The Jewish state - the essence of peace

Follows an article by former Knesset member Einat Wilf I found very interesting, and an occasion to tell you about my own conceptions.

I liked this article, yet, I don't agree with her when she says that "Israel does not need Palestinian recognition in order to know what it is".
If Israel was really a Jewish state, recognizing Israel would be automatically a recognition of the Jewish state. Israel don't know what it is in fact: the state of all its population living in its territory, like all nation-states. Israel is meant to be the state of its nation, the Israeli nation, 'the Israeli people' or 'the people in Israel' as some say. The problem is that the Israeli nation is a pure fiction... We are two nations here, at least, a Jewish one and an Arab one.

I do not quite agree either  when she write that "Being the Jewish state simply means being the one place in the world where the Jewish people, as a people, are free and sovereign to interpret Jewish civilization and determine their own fate".
I would have written 'free and independent to interpret...' because the Jewish political conception says that the Creator, through His Law, is the sovereign, a supranational sovereign, Him and not its people, which He took out of the Egyptian slavery and turned immediately into His servitors.
The Children of Israel have not been 'sovereign' one second. Free, and independent of other peoples, yes, but still under the rule of the transcendent Law.

I have another reservation: "Being the Jewish state simply means being the one place in the world...", a Jewish state is not a place, it is not defined by a territory. The Hebrew word for 'state' is 'medina', from 'din', which means 'law' or judgment'. A Jewish state is defined by its laws, it needs to have the Jewish law as the basis,  at least,  of his legislation in order to be called Jewish. It do needs a place in order to be independent of other peoples - this place is Eretz Israel - but the state is not a place. It doesn't need a place to exist, the Jewish state with its Talmudic laws and institutions existed in exile for centuries, without a territory...

Does this question of the nature of a Jewish state - a nation-state like others for Jews, or a state having a political Jewish structure - may have an impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Yes, I think so: a state based on Jewish law wouldn't impose itself on another people: Jewish law applies only onto Jews personally - like Islamic law applies only on Muslims - and not on the territory and anyone found being there. Muslim and Christian Arabs might finally recognize that, like them, Jews submit themselves to the Sovereign of the World, and have the same conception that 'to Him belongs the Earth'. Jews couldn't be seen then as a western colonialist offshoot. The door would be open for Jews and Arabs to see each other as another tribe of the People of God, and sharing by covenant the Holy Land would be most natural....


Emphasizes mine.

The essence of peace

02/24/2014
To build a peaceful future, the Palestinians need to leave behind the idea that the Jewish people are strangers who have come to a strange land.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her entire government are in Israel as great friends of the State of Israel and its people. The talks between the two governments are taking place in anticipation of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s Framework Agreement for Peace. Early leaks indicate that the document will include a statement, requested by Israel and its prime minister that, as part of any final peace agreement, the Palestinians recognize Israel as the “Jewish state” or as the “Homeland of the Jewish People.”

While this request is supported by the vast majority of Israelis, as well as the chairman of the Opposition and the Labor party Isaac Herzog, some have not understood what it means and why it is necessary. Others have argued that it is merely a hawkish ploy to avoid reaching any agreement with the Palestinians, or that it is a sad mark of Israel’s low self-confidence that it needs the Palestinians to tell it what it is.

The prime minister’s request is none of the above. It is the one core demand that, once met, will mean that peace is possible. Palestinian recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people is not a condition for peace – it is the very essence of peace.

Israel does not need Palestinian recognition in order to know what it is. Those who have dreamed, founded and built it have done so with one purpose in mind: create a sovereign state for the Jewish people in their ancient homeland. It doesn’t matter if those who established the Jewish state were secular atheists who set out to build an egalitarian socialist utopia in the spirit of the Hebrew prophets, religious Jews who hoped to restore biblical traditions to the modern state, or national liberals who imagined Jew and Arab, Christian and Muslim, living side by side in peace in a Vienna-inspired Judenstaadt. They all wanted a Jewish state, but their visions of it were very different.

Being the Jewish state was never to be a simple concept.

Jewish civilization, like all ancient civilizations, is so rich as to support any system of governance and any set of values that its bearers choose. Unlike what Palestinian leaders say when they reject the Israeli request for recognition, there is nothing in the concept of Jewish state that is necessarily religious rather than secular, nor anything that implies that such a state is only for Jews.

Like all ancient value systems that have been constantly evolving, Judaism serves as a repository of liberal, as well as ultra-conservative values; it is in the eye of the beholder and the interpreter. It is partial to neither.

Being the Jewish state simply means being the one place in the world where the Jewish people, as a people, are free and sovereign to interpret Jewish civilization and determine their own fate. Being the Jewish state means nothing more, but also nothing less.

The Palestinians need to recognize Israel as the Jewish state, not for the sake of the Jews, but for their own sake and dignity and for the cause of peace. Time and time again, the Palestinians have rejected opportunities to live freely in their own sovereign state because doing so means coming to terms with the Jewish state.

Already in 1947, the Arab world, including the Arabs of Palestine (later to be termed Palestinians), rejected the partition of the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state as proposed by the United Nations. They did so because they told themselves that Zionism is not the self-determination movement of the Jewish people, but rather a colonial movement that has brought strangers to their land, strangers who – faced with determined resistance – are destined, sooner or later, to leave it.

In comparing the Jews in the Land of Israel to foreign colonials who will succumb to sustained resistance, the Palestinians might have told themselves a comforting story about a future without Jews and without Israel, but one that has repeatedly robbed them of their present.

They have refused any solution that would create a Palestinian state because the price of doing so meant finally accepting that the Jews should have their own state, too. They preferred to have nothing rather than the dignity of their own state, if it meant sharing the land with the state of the Jewish people.

To build a peaceful future, the Palestinians need to leave behind the idea that the Jewish people are strangers who have come to a strange land and, therefore, will one day go away. Once the Palestinians recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, they will finally be accepting that in creating the State of Israel, the Jewish people have come home. In doing so the Palestinians will signal to the world, to Israel and, above all, to themselves, that they are finally ready to part with a false future in order to build a real present: one in which both the Jewish people and the Palestinians people can live in peace as a free people in their own sovereign states – one Jewish, one Palestinian.

The author is a Senior Fellow with the Jewish People Policy Institute and a former member of the Israeli Knesset. A version of this article was published in German in Der Zeit.

Race against space

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.