lennart
30-01-04, 16:29
Maybe the Ottoman Empire knew better
By Yair Sheleg
Prof. Yehuda Kedar, a former Palmach (pre-state militia) fighter and geographer (a founder of the Geography Faculty at Tel Aviv and Haifa Universities), would like to see a "condominium" between Israel and the Palestinians.
Condominium is a Latin word for joint rule by two or more states over the same country. Kedar is indeed suggesting that Israel and the Palestinians jointly rule the whole of Israel, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan. Each would manage its own internal affairs, there would be joint foreign relations and defense systems, and a judicial system that would handle clashes between members of the two peoples.
There would be no borders in this unified country, and all members of both peoples could come and settle anywhere in the country. Kedar calls his model "The United `State of Israel' and Palestine" - USIP, for short.
Kedar says the rationale behind the plan is a snapshot of the situation in Israel and its transformation from de facto to de jure. "After all," says Kedar, "before the first intifada there was already a situation here in which the Jews and Palestinians were mingling on both sides of the Green Line. We went to their villages and they wandered around freely in Tel Aviv."
After what has happened in the past three years are you ready to rely on partnership, even in defense establishments? "Yes. After all, we have already seen times when one of our officers and one of their officers sat together in the same jeep. Long ago, as a Palmach fighter, I was afraid of entering Sachnin (an Israeli Arab town in the Galilee), and today I go there unarmed. So rival wolves can also become good neighbors. In any case I don't believe the wall now being built between us can last for long."
In essence, Kedar is talking about a variation of the bi-national state, but he claims that his proposal raises no demographic danger. "If each side has its own parliament and a government, there is no demographic problem," he explains. "On the contrary, if Israeli Arabs are elected to the Palestinian parliament, then our Knesset will be completely Jewish. I am completely opposed to all the despicable talk of a `demographic danger,' which unfortunately my student Arnon Sofer (a geographer at Haifa University) also espouses." Kedar says he has already found senior Israeli and Palestinian figures who support his ideas.
"During the government of Yitzhak Shamir I presented my idea to him. He did not give me a direct answer, but later the newspapers wrote that he supported a functional compromise - which means joint sovereignty. Rabin also seemed to favor this idea and in October 1994 I traveled to Gaza as his emissary, to present the idea to Arafat, who replied, `That is exactly my dream.'
"A short while before this intifada, Abu Ala invited me to his office in Abu Dis (the proposed seat of the Palestinian parliament) and agreed with me on the idea. He said the reason they were not proposing it was because they felt Israelis would not agree."
Settlements and independence
Kedar's idea is just one in a long list of suggestions for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that are presented on the HopeWays Internet site (www.hopeways.org), a site that offers a variety of original solutions for the problems of our lives, including in diplomacy. These may be seen as part of the gushing flood of plans and peace proposals that has increased in recent years - a clear sign that progress in solving the conflict has reached a dead end.
Unlike the trend in the public discourse, however, in which the terror attacks and demographic danger have led to a plethora of withdrawal plans, the basic assumption of all the proposals at HopeWays is actually opposed to any withdrawal and in favor of reconciling assured Palestinian independence with the Israeli affinity for the territories and the settlements built there. In other words, these are variations of the bi-national framework, but without the demographic danger.
Elon Jarden, a lawyer from Netanya, offers a different alternative at HopeWays - federation between Israel and the Palestinians. The basis for this idea is that the whole of Israel will be divided into cantons, whose national identity, Israeli or Palestinian, will be determined by the majority of residents in that canton. Each canton will have its own parliament, and a national federal parliament will be establishment over them with each cantons sending the same number of representatives, irrespective of the number of Jews and Palestinians in the country as a whole.
Jarden says that his plan is based on a strident opposition to an independent Palestinian state. Such a state, he says would not be able to remain demilitarized for long (since international law does not recognize a "restricted" state). It would destroy the Jewish settlement in Yesha (the Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and Gaza), and since most of the Palestinian people would be beyond its borders (mainly in Jordan and Israel) it would want to unite with them, which would endanger both Israel and Jordan.
Poet and critic Menachem Ben proposes a more moderate version. He is willing to accept the idea of splitting into to states, but feels there is no need for them to have territorial contiguity. "If the Israeli settlements in Yesha are considered to `infringe on the Palestinian territorial contiguity,' why would the same not be true regarding the Arab towns inside the Green Line?" he asks.
Instead, he proposes applying the Clinton model for Jerusalem (Jewish neighborhoods to the Jews, Arab neighborhoods to the Palestinians) to the whole country: every community in Israel, on both sides of the Green Line, would be under Israeli sovereignty and every Arab community would be under Palestinian sovereignty.
"After all, it is unreasonable to accept the crazy idea that we, on the one hand, would evacuate all the settlements, and retain 1.25 million Arabs, most of whom are Palestinian nationals. Under my proposal, any Arab who still wants to be an Israeli citizen will have to accept all the obligations that entails, including serving in the Israel Defense Forces."
Balanced hostility
HopeWays is the brainchild of Ehud Tokatly, a professional screenwriter. "I set up the site," he explains, "in order to inspire in Israel. Personally, I am opposed to most of the ideas proposed here, but I want to open people's minds."
Tokatly's opposition does not stem from advocacy of the "conservative" idea of splitting into two states. He actually espouses the most radical idea on the site - to completely forgo the importance of the political framework in favor of much more basic communities.
"I do not think there are two peoples in this land, but rather an immense variety of tribes," he says. "We certainly recognize this differentiation, but even among the Arabs the hostility between the northerners and the southerners, for example, or between the Palestinians and the Druze, is tremendous. The whole nationality issue is a relatively new invention, from a historical point of view. My model is the community regime in which my father's grandfather lived, in the Ottoman Empire. Each community has autonomy, and the central government intervenes only when there is no other choice."
Formally, Tokatly's proposal could be defined as a federation, but unlike Jarden's federation idea, Tokatly's cantons would not be regions with clear borders. Each "region" would include all the members of the relevant community (ultra-Orthodox, national religious, Circassian, Druze) throughout the country, and the "federal" government would be freely composed of members from all the groups, like the American model.
Are you not afraid that a non-Jewish majority would overcome the differences between the sectors within it and unite against the Jews? "From my conversation with Arab friends," says Tokatly, it is clear that the differences and the hostility among them are much greater than between them and us."
Another thing that is clear is that the multitude of ideas, some of with deviate completely from the basic Israeli consensus, attest more than anything else to the level of disharmony and the dead-end feeling. But is there also any sort of realistic foundation for the plan that is based on political cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians, rather than on political separation? Prof. Yosef Gorny, Head of the Zionist Research Institute at Tel Aviv University, has researched the history of federative and confederative ideas in Zionist thought.
"All the streams raised such ideas," he says, "from Jabotinsky to Mordechai Bentov of Hashomer Hatzair (The Young Guard)." Gorny himself supported ideas in this direction, but changed his mind due to the intifada.
"Now I am in favor of complete separation and a return to the ghetto culture," he admits. "We have no other choice. There can be no cooperation between us and civilization and the Arab-Muslim culture. Islam, after all, does not accept any outsiders, not the Christians and not the Copts, and with us the Muslims have a double problem; both as people who invaded their land and humiliated them, and as people who represent a much more advanced western society that is contrary to their basic values. This means that even if there will be peace, there will not be a bi-national state."
From the Palestinian side, Palestinian Legislative Council member Hanan Ashrawi is actually willing to examine the ideas for political cooperation. "I am prepared to live in a confederation or any other political framework that allows Palestinian independence," she says.
The thorn in her position, however, is that her precondition for any agreement is the evacuation of the settlements, precisely the situation that the proponents of the cooperation ideas want to avoid.
"I am not prepared to relate to demography as a designer of the political arrangement," says Ashrawi. "What counts are the geography and international law, and since the settlements were built in violation of international law, they must be removed. At a later stage, if there are Jews who want to settle as individuals in the Palestinian state, why not, but not within the framework of the existing settlements."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/388248.html
Ik plaats deze column na aanleiding van een eerdere discussie over dit onderwerp. Helaas werkt de zoek functie niet goed, zodat ik geen link kan plaatsen naar die discussie. Voor de mensen die destijds dachten dat de Joden niet onderverdeeld kunnen worden in stammen heb ik een gedeelte cursief gemaakt.
By Yair Sheleg
Prof. Yehuda Kedar, a former Palmach (pre-state militia) fighter and geographer (a founder of the Geography Faculty at Tel Aviv and Haifa Universities), would like to see a "condominium" between Israel and the Palestinians.
Condominium is a Latin word for joint rule by two or more states over the same country. Kedar is indeed suggesting that Israel and the Palestinians jointly rule the whole of Israel, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan. Each would manage its own internal affairs, there would be joint foreign relations and defense systems, and a judicial system that would handle clashes between members of the two peoples.
There would be no borders in this unified country, and all members of both peoples could come and settle anywhere in the country. Kedar calls his model "The United `State of Israel' and Palestine" - USIP, for short.
Kedar says the rationale behind the plan is a snapshot of the situation in Israel and its transformation from de facto to de jure. "After all," says Kedar, "before the first intifada there was already a situation here in which the Jews and Palestinians were mingling on both sides of the Green Line. We went to their villages and they wandered around freely in Tel Aviv."
After what has happened in the past three years are you ready to rely on partnership, even in defense establishments? "Yes. After all, we have already seen times when one of our officers and one of their officers sat together in the same jeep. Long ago, as a Palmach fighter, I was afraid of entering Sachnin (an Israeli Arab town in the Galilee), and today I go there unarmed. So rival wolves can also become good neighbors. In any case I don't believe the wall now being built between us can last for long."
In essence, Kedar is talking about a variation of the bi-national state, but he claims that his proposal raises no demographic danger. "If each side has its own parliament and a government, there is no demographic problem," he explains. "On the contrary, if Israeli Arabs are elected to the Palestinian parliament, then our Knesset will be completely Jewish. I am completely opposed to all the despicable talk of a `demographic danger,' which unfortunately my student Arnon Sofer (a geographer at Haifa University) also espouses." Kedar says he has already found senior Israeli and Palestinian figures who support his ideas.
"During the government of Yitzhak Shamir I presented my idea to him. He did not give me a direct answer, but later the newspapers wrote that he supported a functional compromise - which means joint sovereignty. Rabin also seemed to favor this idea and in October 1994 I traveled to Gaza as his emissary, to present the idea to Arafat, who replied, `That is exactly my dream.'
"A short while before this intifada, Abu Ala invited me to his office in Abu Dis (the proposed seat of the Palestinian parliament) and agreed with me on the idea. He said the reason they were not proposing it was because they felt Israelis would not agree."
Settlements and independence
Kedar's idea is just one in a long list of suggestions for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that are presented on the HopeWays Internet site (www.hopeways.org), a site that offers a variety of original solutions for the problems of our lives, including in diplomacy. These may be seen as part of the gushing flood of plans and peace proposals that has increased in recent years - a clear sign that progress in solving the conflict has reached a dead end.
Unlike the trend in the public discourse, however, in which the terror attacks and demographic danger have led to a plethora of withdrawal plans, the basic assumption of all the proposals at HopeWays is actually opposed to any withdrawal and in favor of reconciling assured Palestinian independence with the Israeli affinity for the territories and the settlements built there. In other words, these are variations of the bi-national framework, but without the demographic danger.
Elon Jarden, a lawyer from Netanya, offers a different alternative at HopeWays - federation between Israel and the Palestinians. The basis for this idea is that the whole of Israel will be divided into cantons, whose national identity, Israeli or Palestinian, will be determined by the majority of residents in that canton. Each canton will have its own parliament, and a national federal parliament will be establishment over them with each cantons sending the same number of representatives, irrespective of the number of Jews and Palestinians in the country as a whole.
Jarden says that his plan is based on a strident opposition to an independent Palestinian state. Such a state, he says would not be able to remain demilitarized for long (since international law does not recognize a "restricted" state). It would destroy the Jewish settlement in Yesha (the Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and Gaza), and since most of the Palestinian people would be beyond its borders (mainly in Jordan and Israel) it would want to unite with them, which would endanger both Israel and Jordan.
Poet and critic Menachem Ben proposes a more moderate version. He is willing to accept the idea of splitting into to states, but feels there is no need for them to have territorial contiguity. "If the Israeli settlements in Yesha are considered to `infringe on the Palestinian territorial contiguity,' why would the same not be true regarding the Arab towns inside the Green Line?" he asks.
Instead, he proposes applying the Clinton model for Jerusalem (Jewish neighborhoods to the Jews, Arab neighborhoods to the Palestinians) to the whole country: every community in Israel, on both sides of the Green Line, would be under Israeli sovereignty and every Arab community would be under Palestinian sovereignty.
"After all, it is unreasonable to accept the crazy idea that we, on the one hand, would evacuate all the settlements, and retain 1.25 million Arabs, most of whom are Palestinian nationals. Under my proposal, any Arab who still wants to be an Israeli citizen will have to accept all the obligations that entails, including serving in the Israel Defense Forces."
Balanced hostility
HopeWays is the brainchild of Ehud Tokatly, a professional screenwriter. "I set up the site," he explains, "in order to inspire in Israel. Personally, I am opposed to most of the ideas proposed here, but I want to open people's minds."
Tokatly's opposition does not stem from advocacy of the "conservative" idea of splitting into two states. He actually espouses the most radical idea on the site - to completely forgo the importance of the political framework in favor of much more basic communities.
"I do not think there are two peoples in this land, but rather an immense variety of tribes," he says. "We certainly recognize this differentiation, but even among the Arabs the hostility between the northerners and the southerners, for example, or between the Palestinians and the Druze, is tremendous. The whole nationality issue is a relatively new invention, from a historical point of view. My model is the community regime in which my father's grandfather lived, in the Ottoman Empire. Each community has autonomy, and the central government intervenes only when there is no other choice."
Formally, Tokatly's proposal could be defined as a federation, but unlike Jarden's federation idea, Tokatly's cantons would not be regions with clear borders. Each "region" would include all the members of the relevant community (ultra-Orthodox, national religious, Circassian, Druze) throughout the country, and the "federal" government would be freely composed of members from all the groups, like the American model.
Are you not afraid that a non-Jewish majority would overcome the differences between the sectors within it and unite against the Jews? "From my conversation with Arab friends," says Tokatly, it is clear that the differences and the hostility among them are much greater than between them and us."
Another thing that is clear is that the multitude of ideas, some of with deviate completely from the basic Israeli consensus, attest more than anything else to the level of disharmony and the dead-end feeling. But is there also any sort of realistic foundation for the plan that is based on political cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians, rather than on political separation? Prof. Yosef Gorny, Head of the Zionist Research Institute at Tel Aviv University, has researched the history of federative and confederative ideas in Zionist thought.
"All the streams raised such ideas," he says, "from Jabotinsky to Mordechai Bentov of Hashomer Hatzair (The Young Guard)." Gorny himself supported ideas in this direction, but changed his mind due to the intifada.
"Now I am in favor of complete separation and a return to the ghetto culture," he admits. "We have no other choice. There can be no cooperation between us and civilization and the Arab-Muslim culture. Islam, after all, does not accept any outsiders, not the Christians and not the Copts, and with us the Muslims have a double problem; both as people who invaded their land and humiliated them, and as people who represent a much more advanced western society that is contrary to their basic values. This means that even if there will be peace, there will not be a bi-national state."
From the Palestinian side, Palestinian Legislative Council member Hanan Ashrawi is actually willing to examine the ideas for political cooperation. "I am prepared to live in a confederation or any other political framework that allows Palestinian independence," she says.
The thorn in her position, however, is that her precondition for any agreement is the evacuation of the settlements, precisely the situation that the proponents of the cooperation ideas want to avoid.
"I am not prepared to relate to demography as a designer of the political arrangement," says Ashrawi. "What counts are the geography and international law, and since the settlements were built in violation of international law, they must be removed. At a later stage, if there are Jews who want to settle as individuals in the Palestinian state, why not, but not within the framework of the existing settlements."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/388248.html
Ik plaats deze column na aanleiding van een eerdere discussie over dit onderwerp. Helaas werkt de zoek functie niet goed, zodat ik geen link kan plaatsen naar die discussie. Voor de mensen die destijds dachten dat de Joden niet onderverdeeld kunnen worden in stammen heb ik een gedeelte cursief gemaakt.