Published: 12 August 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
In the wake of the Gaza operation, NAOMI CHAZAN punctures the fallacies blocking lasting peace; MERON RAPOPORT proposes an alternative to the Green Line.
Operation Breaking Dawn, the three-day strike on Gaza, has ended with a swift military victory for Israel. But has the destruction of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad leadership moved the dial on peace?
Former MK Naomi Chazan writes that a long-term accommodation requires the end of three key fallacies that are blocking resolution: faulty presumptions of core issues, an illusion that the dynamics of the conflict are unique, and a focus on military resolutions.
“For far too long, all involved have clung systematically to short-term military objectives in the hope of forcing a détente. This has not worked in the past and further iterations cannot be expected to yield dissimilar results.
“To achieve a long-lasting understanding, it is necessary to cast aside some key fallacies that continue to fuel the increasingly destructive conflict and replace them with principles that can set it on a different, constructive, course.
“The first faulty presumption relates to the definition of the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For a century and more, both sides have cultivated the notion that the presence and prosperity of the other constitutes an existential threat to their survival and their being. This narrow, militaristic, prism has progressively subsumed efforts at accommodation. Israelis and Palestinians can no longer afford to succumb to this mutually destructive mentality.
“The second fallacy flowing from the pattern of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to date relates to its dynamics. The underlying assumption is that this confrontation is unique and must be treated as such. Movements of national liberation are, however, an integral part of modern history. The Jewish and Palestinian struggles are no exception.
“The manner of the resolution of the conflict is therefore crucial. This is the key challenge facing Israelis and Palestinians. If they once again use the lull to plot how to improve their offensive capabilities, they will bring about even greater chaos and anarchy. But if, with regional backing and international support, they finally address the root causes of their conflict and come to grips with its consequences – as has been the case in many other places – then it may be possible to jumpstart a workable diplomatic process.”
Meron Rapaport identifies another fallacy, the idea of the Green Line as a border between Israel and Palestine. He notes the Green Line was an armistice line that was never supposed to function as a border.
In practice, it has been eroded by both settlements and constant traffic. He calculates at least 260,000 Palestinians cross the Green Line every day from the occupied territories including East Jerusalem.
Rapaport argues failure of the Green Line as a meaningful border does not mean the end of a two-state solution.
“The two-state idea in its traditional incarnation is indeed in deep crisis but not dead. What is needed now is not to give up on the Green Line but to reimagine it in a form that is far less rigid than the one envisaged by the architects of Oslo.
“I am part of an Israeli-Palestinian movement, A Land for All, that is calling for two independent states, Israel and Palestine, with a “soft” border between them that will run along the Green Line, allowing for freedom of movement and residence for all, Jews and Palestinians, including refugees. According to this vision, the two states will join in a confederation or union, not unlike the EU model, and Jerusalem would be an open city, the capital of both states, governed by joint rule.
“After 55 years of occupation, and more than a decade of intensive efforts to replace it with annexation, it is hard to deny that the Green Line does not represent the same physical and emotional reality that it did many years ago.
“This is not necessarily negative. To some extent, since 1967, the Green Line has been an illusion. Palestinians and Israelis live on and fight over the whole of the land between the river and the sea, with most of them seeing the whole of it as their homeland. The conflict did not begin in 1967, as the concept of the Green Line may suggest, but long before it. The Green Line promoted the idea of separation, of hostility, the assumption that Jews and Palestinians cannot live with one another. When we - particularly my fellow Israeli Jews - fully understand that we have to share this land, our political imagination will open up. The Green Line closed it shut.”
READ MORE
From Breaking Dawn to rising sun (Times of Israel)
The Line Separating Israel From Palestine Has Been Erased—What Comes Next? (The Nation)
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Photo: A young Palestinian man peers through a crack in the separation wall from the West Bank sector of Abu Dis (Jim Hollander/AAP)
