[statecom-discuss] Re: What 'Israel's right to exist' means to Palestinians

[Merelice]

Greetings,
I tried to send this oped yesterday as a pdf attachment. I don't
believe it went through so I am sending it without the attachment but
still pasted below.
Merelice


On 2/8/07, Merelice <merelice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Of interest and relevance....
>
> Also attached as a pdf. See the Monitor's website at
> csmonitor.com
>
> Merelice
>
>
> Commentary > Opinion
> from the February 02, 2007 edition of The Christian Science Monitor
>
> What 'Israel's right to exist' means to Palestinians
> Recognition would imply acceptance that they deserve to be treated as subhumans.
>
> By John V. Whitbeck
>
> JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA - Since the Palestinian elections in 2006, Israel
> and much of the West have asserted that the principal obstacle to any
> progress  toward Israeli-Palestinian peace is the refusal of Hamas to
> "recognize Israel," or to "recognize Israel's existence," or to
> "recognize Israel's right to exist."
>
> These three verbal formulations have been used by Israel, the United
> States, and the European Union as a rationale for collective
> punishment of the Palestinian people. The phrases are also used by the
> media, politicians, and even diplomats interchangeably,  as though
> they mean the same thing. They do not.
>
> "Recognizing Israel" or any other state is a formal legal and
> diplomatic act by one state with respect to another state. It  is
> inappropriate – indeed, nonsensical – to talk about a political party
> or movement extending diplomatic recognition to a  state. To talk of
> Hamas "recognizing Israel" is simply to use sloppy, confusing, and
> deceptive shorthand for the real demand  being made of the
> Palestinians.
>
> "Recognizing Israel's existence" appears on first impression to
> involve a relatively straightforward acknowledgment of a fact  of
> life. Yet there are serious practical problems with this language.
> What Israel, within what borders, is involved? Is it  the 55 percent
> of historical Palestine recommended for a Jewish state by the UN
> General Assembly in 1947? The 78 percent of  historical Palestine
> occupied by the Zionist movement in 1948 and now viewed by most of the
> world as "Israel" or "Israel proper"?  The 100 percent of historical
> Palestine occupied by Israel since June 1967 and shown as "Israel"
> (without any "Green Line")  on maps in Israeli schoolbooks?
>
> Israel has never defined its own borders, since doing so would
> necessarily place limits on them. Still, if this were all that  was
> being demanded of Hamas, it might be possible for the ruling political
> party to acknowledge, as a fact of life, that a  state of Israel
> exists today within some specified borders. Indeed, Hamas leadership
> has effectively done so in recent weeks.
>
> "Recognizing Israel's right to exist," the actual demand being made of
> Hamas and Palestinians, is in an entirely different  league. This
> formulation does not address diplomatic formalities or a simple
> acceptance of present realities. It calls for  a moral judgment.
>
> There is an enormous difference between "recognizing Israel's
> existence" and "recognizing Israel's  right to exist." From a
> Palestinian perspective, the difference is in the same league as the
> difference between asking a Jew to  acknowledge that the Holocaust
> happened and asking him to concede that the Holocaust was morally
> justified. For Palestinians  to acknowledge the occurrence of the
> Nakba – the expulsion of the great majority of Palestinians from their
> homeland between 1947 and 1949 – is one thing. For them  to publicly
> concede that it was "right" for the  Nakba to have happened would be
> something else entirely. For the Jewish and Palestinian peoples, the
> Holocaust and the Nakba, respectively, represent catastrophes and
> injustices on an unimaginable scale that can neither be forgotten nor
> forgiven.
>
> To demand that Palestinians recognize "Israel's right to exist" is to
> demand that a people who have been treated as subhumans  unworthy of
> basic human rights publicly proclaim that they  are subhumans. It
> would imply Palestinians' acceptance that they deserve what has been
> done and continues to be done to them.  Even 19th-century US
> governments did not require the surviving native Americans to publicly
> proclaim the "rightness" of their  ethnic cleansing by European
> colonists as a condition precedent to even discussing what sort of
> land reservation they might receive. Nor did native Americans have to
> live under economic blockade and threat of starvation until they shed
> whatever pride  they had left and conceded the point.
>
> Some believe that Yasser Arafat did concede the point in order to buy
> his ticket out of the wilderness of demonization and  earn the right
> to be lectured directly by the Americans. But in fact, in his famous
> 1988 statement in Stockholm, he accepted  "Israel's right to exist in
> peace and security." This language, significantly, addresses the
> conditions of existence of a  state which, as a matter of fact,
> exists. It does not address the existential question of the
> "rightness" of the dispossession  and dispersal of the Palestinian
> people from their homeland to make way for another people coming from
> abroad.
>
> The original conception of the phrase "Israel's right to exist" and of
> its use as an excuse for not talking with any Palestinian  leaders who
> still stood up for the rights of their people are attributed to former
> US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.  It is highly likely that those
> countries that still employ this phrase do so in full awareness of
> what it entails, morally  and psychologically, for the Palestinian
> people.
>
> However, many people of goodwill and decent values may well be taken
> in by the surface simplicity of the words, "Israel's  right to exist,"
> and believe that they constitute a reasonable demand. And if the
> "right to exist" is reasonable, then refusing  to accept it must
> represent perversity, rather than Palestinians' deeply felt need to
> cling to their self-respect and dignity  as full-fledged human beings.
> That this need is deeply felt is evidenced by polls showing that the
> percentage of the Palestinian population that approves of Hamas's
> refusal to bow to this demand substantially exceeds the percentage
> that voted for Hamas  in January 2006.
>
> Those who recognize the critical importance of Israeli-Palestinian
> peace and truly seek a decent future for both peoples must  recognize
> that the demand that Hamas recognize "Israel's right to exist" is
> unreasonable, immoral, and impossible to meet.  Then, they must insist
> that this roadblock to peace be removed, the economic siege of the
> Palestinian territories be lifted,  and the pursuit of peace with some
> measure of justice be resumed with the urgency it deserves.
>
> •  John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer, is the author of, "The
> World According to Whitbeck." He has advised Palestinian  officials in
> negotiations with Israel.
>
>