when we discussed the deep sources of the conflict between us, I was told, "Judaism is not a nationality, it's only a religion and religions don't have the right to self-determination." The historic connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel was also described as made-up or nonexistent.
Reflecting on the comments of these "moderates," I was forced to realize that the conflict is far deeper and more serious than I allowed myself to believe. It was not just about settlements and "occupation," as Palestinian spokespeople have led the Israeli left to believe. I realized that the Palestinians, who were willing to accept the need for peace with Israel, did so because Israel was strong. I realized that, contrary to the leftist views in Israel, which support the establishment of a Palestinian state because the Palestinians have a right (repeat: right) to sovereignty in their homeland, there is no such parallel Palestinian "left" that recognizes the right (repeat: right) of the Jewish people to sovereignty in its ancient homeland.
These did not remain personal reflections. For the following years, these conversations impacted my political career as I found myself within the Labor Party increasingly alienated from what I began to term as the "self-flagellating left," to which the conflict was entirely due to Israel's actions and which demanded no responsibility or recognition from the Palestinians. As a member of the Knesset, on behalf of the Labor Party, I helped carry out a split within the party between its dovish and hawkish wing in order to allow the hawkish wing headed by then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak to remain in the coalition with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This realization has also motivated my continued work around the world to defend Israel and Zionism, insisting that all peace must be rooted in the mutual recognition of the equal right of both peoples to the land.
So, it was somewhat ironic when, just several months ago, I received an email from the Israeli-Palestinian meeting's organizer to write a response to one of the program's core funders as to whether the program had an "impact on anything or anybody." I was asked to "reflect back a few years" and to write whether the program "had any impact on you — personally, professionally, socially, politically … " Naturally, I responded. I wrote that the program had a "tremendous impact on my thinking and I continue to discuss it to this day in my talks and lectures." I shared the above story with the organizer, recognizing that "it is probably not a perspective you want to share with your funders."
In response, the organizer sent me an email saying that there are "many, not one, grass-roots and political Palestinians who truly believe that Jews have a right to part of the land." I responded enthusiastically that meeting even "one Palestinian who believes that the Jewish people have an equal and legitimate claim to the land would be huge for me," and that "I've been looking for someone like that ever since I participated in the program many years ago."
Shortly thereafter, I received the following quote from a Palestinian participant who expressed a desire to renew the program so that "we can reach a resolution to this conflict by having an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as it's capital living in peace side-by-side with the State of Israel." I responded, "I do not see that this individual writes that he recognizes the equal and legitimate right of the Jewish people to a sovereign state in their own homeland." I was then asked to write precisely what would convince me that we have a true partner for peace in the Palestinians. So, I drafted the following phrase:
"The Jewish people and Palestinian people are both indigenous to the Land of Israel/Palestine and therefore have an equal and legitimate claim to a sovereign state for their people on the land." I added that this sentence could be expanded to say, "Both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people around the world have an equal and legitimate claim to settle and live anywhere in the Land of Israel/Palestine, but given the desire of both peoples to a sovereign state that would reflect their unique culture and history, we believe in partitioning the land into a Jewish state, Israel, and an Arab state, Palestine, that would allow them each to enjoy dignity and sovereignty in their own national home." I would also add here that it should be clear that neither Israel nor Palestine should be exclusively for the Jewish and Palestinian people respectively and both should accommodate minorities of the other people.
The organizer promised to get back to me. Weeks and months passed, and I was about to publish this piece, opening up the conversation, hoping to find partners who share my belief, so that I could rekindle my hope that peace is possible. At the last minute, I was contacted by professor Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi, the head of American Studies at Al-Quds University and founder of the Palestinian centrist movement, Wasatia. All he asked was to change the word "claim" to "right," and "partition" to "sharing," saying that "right" was more positive, and "partitioning" had in the deep psyche of the Palestinians the negative connotation of the 1947 UN partition plan recommendation. He emphasized that 67 years later, he hopes that Palestinians would realize that sharing the land by a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, as envisioned by the UN resolution, was "the right thing to do" in 1947, since both people do have a legitimate right to the land, and remains "the right thing to do" today. I found these changes wholly acceptable and welcome. So the statement we share now reads as follows:
"The Jewish people around the world and Palestinian people around the world are both indigenous to the Land of Israel/Palestine and therefore have an equal and legitimate right to settle and live anywhere in the Land of Israel/Palestine, but given the desire of both peoples to a sovereign state that would reflect their unique culture and history, we believe in sharing the land between a Jewish state, Israel, and an Arab state, Palestine, that would allow them each to enjoy dignity and sovereignty in their own national home. Neither Israel nor Palestine should be exclusively for the Jewish and Palestinian people respectively and both should accommodate minorities of the other people."
Who else will join us in our journey to find true partners on both sides?
I had the occasion to meet former Knesset member dr. Einat Wilf and professor Mohammed S. Dajani, and have great respect for both. Einat Wilf has a doctorate in Political Sciences, Mohammed Dajani is the founder of Wasatia, a moderate Islamic movement.
Can this common declaration, written by Einat Wilf and Mohammed Dajani, unite Israelis and Palestinians around the divisive issue of Israel as a Jewish state and Palestine as the Palestinian people's homeland?
"The Jewish people around the world and Palestinian people around the world are both indigenous to the Land of Israel/Palestine and therefore have an equal and legitimate right to settle and live anywhere in the Land of Israel/Palestine, but given the desire of both peoples to a sovereign state that would reflect their unique culture and history, we believe in sharing the land between a Jewish state, Israel, and an Arab state, Palestine, that would allow them each to enjoy dignity and sovereignty in their own national home. Neither Israel nor Palestine should be exclusively for the Jewish and Palestinian people respectively and both should accommodate minorities of the other people.
Who else will join us in our journey to find true partners on both sides?"
How can we guaranty the sustainability and safety of the sharing of the Land of Israel/Palestine between two nation states, a Jewish state, Israel, and an Arab state, Palestine, in a sharing allowing everyone to settle and live anywhere in this land? How are we going to prevent religious or nationalist extremists from both side to torpedo any such agreement?
The fact that Prof. Dajani asked to change the word "partition", used by Mrs. Wilf, to "sharing" is very significant in this perspective.
In my view, the solution is to include those two states into a federation, the only sovereign onto the undivided land, having one federal army and Jerusalem as united federal capital. I don't see another possibility.
We propose to get out of the usual partition rationality and try another, a sharing rationality:
This land belongs to God and shouldn't be divided. It should be shared.
Neither Jews nor Arabs should have sovereignty: our common Creator alone is the Sovereign, we can only be independent and free from each other under His supranational rule of Law and Justice. This religious ideal has to be politically translated into the rule of a supranational and secular Federation of the two peoples.
I wouldn't justify the right of either of both peoples to self-determination in this Land by indigeneity:
- the ancestors of many Palestinians, may be most of them, came from diverse regions of the Ottoman Empire when no political borders existed inside the Middle-East.
- the ancestors of most Israeli Jews emigrate from abroad, and none can prove his descent from the Jews of 2000 years ago...
The point is that as Nations, both Jews and Palestinian Arabs don't conceive of any other homeland than this Land of Israel-Palestine. This is the way we both define ourselves. We have to reciprocally recognize this fact, despite its apparent subjectivity, because it is a political and historical fact.
For Wilf, only this recognition by Palestinians will allow a real peace. The problem is that if we wait for Palestinians to understand Jewish identity and Zionism, we might wait for a long time.
The federal model we propose is based on a covenant between the two peoples themselves, and not between states; the constitutional democracy neutralizes the demographic problem. It means that the political frame really embodies the mutual recognition of the peoples and their right to live on the Land of Israel-Palestine.
It can be hoped that this federal frame and the fruit of civil peace will influence individuals to progressively understand the point of view of the other side, but we don't need to wait and reach this stage in order to create the Federation of Israel-Palestine.
Here is the article by Einat Wilf. Emphasis is mine:
An Israeli leftist finds glimmer of hope
I was born into the Israeli left. I grew up in the left. I was always a member of the left. I believed that the day that the Palestinians would have their own sovereign state would be the day when Israel would finally live in peace. But like many Israelis of the left, I lost this certainty I once had.
Why? Over the last 14 years, I have witnessed the inability of the Palestinians to utter the word "yes" when presented with repeated opportunities to attain sovereignty and statehood; I have lived through the bloody massacres by means of suicide bombings in cities within pre-1967 Israel following the Oslo Accords and then again after the failed Camp David negotiations in 2000; and I have experienced firsthand the increasing venom of anti-Israel rhetoric that only, very thinly, masks a deep and visceral hatred for the state and its people that cannot be explained by mere criticism for the policies of some of its elected governments.
But one of the most pronounced moments over the past several years that has made me very skeptical toward the left were a series of meetings I had with young, moderate Palestinian leaders to which I was invited by virtue of being a member of Israel's Labor Party.
I had much in common with these young Palestinian leaders. We could relate to each other. However, through discussion, I soon discovered that the moderation of the young Palestinian leaders was in their acknowledgement that Israel is already a reality and therefore is not likely to disappear. I even heard phrases such as, "You were born here and you are already here, so we will not send you away." (Thank you very much, I thought). But, what shocked and changed my approach to peace was that when we discussed the deep sources of the conflict between us, I was told, "Judaism is not a nationality, it's only a religion and religions don't have the right to self-determination." The historic connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel was also described as made-up or nonexistent.
Reflecting on the comments of these "moderates," I was forced to realize that the conflict is far deeper and more serious than I allowed myself to believe. It was not just about settlements and "occupation," as Palestinian spokespeople have led the Israeli left to believe. I realized that the Palestinians, who were willing to accept the need for peace with Israel, did so because Israel was strong. I realized that, contrary to the leftist views in Israel, which support the establishment of a Palestinian state because the Palestinians have a right (repeat: right) to sovereignty in their homeland, there is no such parallel Palestinian "left" that recognizes the right (repeat: right) of the Jewish people to sovereignty in its ancient homeland.
These did not remain personal reflections. For the following years, these conversations impacted my political career as I found myself within the Labor Party increasingly alienated from what I began to term as the "self-flagellating left," to which the conflict was entirely due to Israel's actions and which demanded no responsibility or recognition from the Palestinians. As a member of the Knesset, on behalf of the Labor Party, I helped carry out a split within the party between its dovish and hawkish wing in order to allow the hawkish wing headed by then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak to remain in the coalition with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This realization has also motivated my continued work around the world to defend Israel and Zionism, insisting that all peace must be rooted in the mutual recognition of the equal right of both peoples to the land.
So, it was somewhat ironic when, just several months ago, I received an email from the Israeli-Palestinian meeting's organizer to write a response to one of the program's core funders as to whether the program had an "impact on anything or anybody." I was asked to "reflect back a few years" and to write whether the program "had any impact on you — personally, professionally, socially, politically … " Naturally, I responded. I wrote that the program had a "tremendous impact on my thinking and I continue to discuss it to this day in my talks and lectures." I shared the above story with the organizer, recognizing that "it is probably not a perspective you want to share with your funders."
In response, the organizer sent me an email saying that there are "many, not one, grass-roots and political Palestinians who truly believe that Jews have a right to part of the land." I responded enthusiastically that meeting even "one Palestinian who believes that the Jewish people have an equal and legitimate claim to the land would be huge for me," and that "I've been looking for someone like that ever since I participated in the program many years ago."
Shortly thereafter, I received the following quote from a Palestinian participant who expressed a desire to renew the program so that "we can reach a resolution to this conflict by having an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as it's capital living in peace side-by-side with the State of Israel." I responded, "I do not see that this individual writes that he recognizes the equal and legitimate right of the Jewish people to a sovereign state in their own homeland." I was then asked to write precisely what would convince me that we have a true partner for peace in the Palestinians. So, I drafted the following phrase:
"The Jewish people and Palestinian people are both indigenous to the Land of Israel/Palestine and therefore have an equal and legitimate claim to a sovereign state for their people on the land." I added that this sentence could be expanded to say, "Both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people around the world have an equal and legitimate claim to settle and live anywhere in the Land of Israel/Palestine, but given the desire of both peoples to a sovereign state that would reflect their unique culture and history, we believe in partitioning the land into a Jewish state, Israel, and an Arab state, Palestine, that would allow them each to enjoy dignity and sovereignty in their own national home." I would also add here that it should be clear that neither Israel nor Palestine should be exclusively for the Jewish and Palestinian people respectively and both should accommodate minorities of the other people.
The organizer promised to get back to me. Weeks and months passed, and I was about to publish this piece, opening up the conversation, hoping to find partners who share my belief, so that I could rekindle my hope that peace is possible. At the last minute, I was contacted by professor Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi, the head of American Studies at Al-Quds University and founder of the Palestinian centrist movement, Wasatia. All he asked was to change the word "claim" to "right," and "partition" to "sharing," saying that "right" was more positive, and "partitioning" had in the deep psyche of the Palestinians the negative connotation of the 1947 UN partition plan recommendation. He emphasized that 67 years later, he hopes that Palestinians would realize that sharing the land by a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, as envisioned by the UN resolution, was "the right thing to do" in 1947, since both people do have a legitimate right to the land, and remains "the right thing to do" today. I found these changes wholly acceptable and welcome. So the statement we share now reads as follows:
"The Jewish people around the world and Palestinian people around the world are both indigenous to the Land of Israel/Palestine and therefore have an equal and legitimate right to settle and live anywhere in the Land of Israel/Palestine, but given the desire of both peoples to a sovereign state that would reflect their unique culture and history, we believe in sharing the land between a Jewish state, Israel, and an Arab state, Palestine, that would allow them each to enjoy dignity and sovereignty in their own national home. Neither Israel nor Palestine should be exclusively for the Jewish and Palestinian people respectively and both should accommodate minorities of the other people."
Who else will join us in our journey to find true partners on both sides?
Monday, April 1, 2013
Oslo is dead, what's next?
The right of Alyah for Jews should be stressed in the same strength as the Right of Return is for Palestinians, and not only left as a possibility in situations of danger according to UN decisions.
This is the right direction though, the only hope of freedom from insecurity and military control for the peoples of Israel-Palestine:
Oslo is dead, what's next?
By Avraham Burg | Mar.29, 2013
This fall will mark 20 years since the Oslo Accords were signed. The euphoria and the hope that accompanied the birth of the peace process gave way to bloodshed, cynicism and boundless despair, anger and fear.
We've reached a crossroads of decisions. We could continue with the same negative feelings for years to come - more humiliation and scorn, more revenge and hatred. We can wait for new cycles of suspicion, arrogance and disregard. We've become used to it all.
However, things could be different.
For both Israelis and Palestinians to get on the right path, we have to go back and honestly discern what went wrong in the previous attempt. It's easy to pin the blame on obvious external factors such as the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Palestinian leadership, George Bush's term in office, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu and the repercussions of the Twin Towers attack. But the truth also lies in harder to reach places: One is political; the other goes far beyond politics.
On the political front, every one of us, Israelis and Palestinians, did not do enough, if at all, to rein in the peace-destroying mechanisms within us. The Israelis signed a peace accord and didn't stop the occupation enterprise via the settlements for one moment. Israel never understood Palestinian sensitivities to the Zionist movement's greatest colonial undertaking. The Palestinians' expectation was, and remains, that in exchange for the great concession of the majority of their homeland, the erosion and creeping annexation of the little that remains would come to a halt. The Palestinians didn't understand Israeli sensitivities to the continued culture of incitement and violence that emanated from the mosques and was expressed horrifically in terror attacks.
The clash between the settlements and the incitement was unavoidable. When it happened, every structure collapsed. And the result? Oslo has been dead for years; they just forgot to inform the nations and their leaders.
The Oslo Accords were not born to live forever. They were just temporary scaffolding, meant to restructure reality, from occupation and control to partnership among equals. However, the absence of a Palestinian state that can sit at the negotiation table as an equal to the state of Israel created trouble for the unequal process. The Palestinian state was the ultimate decree that Israel, in its fear, never wanted to allow. The Palestinians, for their part, were never prepared to give up, and rightly so.
Meanwhile, current events don't wait for us. New realities now clash: The Palestinian state is an accomplished international fact. The Palestinian statesmen, by turning to the United Nations, revived the formula of two states for two peoples for the foreseeable future, while opponents of the two-state approach want to skip the stage of separating the communities and go straight to one, bi-national state. Some of the latter are positive voices, believing we can live together. Other voices, on both sides, which are stronger, are negative, violent and radical. They dream of one state in which one nation will dominate the other.
To return to the path of dialogue, reconciliation and peace, we, and everyone in our communities must bravely stand against those who are trying - both in Israel and Palestine - to kill the thirst for peace through violence and by sowing fear.
I believe the time has come to explore new paradigms that will save us from the enormous price of more humiliation and arrogance, occupation and violence.
Twenty years after Oslo, 45 years after Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 64 years after the establishment of Israel and the Palestinian Nakba, we have reached a dead end in which there is no freedom for the Palestinian nation and no security for Israelis. We have grown no closer to a just and viable solution of two states for two peoples. We all live under one, discriminatory, Israeli regime. Moreover, many of us lost hope and are no longer able to imagine a just solution for the foreseeable future.
In an effort to pave a new way toward a historic reconciliation and a true political engagement between the nations, we must abandon the perception of the current solution based on multiple layers of separation, isolation and structural discrimination. We must replace it with completely different principles and methods.
We, an international group of Israelis and Palestinians, some from here and others from the Diaspora, have met over the past two years through the Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue, and we have reached the conclusion that a joint dialogue and understanding is both possible and essential.
These principles have no intention of offering practical and detailed solutions, rather they intend to lay totally different foundations for a fair and viable Jewish Israeli-Palestinian partnership.
Our starting point is based on the belief that the fate of both nations is inextricably tied together; that Israeli Jews and Palestinians are part of the Middle East; and also that neither of them is entitled to privileges or exclusive sovereignty over the entire territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
For this purpose:
- Every person living (or possessing residence status) between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will be guaranteed equal personal, political, economic and social rights. These rights include: defense and security; receiving equal treatment free of discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity or religion; freedom of movement; ownership and possession of property; legal access; and election and being elected.
- The collective rights of Jewish Israelis and Palestinians - linguistic, cultural, religious and political - will be guaranteed in every political framework. It is understood that neither side will have exclusive sovereignty on the entire land area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea (including exclusive ownership of land, exclusive access to natural resources, etc.).
- All exclusive privileges currently accorded to Israeli Jews will be canceled, among them: land ownership and access to natural resources. All the resources - material and political - will be redistributed on the basis of principles of restorative justice.
- Recognizing the Palestinian right of return as expressed in UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Implementing this decision will take into account the current reality. A lack of moral and political justice of the expulsion of Palestinians in the past won't be corrected by creating new injustices.
- The new political institutions will enact democratic immigration laws for regulating citizenship. At the same time, Jews and Palestinians living in the Diaspora will enjoy immunity in situations of danger (according to UN decisions). They will have a special status in the citizenship process relative to all other ethnic and national groups.
Like many, I believe with all my heart that mutual recognition based on these principles can bring forth an alternative political reality in which memories of exile and expulsions will turn into a comprehensive implementation of rights, citizenship and belonging. Loss will turn into life and despair will turn into hope.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Toward confederation
Interesting article by a Professor of Political Science.
In his confederation, Palestine is supposedly sovereign but have no army.
No solution for borders and sharing of Jerusalem...
He does not explain either why "A federation called The United States of Israel and Palestine is not much better" than a unitary state.
A confederal treaty not mentioning Jerusalem, borders and refugees could be a first step, but it will have to evolve into a true supranational federation: like Europe, made too of different nation-states.
Emphasis is mine.
Toward confederation
By RONALD TIERSKY
08/05/2012
Palestinians know approximately what they will have to accept. Finding the least bad solution consonant with defeat is their unenviable task.
Israel’s strategic problem in historical terms is, ultimately, how to win a war well. The Palestinian problem is to avoid losing this war in the most drawn-out, worst possible way.
Palestinians (including any realistic Hamas leaders), know approximately what they will have to accept. Finding the least bad solution consonant with defeat is their unenviable task. Yet neither is Israel completely free, because victory can be dangerous. Israel needs a strategy that isn’t in the end self-defeating.
Realistically, the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma is this: In what circumstances could the strong safely show magnanimity and the weak believe they are getting an acceptable result? Intractable conflicts can sometimes be unblocked by enlarging the problem, by increasing the number of players, stakes and potential rewards.
All the “one-state” solutions – whether bi-national or a federation – are non-starters because Israeli Jews rightly refuse to sacrifice their own interest in a grand gesture of philanthropy.
Majorities in Israeli and Palestinian public opinion would doubtless accept a simple two-state solution if leaders agreed on it. Israel’s current government, however, seems not really interested whatever lip-service it is given from time to time. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s “economic peace” formula in effect replaces the creation of a Palestinian state with Israeli-sponsored economic development in the West Bank combined with an oppressive, volatile political status quo.
A way forward is to find a larger formula that increases the rewards and reduces costs for Israelis and Palestinians, and involves outside states as guarantors. Complexity and flexibility in this case are advantages. What is necessary is an institutional structure that limits to a minimum the binding links for Israel and at the same time provides time and space for Palestinian self-government and proof of competence to evolve, including stopping the violence on both sides.
A minimal, complex and flexible Israeli-Palestinian confederation, here meaning a two-state solution within the confines of a larger confederation, is a promising alternative.
Two sovereign states wrapped in a semi-state, a less-than-a-state.
Confederation – political and economic – could provide what Israelis and Palestinians, and outside powers, want most: guaranteed mutual security of the two states, reliable peace in the region, diminished capacity for Islamist terrorist groups to use the conflict as a pretext, and economic and social progress.
What is a confederation, how does it differ from a one-state solution, and what would be its international legal basis? A confederation differs from a binational single state and also from a federation of two states.
Some states are unitary, ruled entirely from the national capital (France). Others are federations in which power is shared in some balance between a national government and the states that compose it (the US, Germany). A few are confederations (Switzerland is a modern example).
Unique in world political development, the European Union is extremely complex: a hybrid combination of historical nation-states and national capitals with European-level institutions located in Brussels and elsewhere.
EU institutions are in part confederal (EU summit meetings in various cities), part federal (the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the European Central Bank in Frankfurt) and part strict national sovereignty (major foreign policy decisions, above all decisions for war or peace in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya).
In the EU, complexity is often a curse but it does provide benefits as well, for example deflecting conflict into ambiguity and permitting the whole to survive even as one part falls into crisis (cf. the current Eurozone debt mess).
The EU is of particular relevance here because, although not wellknown, in international legal terms the entire EU is still a treaty organization (Maastricht) because a proposed constitution for it didn’t achieve ratification in 2005.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because it is also unique, requires a particularly imaginative legal and institutional structure.
Why not one state or two states? In the Holy Land a unitary state called Israel-Palestine makes no historical or political sense. A federation called The United States of Israel and Palestine is not much better.
What of a confederation? Normally a confederation means a constitution, weak but nonetheless more than a treaty. Sovereignty rests with the composing states.
(The American Articles of Confederation before 1789 are an example.) But if a Holy Land confederation is based on a treaty rather than a constitution, Israel’s national constitution and sovereignty are always superior (as would be true also for a Palestinian state). A treaty in this case would be more durable than a constitution.
A treaty is usually made for a specified period of years and renewed (NATO is an example). A constitution, however, is implicitly permanent.
If the situation on the ground goes sufficiently bad, a treaty can perfectly well be renounced (cf. current concerns about Egyptian repudiation of the peace treaty with Israel.) What would happen in practice as politics in the confederation? For example, there would be no common elections or governments.
Israeli and Palestinian parliaments might meet jointly once or twice a year for a few days, to get to know each other and create common culture more than to legislate. Existing Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation could be given formal legal status in the treaty. Once or twice yearly summit meetings of top national leaders could be mandated along with more frequent councils of ministers in a particular policy area, say agriculture (as in the EU).
In short, a treaty-based confederation sidesteps the entire zero-sum one-state two-state drama.
For Israel, in particular, confederation deals with intractable issues of Palestinian political sovereignty.
Creating a Palestinian state within a confederation would not increase but actually diminish threats to Israel’s security. Having their own state, Palestinian obsession with Israel, the ideological passion about sovereignty, borders and revenge, would shift to ambitions for more prosperous lives with individual dignity. Gaza, now such a special case, could join the Palestinian state immediately combined with the West Bank. If, however, Palestinian unity were impossible, Gaza could evolve over time one way or another.
For Palestinians, entrepreneurial energy and private sector business development would stimulate the growth of a more complex civil society connected to the wider world. A Palestinian state that issues internationally recognized passports permitting its citizens to freely visit the world would change the mind-set of young and old generations alike.
Speculating even further ahead, the confederation could encompass not just Israel and Palestine but, sooner or later, Jordan as well. Stimulating Jordanian economic and social development is a good in itself. Security across the entire confederation could be guaranteed by a combination of sovereign Israeli military and police forces, a Palestinian internal police force, a Jordanian participation, and overlapping security guarantees in the form of international boots on the ground: the US, UN and NATO (including Turkey). Jordanian domestic political reform would be de-dramatized.
A more cosmopolitan Israel can afford to deal differently with the Palestinians, who have by now suffered and been punished enough for disastrous policies of the past.
Israel would win its war well if a Palestinian state were created not against Israel’s will but sponsored and even mentored by Israel.
Inevitably, new international esteem would follow. The high cards are in Israeli hands.
The writer is the Eastman Professor of Political Science at Amherst College.
In his confederation, Palestine is supposedly sovereign but have no army.
No solution for borders and sharing of Jerusalem...
He does not explain either why "A federation called The United States of Israel and Palestine is not much better" than a unitary state.
A confederal treaty not mentioning Jerusalem, borders and refugees could be a first step, but it will have to evolve into a true supranational federation: like Europe, made too of different nation-states.
Emphasis is mine.
Toward confederation
By RONALD TIERSKY
08/05/2012
Palestinians know approximately what they will have to accept. Finding the least bad solution consonant with defeat is their unenviable task.
Israel’s strategic problem in historical terms is, ultimately, how to win a war well. The Palestinian problem is to avoid losing this war in the most drawn-out, worst possible way.
Palestinians (including any realistic Hamas leaders), know approximately what they will have to accept. Finding the least bad solution consonant with defeat is their unenviable task. Yet neither is Israel completely free, because victory can be dangerous. Israel needs a strategy that isn’t in the end self-defeating.
Realistically, the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma is this: In what circumstances could the strong safely show magnanimity and the weak believe they are getting an acceptable result? Intractable conflicts can sometimes be unblocked by enlarging the problem, by increasing the number of players, stakes and potential rewards.
All the “one-state” solutions – whether bi-national or a federation – are non-starters because Israeli Jews rightly refuse to sacrifice their own interest in a grand gesture of philanthropy.
Majorities in Israeli and Palestinian public opinion would doubtless accept a simple two-state solution if leaders agreed on it. Israel’s current government, however, seems not really interested whatever lip-service it is given from time to time. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s “economic peace” formula in effect replaces the creation of a Palestinian state with Israeli-sponsored economic development in the West Bank combined with an oppressive, volatile political status quo.
A way forward is to find a larger formula that increases the rewards and reduces costs for Israelis and Palestinians, and involves outside states as guarantors. Complexity and flexibility in this case are advantages. What is necessary is an institutional structure that limits to a minimum the binding links for Israel and at the same time provides time and space for Palestinian self-government and proof of competence to evolve, including stopping the violence on both sides.
A minimal, complex and flexible Israeli-Palestinian confederation, here meaning a two-state solution within the confines of a larger confederation, is a promising alternative.
Two sovereign states wrapped in a semi-state, a less-than-a-state.
Confederation – political and economic – could provide what Israelis and Palestinians, and outside powers, want most: guaranteed mutual security of the two states, reliable peace in the region, diminished capacity for Islamist terrorist groups to use the conflict as a pretext, and economic and social progress.
What is a confederation, how does it differ from a one-state solution, and what would be its international legal basis? A confederation differs from a binational single state and also from a federation of two states.
Some states are unitary, ruled entirely from the national capital (France). Others are federations in which power is shared in some balance between a national government and the states that compose it (the US, Germany). A few are confederations (Switzerland is a modern example).
Unique in world political development, the European Union is extremely complex: a hybrid combination of historical nation-states and national capitals with European-level institutions located in Brussels and elsewhere.
EU institutions are in part confederal (EU summit meetings in various cities), part federal (the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the European Central Bank in Frankfurt) and part strict national sovereignty (major foreign policy decisions, above all decisions for war or peace in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya).
In the EU, complexity is often a curse but it does provide benefits as well, for example deflecting conflict into ambiguity and permitting the whole to survive even as one part falls into crisis (cf. the current Eurozone debt mess).
The EU is of particular relevance here because, although not wellknown, in international legal terms the entire EU is still a treaty organization (Maastricht) because a proposed constitution for it didn’t achieve ratification in 2005.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because it is also unique, requires a particularly imaginative legal and institutional structure.
Why not one state or two states? In the Holy Land a unitary state called Israel-Palestine makes no historical or political sense. A federation called The United States of Israel and Palestine is not much better.
What of a confederation? Normally a confederation means a constitution, weak but nonetheless more than a treaty. Sovereignty rests with the composing states.
(The American Articles of Confederation before 1789 are an example.) But if a Holy Land confederation is based on a treaty rather than a constitution, Israel’s national constitution and sovereignty are always superior (as would be true also for a Palestinian state). A treaty in this case would be more durable than a constitution.
A treaty is usually made for a specified period of years and renewed (NATO is an example). A constitution, however, is implicitly permanent.
If the situation on the ground goes sufficiently bad, a treaty can perfectly well be renounced (cf. current concerns about Egyptian repudiation of the peace treaty with Israel.) What would happen in practice as politics in the confederation? For example, there would be no common elections or governments.
Israeli and Palestinian parliaments might meet jointly once or twice a year for a few days, to get to know each other and create common culture more than to legislate. Existing Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation could be given formal legal status in the treaty. Once or twice yearly summit meetings of top national leaders could be mandated along with more frequent councils of ministers in a particular policy area, say agriculture (as in the EU).
In short, a treaty-based confederation sidesteps the entire zero-sum one-state two-state drama.
For Israel, in particular, confederation deals with intractable issues of Palestinian political sovereignty.
Creating a Palestinian state within a confederation would not increase but actually diminish threats to Israel’s security. Having their own state, Palestinian obsession with Israel, the ideological passion about sovereignty, borders and revenge, would shift to ambitions for more prosperous lives with individual dignity. Gaza, now such a special case, could join the Palestinian state immediately combined with the West Bank. If, however, Palestinian unity were impossible, Gaza could evolve over time one way or another.
For Palestinians, entrepreneurial energy and private sector business development would stimulate the growth of a more complex civil society connected to the wider world. A Palestinian state that issues internationally recognized passports permitting its citizens to freely visit the world would change the mind-set of young and old generations alike.
Speculating even further ahead, the confederation could encompass not just Israel and Palestine but, sooner or later, Jordan as well. Stimulating Jordanian economic and social development is a good in itself. Security across the entire confederation could be guaranteed by a combination of sovereign Israeli military and police forces, a Palestinian internal police force, a Jordanian participation, and overlapping security guarantees in the form of international boots on the ground: the US, UN and NATO (including Turkey). Jordanian domestic political reform would be de-dramatized.
A more cosmopolitan Israel can afford to deal differently with the Palestinians, who have by now suffered and been punished enough for disastrous policies of the past.
Israel would win its war well if a Palestinian state were created not against Israel’s will but sponsored and even mentored by Israel.
Inevitably, new international esteem would follow. The high cards are in Israeli hands.
The writer is the Eastman Professor of Political Science at Amherst College.
A federated state for Israelis and Palestinians
Source: A federated state for Israelis and Palestinians
By JAY BUSHINSKY
03/05/2012
Emphasis is mine.
Source:
[...] If Netanyahu manages to forge a new coalition that would have the middle-of-the-road Kadima party as a major component and leaves the Jewish religious and nationalist extremists on the parliamentary sidelines, he may escape the pressure constantly bearing down on him from the West Bank settlers who constantly seek territorial acquisitions.
Theoretically, he could then launch a process that would require the dismantling of a substantial number of settlements and the removal of unauthorized outposts further to the east.
A proposed exchange of territory that might enable many of the settlements to remain intact already has public support from Kadima. Its newly elected leader, Shaul Mofaz, is on the record as favoring a deal of this kind. But the transfer of thousands of hard-line settlers from the West Bank to ante bellum Israel would be a daunting if not politically impossible task.
This apparent fact of life bears out the contention that the permission given by the incumbent government and several of its predecessors for 350,000 to 500,000 Jewish settlers to move into the West Bank was a major mistake.
The financial cost of relocating them would be prohibitive, not to mention the fury of the inevitable social backlash in ante bellum Israel that would be a by-product.
All of these considerations suggest that it would be wise for Netanyahu, his party and the electorate as a whole to consider seriously whether there indeed are alternatives to the seemingly inoperable two-state solution.
One of them may be the hitherto unthinkable one-state solution: Annexation of the West Bank and extension of Israeli citizenship to its Palestinian inhabitants on the basis of total equality and political freedom.
This notion has been resisted in the past by Orthodox religious politicians who fear that it would set the stage for intermarriages between Jews and Arabs. But where and when did such an esoteric issue like intermarriage form the basis of any country’s political program? That has not been the case in Ireland, Ceylon or Nigeria where rival ethnic or religious groups also are required to live under one political roof.
In the local case, the one-state solution would take the form of a federation made up of two entities – one primarily Jewish and the other primarily Arab (in demographic terms).
Each entity could have its own parliament and governmental administration.
The state as a whole could have a federal government which would be responsible primarily for national security (for the entire territory of the federated state) – foreign policy and economic affairs including a common currency for both entities (as already exists in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip). The federal government’s personnel and leadership would be drawn from the two entitities.
Ironically, annexation was originally proposed by the late Chaim Herzog when he served as the first military governor of the West Bank immediately after the Six Day War.
He was opposed then by the National Religious Party which was destined to spawn the ideological core of Gush Emunim and other Jewish settlement movements.
Its rationale then too was that annexation would foster intermarriage.
It all boils down to the likelihood that the prospective election will give Netanyahu a chance to implement domestic reforms, especially in the economic and social spheres.
These should include a more equitable distribution of private income so as to reduce or (preferably) eliminate the phenomenon of so-called “tycoons” lording it over the rest of the economy, and reduction of the cost of new or suitable housing so that young couples will be able to afford it and the deterioration of overcrowded neighborhoods can be stopped.
The winner (presumably Netanyahu) also might be in a better position to rehabilitate the tens of thousands of Africans who entered Israel illegally in the past five years, by integrating as many of them as possible and facilitating the emigration or deportation of those who cannot adjust to Israeli society to alternative destinations elsewhere in the world. These steps certainly are preferable to letting them converge on neglected urban areas, especially south Tel Aviv, and turning them into crime-infested slums.
The writer is a veteran foreign correspondent.
By JAY BUSHINSKY
03/05/2012
Emphasis is mine.
Source:
[...] If Netanyahu manages to forge a new coalition that would have the middle-of-the-road Kadima party as a major component and leaves the Jewish religious and nationalist extremists on the parliamentary sidelines, he may escape the pressure constantly bearing down on him from the West Bank settlers who constantly seek territorial acquisitions.
Theoretically, he could then launch a process that would require the dismantling of a substantial number of settlements and the removal of unauthorized outposts further to the east.
A proposed exchange of territory that might enable many of the settlements to remain intact already has public support from Kadima. Its newly elected leader, Shaul Mofaz, is on the record as favoring a deal of this kind. But the transfer of thousands of hard-line settlers from the West Bank to ante bellum Israel would be a daunting if not politically impossible task.
This apparent fact of life bears out the contention that the permission given by the incumbent government and several of its predecessors for 350,000 to 500,000 Jewish settlers to move into the West Bank was a major mistake.
The financial cost of relocating them would be prohibitive, not to mention the fury of the inevitable social backlash in ante bellum Israel that would be a by-product.
All of these considerations suggest that it would be wise for Netanyahu, his party and the electorate as a whole to consider seriously whether there indeed are alternatives to the seemingly inoperable two-state solution.
One of them may be the hitherto unthinkable one-state solution: Annexation of the West Bank and extension of Israeli citizenship to its Palestinian inhabitants on the basis of total equality and political freedom.
This notion has been resisted in the past by Orthodox religious politicians who fear that it would set the stage for intermarriages between Jews and Arabs. But where and when did such an esoteric issue like intermarriage form the basis of any country’s political program? That has not been the case in Ireland, Ceylon or Nigeria where rival ethnic or religious groups also are required to live under one political roof.
In the local case, the one-state solution would take the form of a federation made up of two entities – one primarily Jewish and the other primarily Arab (in demographic terms).
Each entity could have its own parliament and governmental administration.
The state as a whole could have a federal government which would be responsible primarily for national security (for the entire territory of the federated state) – foreign policy and economic affairs including a common currency for both entities (as already exists in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip). The federal government’s personnel and leadership would be drawn from the two entitities.
Ironically, annexation was originally proposed by the late Chaim Herzog when he served as the first military governor of the West Bank immediately after the Six Day War.
He was opposed then by the National Religious Party which was destined to spawn the ideological core of Gush Emunim and other Jewish settlement movements.
Its rationale then too was that annexation would foster intermarriage.
It all boils down to the likelihood that the prospective election will give Netanyahu a chance to implement domestic reforms, especially in the economic and social spheres.
These should include a more equitable distribution of private income so as to reduce or (preferably) eliminate the phenomenon of so-called “tycoons” lording it over the rest of the economy, and reduction of the cost of new or suitable housing so that young couples will be able to afford it and the deterioration of overcrowded neighborhoods can be stopped.
The winner (presumably Netanyahu) also might be in a better position to rehabilitate the tens of thousands of Africans who entered Israel illegally in the past five years, by integrating as many of them as possible and facilitating the emigration or deportation of those who cannot adjust to Israeli society to alternative destinations elsewhere in the world. These steps certainly are preferable to letting them converge on neglected urban areas, especially south Tel Aviv, and turning them into crime-infested slums.
The writer is a veteran foreign correspondent.
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