62 Years on, Peace Is Not Impossible

NEW YORK -- Where are we, then, in the Arab-Israeli conflict, at the close of the 62nd year after the seminal act of the conflict in 1947-48? That was when Zionist Jews achieved statehood in their new state of Israel, and indigenous Palestinian Arabs found themselves refugees outside their land -- or second-class citizens living in security zones inside the new state that Jews had created for Jews. We are in a very bad situation with no easy solution, but only hard choices that must be made if generations to come will be spared more wasteful wars. The situation is very difficult, but not irresoluble, as was succinctly captured in recent weeks in statements by the Israeli foreign minister and the Palestinian chief negotiator.

The Palestinian, Saeb Erekat, in a commentary in the Guardian newspaper earlier this month, reminded us that the heart of the conflict for the Palestinians was their refugeehood and exile -- partly due to the usual chaos of war, mostly due to deliberate Zionist ethnic cleansing to clear the way for the Jewish state. Neither time nor facts on the ground would render the refugees’ rights moot, he said, emphasizing that “Palestinian displacement continues to this day through the revocation of residency cards, land confiscation, home demolitions and evictions. At the same time, Israel has barred Palestinians displaced between 1947 and 1949, and again in 1967, from returning to their homes or receiving restitution for their lost property.”

The Jewish-majority Zionist Israeli state would have been impossible without the mass expulsion of Palestinians, he explained, “given that Palestinians constituted a majority in every district of historic Palestine prior to 1948 and also owned over 90% of the land…This period of dispossession, known to Palestinians as al-Nakba or ‘the catastrophe’, is the seminal Palestinian experience and source of our collective identity.”

The Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, meanwhile, noted in his year-end remarks to Israeli diplomats that a peace agreement with the Palestinians was impossible to achieve in the current circumstances, and the best that could be hoped for were long-term interim agreements on security and economic matters -- an offer the Palestinians reject routinely. Israeli senior officials recently have also offered other ideas, notably the notion that Jews who left, fled or were driven out of Arab countries in and around 1948 had to be considered in any peace agreement -- meaning that approximately equal numbers of Jews and Arabs changed places in the region and therefore there is nothing to negotiate.

The Palestinians, Erekat suggests, need a combination of “return and restitution” as the remedy of choice that has a strong international precedent, such as in Bosnia. He adds that “Israel's recognition of Palestinian refugee rights and its agreement to provide reparation and meaningful refugee choice in the exercise of these rights will not change the reality in the Middle East overnight, nor will it lead to an existential crisis for Israel. What it will certainly do is mark the beginning of a new reality that will no longer be rooted in repression, denial of rights, and discrimination. In other words, it will lead to a lasting peace.”

The many attempts in the past 62 years have failed to achieve a comprehensive, lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians because they have consistently avoided coming to grips with the core issues that most matter to both people. The Palestinian chief negotiator is making an important statement when he says publicly that “reparation and meaningful refugee choice” in the exercise of the rights of “return and restitution,” provides an opening for serious and honest Israelis to explore a middle ground on which to reconcile the national rights and claims of both sides.

When I was discussing this with an American Jewish friend at Harvard University the other day, he used a phrase that struck me as capturing the essence of what Israelis and Zionists seek from any permanent peace agreement -- Palestinian and Arab “acceptance of the legitimacy of the idea of Israel as a safe haven for Jews.”

Yes, this is a hard conflict to resolve, but hard is not impossible. Israelis must come to grips with a “meaningful refugee choice on return and restitution” for Palestinian refugees everywhere, while Palestinians and Arabs must acknowledge that the state of Israel they say they are prepared to live with is a legitimate home and haven for Jews everywhere. The details and specifics of an agreement will be much easier to work out once these core principles are first acknowledged, and then formally accepted in a legally binding agreement. If anyone plans to start the New Year exploring for ways to advance the stalled Arab-Israeli peace process, this is probably as good a starting point as any.