THE PALESTINIANS AT THE UN
ROSH HASHANAH I 5772
How many of you feel a strong personal attachment to Maimonides’ 13 principles of Jewish faith? How many of you feel a strong personal attachment to the Passover seder?
Thus we see the importance of narratives in our lives. They guide us at least as much as factual arguments, and, indeed, facts get much of their significance from the narratives in which they are imbedded. One might even translate the Hebrew word “haggadah” as narrative (although, in modern Hebrew, people usually say “narrative”).
In thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with particular reference now to the move to have Palestine admitted to the United Nations, I think of two competing narratives. I have stated many times the case for a Jewish state in the Land of Israel: our ancient connection to the Land, the continuous Jewish settlement there through the centuries, the cultural connection, exemplified by our turning, from wherever we are, towards Jerusalem in prayer, the periodic waves of aliyah, immigration to the Land of Israel, culminating in the organized Zionist movement of the 19th and 20th centuries, and international legal measures such as the League of Nations Palestine Mandate, which incorporated the Balfour declaration, and the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan.
That was my Jewish narrative about Eretz Yisrael. Let me now state my Arab narrative about Falastin. From the end of the first millennium until 1948, the overwhelming majority of the population of the area consisted of Palestinian Arabs. That is to say, they were Arabs, and they lived in Palestine. The Arab conquerors of the Land of Israel in 636 established jund filastin, the district of Palestine, as part of the caliphate. Also, in the Koran and early Muslim literature, Palestine was sometimes referred to as al-Ard al-Mukadasah (the Holy Land).
In 1911, an Arabic newspaper was launched in Jaffa with the name "Falastin". The beginning of a distinct Palestinian Arab consciousness can perhaps be traced back as the 19th century, and a Palestinian Arab nationalist movement certainly can be seen emerging in the years following World War I. I don’t want to spend a lot of time stating the Palestinian narrative, but I feel that I need to dispel a few common misconceptions. I have already dealt with the erroneous claim that nobody considered Palestine to be an identifiable region or the Palestinians to be a distinct group of people until after the establishment of the State of Israel. Some advocates for Israel have quoted Arab public figures denying the existence of Palestinian nationality. That is no surprise. Palestinian Arab nationalism had to compete with local and tribal loyalties, with pan-Arabism, and with other views.
Similarly, Zionism had to compete with traditional religious self-definition, with liberal religious self-definition, with socialism, and with autonomism (the view that Jews should have their own autonomous region, in Europe or some other place, not particularly the Land of Israel). I am not positive, but I suspect that Zionism was a minority position among Jews until the Holocaust, and I am certain that, when it prevailed, it was in an attenuated form. Even today, if you asked the question in a neutral way, I wonder how many Jews would say that being Jewish is a nationality.
A Zionist catchphrase from the turn of the last century was that it advocated a land without a people for a people without a land. Nobody claims that Eretz Yisrael / Falastin was literally empty in the 19th century, but I often hear the claim that there were very few Arabs there, and that most Palestinian Arabs today are descended from recent immigrants to the area. The idea of Arab immigration into Palestine from nearby areas was made popular by Joan Peters in her 1984 book From Time Immemorial. However, the book is very problematic. Perhaps its harshest critic is Prof. Yehoshua Porath of the Hebrew University, a specialist in Palestinian history, who wrote that "in Israel, . . . the book was almost universally dismissed as sheer rubbish except maybe as a propaganda weapon.”
There is no question that there was Arab immigration into EI / Palestine in the late Ottoman and British periods, but some people greatly exaggerate its significance. If we look at what has happened in other Middles Eastern countries, we can trace a hypothetical trajectory of the Palestinian Arab national movement leading to independence some time after World War II.
I believe that the parallels and similarities between the Zionist movement and the Palestinian Arab national movement are so great that the principle “V’ahavta l’re-akha kamokha” (You shall love your neighbor as yourself), or, in Hillel’s formulation, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow,” apply. If we support a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, then we have an ethical obligation to support an Arab state in Falastin.
What happened, then? A number of years ago, a cartoon appeared in the Jerusalem Post showing a picture of Arafat with the caption “Al Nakba” “Al Nakba” means “the disaster,” and it is the name that Arabs give to the events of 1948. Indeed, not only Yassir Arafat, but the entire Palestinian nationalist movement, from the Mufti, Hitler’s pal, to Mahmud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, has been a disaster, to their own people as well as to the Jewish people. Time after time, when they could have achieved national independence in large parts of Palestine, they rejected the possibility, insisting on all or nothing. Furthermore, they opposed, not only the Jews and, for a time, the British, but also each other.
During the great Arab revolt of 1936-1939, thousands of Palestinian Arabs (We don’t really know exactly how many) were killed. A few were killed by Jews acting in self-defense or in retaliation. More were killed by the British, who, after some initial hesitation, suppressed the revolt with great brutality. It is quite possible that the largest number of Arabs were killed by other Arabs, as the Husseini and Nashashibi factions, in particular, fought with each other.
Even given the shortcomings of its national movement, the Palestinian Arabs might have had their own state. After all, other post-colonial national movements have achieved independence despite having many weaknesses. But, of course, while the Arabs were messing up, the Jews were laying the foundations of a state. We can hardly imagine Chaim Weizmann saying, “Thank you very much, Lord Balfour, but we’re going to put your declaration aside for a while until the Palestinian Arabs catch up to us, so that both peoples can benefit equally.”
I asked myself once, “After all of this, why should we bother with them?” (the Palestinians) At some point, haven’t they forfeited whatever national legitimacy that they might have had? My answer to myself was, “No.” I really can’t think of any circumstances under which a people would fundamentally forfeit its legitimate national rights. Given all that I have said so far, one might think that I would support the Palestinian initiative to get their state admitted to the United Nations. But I don’t. If the theme of the first part of my sermon has been one saying of Hillel, the theme of the next part of my sermon will be another: “Im ein ani li, mi li”. (If I an not for myself, who will be for me)
Remember: before I gave my “Palestinian narrative,” I gave my Jewish-Zionist narrative, and I would not approve of a Palestinian state which would threaten the existence of Israel. I must say that I have been tempted to support the Palestinian initiative. In June, four thoughtful and intelligent Israelis, including Shlomo Gazit, former military coordinator in the Occupied Territories and head of military intelligence, and Yossi Alpher, an Israeli political commentator whom I greatly respect, wrote an op-ed in the Times, entitled “Buying Into Palestinian Statehood.” They wrote: "What is described in some quarters as a recipe for new strife and confrontation can actually be leveraged into a win-win situation for Israelis, Palestinians and the world. . . ."
They went on to describe some conditions which could make such a UN resolution acceptable to Israel. In September, Isaac Herzog, former Israeli cabinet minister and member of the Knesset’s Foreign and Defense Committee, wrote an article along the same lines for Foreign Relations entitled “Why Israel Should Vote for Palestinian Independence”.
Ultimately, however, I was not convinced by any of these arguments. It seems to me that all the conditions and qualifications that the Israeli commentators stipulated, which would make UN recognition of Palestine acceptable, are simply not on the table. Mahmoud Abbas does not seem to be interested in the 1967 borders (which are really the 1949 cease fire lines) with adjustments. He wants the ’67 borders, period. Furthermore, while Abbas has said many times that a Palestinian state defined by the ’67 borders would live alongside Israel (which would be fine with me if it really happened), he and other Palestinian leaders have said others things which make me wonder if they really mean it.
We may also wonder whether, even if Abbas’s people, who are only one faction among the Palestinians, carried through on their stated intention, what about the others? What about Hamas? If the situation in Gaza got worse, and Israel felt a need to send the IDF in there again, would that be considered an invasion of Palestine?
I was not impressed with the speeches of either PM Netanyahu or Mr. Abbas at the UN. I thought that Netanyahu’s content was all right, but that his style was not. He had too much of a chip on his shoulder. Abbas was terrible with regard to both style and content.
Last Friday, while the speeches were being given, I decided that I had too much to do in the way of Shabbat preparations to listen to them live. In the end, I experienced perhaps the worst of both worlds. As I was doing my work, I kept looking at the internet: at the stock market and at Facebook, where some of my friends were posting running commentary on the speeches. I was very much struck by one of my colleagues, definitely to my left politically, who described Abbas’s performance with a word that I don’t think that I can use here. Besides insisting on the exact 1967 borders, Abbas dredged up every Palestinian grievance against Israel, legitimate, exaggerated, or fabricated.
Tellingly, he referred to Palestine as the home of Mohammed (who was never in Palestine, except in legend) and Jesus, but did not refer to anyone associated with the Jewish people. I don’t really expect Mahmoud Abbas to buy into the whole Jewish-Zionist narrative, but, if he does not recognize any historical connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel – and we know that many Palestinians do not recognize any such connection – that is a problem. His version of history was horribly skewed. He referred to Al Nakba, the Palestinian disaster of 1948, but he did not mention at all the role of Arab armies and militias in the violence of that year. The speech carried over many of the bad points of his New York Times op ed of earlier this year, and it added more bad points.
Some of you, I know, believe that the problems connected with any Palestinian state are such that we should simply say that we are against it. I don’t hold that position, but I do believe that the problems with the Palestinian UN initiative are such that we should oppose it. We should be pleased that the United States government has taken such a strong stand against the initiative. However, it ain’t over ‘till it’s over. The Palestinian resolution is only at the beginning of discussion in the Security Council, and votes will come along later.
I have relied on a verse from Leviticus and two teachings of Hillel to anchor my presentation. Let me now mention another verse, one from this morning’s Torah reading. After Hagar and Ishmael have been thrown out of Abraham’s house and are in the desert without water, God says to Hagar, “I have heard the voice of the boy, as he is.”
I have sometimes quoted that verse to argue for respecting the rights of individual Palestinian Arabs, and not lumping all Palestinians, or all Arabs, together. Today, however, I quote the verse to say that the ball is in the Palestinians’ court. What happens, or what should happen, depends in part on what they do. I am confident that, if the Palestinians were to show convincingly that they really were prepared to live peacefully alongside Israel, then the majority of Israelis would rush to support a Palestinian state, and then, and only then, so would I.
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