I imagine that the Palestinians are not sure whether to mostly ridicule or thank the Israeli left wing. In a recent op-ed in (where else?) Ha'aretz, Akiva Eldar writes, among other things:
What difference is there between Abu Mazen's vague and sometimes contradictory statements concerning the solution to the refugee problem, and Sharon's declarations about the perpetuity of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem? Why should the right of return be less sacred to the Palestinians than the Temple Mount is to the Jews? Not to mention that while the Palestinians "are dreaming about the right of return to Israel," the Israelis are continuing to exercise unceasingly their "right of return" to territories in the West Bank.
I want to be fair to Eldar - his point is that the rhetoric on either side must be discouraging to the other. And that is, I suppose, a valid but not far from convincing point. But his arguments are so fallacious that one could only imagine that the right-wing opposition on the Israeli side will only scoff with contempt and the Palestinians laugh with glee.
Let's take them one by one:
While it is, as Eldar points out elsewhere in the article, not entirely clear what the Palestinians will ultimately settle for, it is very clear that there are strong rejectionist forces among them. Abbas is "vague and sometimes contradictory" because he has to placate those on his own side who don't see the difference between Tel Aviv and Netzarim, though by other names. So the difference is that Israel's perpetual "occupation of East Jerusalem" is simply not as extreme a position as abolishing the entire State of Israel. And therein lies the difference.
As for comparing claims to the "right of return" for Palestinians and Jewish claims to the Temple Mount, let's be clear here: Full Palestinian "right of return" can only be realized - if we're honest with ourselves - with the consequence that Israel ceases to exist. You can simply not advocate this as a matter of policy unless you also advocate the abolishment of the State of Israel. Nothing like that is at stake when it comes to the Temple Mount. Only a handful of extremists want to raze Muslim structures and rebuild a Temple, and the vast majority of Israelis accept the governance of the Waq'f.
In other words, Eldar is unwilling to see the difference between an event that in all likelihood would deprive Israelis of (at best) their homeland and possibly their lives and safety; and an event that takes absolutely nothing away from anybody.
Golda Meir has been much maligned for saying that the Palestinians aren't a people. And it would be cruel to make such a point to deny them political, civil, and human rights. I rather suspect that Meir's point was that Palestinians are a subset of a larger people known as Arabs, indistinguishable for all practical purposes from Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian, or Egyptian Arabs - the corollary being that there are plenty of places Palestinians could live without feeling too out of place. It would, from her point of view, involve less hardship for a Palestinian to move from Tulkarem to Tyre than it would for a Norwegian to move from Hamar to Alta (both cities in Norway). Indeed, historians might say, it was and is common for people to move within the Arab world for any number of reasons. And if this is so, what makes the area now known as Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza such indispensable tracts of land for Palestinians?
Eldar makes a common mistake in simply assuming that a claim from one side is equivalent to a claim from the other. It is a comfortable assumption to make, but because it is sloppy, it takes us to strange places. Islam does not hold Mount Moriah in as high regard as Judaism does; but Islam's claim is more important now because invoking Judaism's claim would be unethical, reckless, and (imho) in violation of Jewish law. The Palestinians have a right to return to their ancestral homes, but that right is less important than the Israelis' right to have a home at all. Palestinians have a right to pursue their nationalist aspirations, but the Jews have a right to a homeland where they can be safe. Until Eldar develops the moral discernment to understand such distinctions, his analysis is worthless.
Comments