By Mohamad Bydon '01
In her Jan. 10 column in The Dartmouth, entitled "Israelis and Palestinians: Fighting for Existence," Ana Bonnheim writes that the Palestinians must "meet the necessary goal of recognizing the state of Israel's right to exist." While the Palestinians did in fact recognize Israel's right to exist in the 1993 Oslo Accords, a general perception remains that the majority of Palestinians want nothing short of the destruction of the state of Israel. Fortunately for the supporters of peace, this is far from an accurate picture. A recent poll cited by Ha'aretz, a leading Israeli newspaper, shows that 60 percent of Palestinians support a cease-fire while 71 percent support an immediate return to negotiations. Additionally, 72 percent support ultimate reconciliation between themselves and the Israeli people.
It is also important to note that when Yassir Arafat returned from exile to the occupied territories with a peace treaty in hand the overwhelming majority of Palestinians (66.2 percent) supported that treaty. In the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Palestinians gave up their claim to 78 percent of historic Palestine with the understanding that they would have claim to the remaining 22 percent comprised of the West Bank and Gaza. The jubilant Palestinian population not only accepted Israel's right to exist, but they ended their first uprising, or Intifada, promptly.
What follows between 1993 and the present situation is in many ways tragic. Yassir Arafat allowed the fringe existence of radical groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad that refuse to give up on the idea of an armed struggle or the use of terrorism to achieve their goals. At the same time, the Israeli government proceeded to send Jewish settlers to occupied land (which is a war crime according to the fourth Geneva Convention) in larger numbers than at any other point in Israel's history. Why would a state that wants nothing but peace do such a thing? Ariel Sharon had the answer in a speech before the Tsomet Party in 1998: "Everything we take now is ours Everything we don't grab will go to them." Evidently Sharon, who was foreign minister at the time, saw the interim peace agreement as a blue light special on Palestinian land. Indeed since the Oslo Accords, Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza have more than doubled.
Of course, Arafat has also done his share to dismantle hope for peace. The consequence of his and Israel's maneuvering had led to a breakdown of the peace process. In real terms, the result of the Oslo Accords for the general populations was minimal: Israelis do not have security and Palestinians remain a poor and stateless people.
The Camp David summit of 2000 did bring about hope that a final settlement could be reached. While the popular version of the negotiations states that the Israeli offer was generous, a closer examination of the proposals indicates that the situation is too complex for any binary conclusion.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak proposed the permanent annexation of 10 percent of the West Bank and also insisted that Israel hold an extra 10 percent indefinitely. But statehood is not an issue of percentages; it's an issue of viability. The Palestinian state would have been denied control over water, borders, airspace and aspects of foreign policy. While some of these stipulations are necessary to guarantee Israel's security, others are not. Barak's proposal would have retained the vast majority of internationally illegal Jewish settlements and would have built a system of "security roads" and checkpoints between them. The ultimate effect of this policy was to divide up the West Bank into three cantons and innumerable Palestinian "islands" each of which would remain surrounded by Israeli troops. This "offer of statehood" would have rendered the West Bank ungovernable by any legitimate Palestinian government. More importantly, Barak's proposals would not have brought an end to the Israeli occupation: they would have simply repackaged and legitimized it.
Ms. Bonnheim is correct in saying that the Palestinian education system does not acknowledge the existence of Israel. But she fails to mention an important report by Israeli Professor Daniel Bar-Tal, who studied 124 elementary, middle and high school textbooks used by Israeli schools. Professor Bar-Tal found that Israeli textbooks are teaching children that the Palestinian is "hostile, deviant, cruel, immoral within this frame of reference, Arabs are delegitimized by the use of such labels as 'robbers,' 'bloodthirsty,' and 'killers.'" Palestinians are also portrayed as "unenlightened, inferior, fatalistic, unproductive, and apathetic."
According to 17-year-old student Daniel Banvolegyi "our books basically tell us that everything the Jews do is fine and legitimate and Arabs are wrong and violent and are trying to exterminate us."
In 2000, when Israeli Education Minister Yossi Sarid attempted to add to the Israeli curriculum a poem written by a Palestinian kicked out of his home in 1948, hard line members of the government threatened to resign over the issue until it was dropped soon thereafter.
Undoubtedly, the Palestinians need to teach their children that Israel exists. Likewise, Israelis need to teach their children that Palestinians used to live on the land that is now Israel. In 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said, "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people . . . It's not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist." In a later interview, she clarified, "How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."
This denial of history is what led former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to declare on June 25, 1982 that the Palestinians "are beasts walking on two legs." Even today, hard line Israeli politicians openly discuss expelling Palestinians from the occupied territories.
Six months ago, the influential Rabbi Ovadia Yosef went so far as to advocate ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians. "It is forbidden to have pity on them (Palestinians). We must give them missiles with relish, annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones." Rabbi Yosef is spiritual leader of the Shas Party, which is a member of the current Israeli government.
There is little doubt in my mind that the majority of Israelis do not support the ways of Rabbi Yosef, just as the majority of Palestinians do not support Sheikh Yassin, leader of Hamas. But peace-loving Palestinians and Israelis are currently handcuffed by the actions of their governments or the extremists on their side. Palestinians need to understand that terrorism is neither morally nor tactically a useful weapon in resisting the occupation. And Israel needs to understand that it cannot have it both ways. It cannot maintain the occupation and confiscation of Palestinian land and expect to have security. This understanding, along with measures to accept their shared history, will go a long way toward easing tensions, hatreds and killings in the Holy Land.
