Ex-Mossad head Meir Dagan says
demanding recognition as a Jewish state is nonsense. Here’s why he’s wrong.
By Ari
Shavit Feb. 13. 2014
Former
Mossad chief Meir Dagan thinks the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state
is nonsense. But it is not nonsense - it is the most natural and justified
demand imaginable. For four different reasons we must support Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who are placing the demand
at the top of the diplomatic agenda.
The
first reason: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict did not start in 1967 and does
not revolve around the occupation and the settlements. It is a deep
national-religious-cultural-social conflict, whose foundation is blindness. For
decades Zionism refused to see the Palestinian people and in doing so refused
to recognize its right to establish a Palestinian state. To this day the
Palestinian national movement refuses to see the Jewish people and recognize in
this way its right to a Jewish state. This double and continuing blindness is
what ignited the 100-year war between us and them. That is why, in order to end
this war, we must recognize their nationalism and their state, and they must
recognize our nationalism and our state. Just as peace is impossible without a
Palestinian state, peace is impossible without a Jewish state.
The
second reason: The great achievement of the Oslo Accords was in their bringing
the Israelis to recognize the fact that there is a Palestinian people in the
land of Israel with legitimate rights. The great achievement of the Camp David
peace summit was in Israel recognizing the need to establish a Palestinian
state. The cumulative result of Oslo and Camp David was a revolution in Israel.
The people living in Zion finally saw that there is another people in this land
and admitted that it is entitled to a different state, which will express its
right to self determination. Thus, there is no reason that the people residing in
Palestine cannot open its eyes finally and see that there is another people in
the land, and that it is entitled to a different country that will express its
right to self determination. Reciprocity is not a sin. Symmetry is not a war
crime. Those who believe the Israelis and Palestinians are equal have a moral
obligation to demand from the Palestinians exactly what they demand from the
Israelis.
The
third reason: The Palestinians will not give up on the demand for the right of
return. The trauma of the Nakba is their foundational trauma, and the
experience of the refugees is the experience that molded them, and there is no
Palestinian leader who will declare that the Palestinians will never return to
the cities and villages they lost in 1948. If there is any solution at all to
the refugee problem, it will be a superficial and insignificant one. But
because it is actually impossible to demand from the Palestinians that they
change their spots and convert their identity, it is required to demand they
recognize this: that the Jewish people is a people of this land, and it did not
arrive here from Mars. It is necessary to demand of them to admit that the
Jewish people has a history of its own and a tragedy of its own and its own
justification. The Palestinians must concede that the Jews are not colonialists
but legal neighbors. There will not be peace if the children growing up in the
Deheisheh refugee camp will not know that the country across the border is a
legitimate Jewish state of a true Jewish people, whom they are decreed to live
with. It is those who give up on the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state
who are actually giving up on peace.
The
fourth reason: An Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is to a great extent a
one-sided agreement in which Israel gives and the Palestinians receive. Only
the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state would turn the longed-for agreement
into a two-sided one. While Israel will transfer concrete assets to its
neighbor, territory and rights, the Palestinians will give the only gift they
are capable of giving: legitimacy.
Meir
Dagan is an Israeli due a great amount of respect. His biography is a heroic
one of “by the rights of power.” But peace is not made by the right of power
but by the power of right. Without the Palestinians’ explicit recognition of
our name, identity and rights, there will not be peace.
Okay, your four reasons to explicitly recognize Israel as a Jewish State are perfectly valid, but you are
ReplyDeletetotally ignoring the one COMPELLING reason: all the Jewish people in the world need a state to flee to!
The Jews from the European Holocaust, from North Africa, Ethiopia, Russia, have all found their haven
from daily attacks in Israel. The Jewish citizens of France and Belgium are next. to flee. After that, English Jewery. A secure, safe and welcoming Israel is an absolute necessity for every Jew in the world,
and a peace treaty must reflect this!!