From Dove to Hawk
A prominent Israeli historian explains why, after decades of research about the Jewish state, he now holds out little hope for reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians .
I remember the moment when the Palestinian diaspora began to interest me, professionally. It was in Rashidiye Camp, outside Tyre, in June 1982, just after the Israel Defense Forces had scythed through on their way north to oust the Palestinian Liberation Organization from Lebanon. A journalist at the time, I picked my way through the devastated buildings. Most of the men had fled or been detained or killed by the Israelis, but I was struck by a group of old women hunched over a tabun, an outdoor oven, making pita bread far from their homeland. A few weeks later a stash of documents produced in 1948 by the Palmah—the strike force of the Haganah, the main Zionist underground in Palestine—was opened for me, revealing why and how many of these people had been displaced as Israel was born.
My historical account of that event, published a few years later, was greeted with some acclaim by Palestinians and their sympathizers—and much shock by Israelis, who had been brought up to believe, or to pretend to believe, that the Palestinians had fled their homes four decades earlier because of orders or advice from their leaders. In certain places, at certain times, there had been such advice and orders, of course. But there had also been Israeli expulsions, as well as the chaos of British withdrawal and economic hardship and anxiety about an uncharted future under Jewish rule. In most places it was the flail and fear of onrushing hostilities that had set some 700,000 Arabs on the roads.
Myself and several other young Israeli historians were dubbed revisionists and commonly assumed to be doves. But what brought me to my conclusions about 1948 were the facts, not my political views. Contrary to current historiographic discourse I believe there is such a thing as the Truth—what, why and how things happened—and I've always sought it in my research. If I've since come to a much bleaker opinion about the possibility of reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians—many would now call me a hawk—it is also because of that research.
During the 1990s, as the Oslo peace process gained momentum, I was cautiously optimistic about the prospects for peace. But at the same time I was scouring the just opened archives of the Haganah and the IDF. Studying the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict—in particular the pronouncements and positions of the Palestinian leadership from the 1920s on—left me chilled. Their rejection of any compromise, whether a partition of Palestine between its Jewish and Arab inhabitants or the creation of a binational state with political parity between the two communities, was deep-seated, consensual and consistent.
Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Palestinian national movement during the 1930s and 1940s, insisted throughout on a single Muslim Arab state in all of Palestine. The Palestinian Arab "street" chanted "Idbah al-Yahud" (slaughter the Jews) both during the 1936-1939 revolt against the British and in 1947, when Arab militias launched a campaign to destroy the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine. Husseini led both campaigns.
So when Yasir Arafat rejected Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's two-state proposals at Camp David in July 2000, and then President Clinton's sweetened offer the following December, my surprise was not excessive. Nor was I astounded by the spectacle of masses of suicide bombers launched, with Arafat's blessing, against Israel's shopping malls, buses and restaurants in the second intifada, which erupted in September 2000. Each suicide bomber seemed to be a microcosm of what Palestine's Arabs had in mind for Israel as a whole. Arafat's rejectionism and, after his death, the election of Hamas to dominance in the Palestinian national movement, persuaded me that no two-state solution was in the offing and that the Palestinians, as a people, were bent, as they had been throughout their history, on "recovering" all of Palestine.
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Member Comments
Posted By: LIKEITIS @ 05/22/2008 11:39:31 AM
Comment: The jews may not be killing the Arabs as FAST as the nazis were killing jews--but they are killing them non-the-less.
Gaza truck bomber attacks key Israel crossing
Attacker dies in huge blast; helicopter reportedly destroys getaway vehicle
YOU HAVE TO BE OUT OF YOUR MIND!
THE PALESTINIANS ARE PERFECT EXAMPLES OF A PEOPLE THAT HAVE LIVED OUT THEIR COLLECTIVE USEFULLNESS AS ANY PART OF THE CIVILIZED WORLD.
THEY ARE GETTING JUST WHAT THEY ASK FOR. IF THE DOG DEFICATES IN THE HOUSE, HE MUST REMAIN OUTSIDE THE HOUSE......IF HE IS AGRESSIVLY VIOLENT, THERE MUST BE NO QUARTER GIVEN AND THE DOG SHOULD BECOME FERTILIZER. THAT IS FUTURE OF THOSE LOST FOOLS CALLING THEMSELVES PALESTINIANS.
THE JEWS IN HITLERS GERMANY WERE NOT ROUNDED UP ,PUT INTO SLAVE LABOR CAMPS, TORTURED AND KILLED FOR ATTACKING THE NATZI REGIME. THEY HAD THIS DONE TO THEM FOR BEING GENETICALLY UNACCEPTIBLE TO THE BELIEFS OF HITLER.
WHEN A PEOPLE AS BACKWARD AS THE MIDDLE EASTS PEOPLE HAVE BECOME, MOST DUE TO COLLECTIVELY INSISTING ON HOLDING TO "THE OLD WAYS", AWARE THAT THEY HAVE MISSED THE TRAIN TO THE DELIGHTS OF THE TECHNOLOGICAL PRESENT AND ALL OF THOSE GOOD THING THAT GO WITH MAINTAINING SOME SORT OF TOUCH WITH THE PRESENT DAY, THERE ARE FACTIONS WHO NOTICE THAT THEY ARE NOW IRRELIVENT AND RESPOND WITH THE ONLY THING A BACKWARD LOSING GROUP CAN WHICH IS INDIRECT VIOLENCE(NOTHING MUCH DIFFERENT THAN A TANTRUM).
WHEN I SAY INDIRECT VIOLENCE, I MEAN THAT IT MATTERS LITTLE THAT THEY ARE IN MOST CASES KILLING THEIR OWN PEOPLE, OR IF THEY DO MANAGE TO KILL A FEW OF THEIR INTENDED TARGETS
THE RESPONSE IS MORE OF THEIR OWN KILLED BY THE ATTACTED AND OF COURSE MUCH BETTER EQUIPED TO KILL FOES.
THE PALESTINIANS ARE NOTHING LESS THAN BEGGERS, THAT ARE MAKING NO ATTEMPT TO BETTER THEIR OWN SITUATIONS, AND THIS HAS TO BE A DIRECT EXAMPLE OF THEIR LACK OF INTELLIGENCE AND A SIGN OF THEIR INPENDING DOOM .
THE SOONER THE ISRAELIS TAKE THE KID GLOVES OFF AND TAKE A FEW STRAFFING RUNS DOWN THE GAZA STRIP WITH A FEW F16'S ....POSSIBLY ARMED WITH NAPALM, THE BETTER.
Posted By: ??? ????? @ 05/22/2008 5:52:26 AM
Comment: The jews may not be killing the Arabs as FAST as the nazis were killing jews--but they are killing them non-the-less. It's worse because it's a more slower process. A slower torture than gas. Arab women and children starving--slowly. Limited movement by everyone else who try to get food and water and shelter. The jews are merely operating in a more covert manner than the nazis. The rest of the world stands by and do nothing--because of some guilt-complex for having not done anything for thre jews during W.W.II. And the nazis not only exterminated jews, dave, they murdered gypsies, blacks, and everybody else not "white" enough. Israel is on a power-trip--just like the nazis. They believe military-might makes them right--just like the nazis. They ignore the call for peace-talks--just like the nazis. They will kill dozens in attempts to murder one--just like the nazis. They are experts when it comes to propaganda--just like the nazis. They have also committed war-crimes--just like the nazis (during the 1967 war). Quite comparable.
And as far as what happened in Rwanda, many like me spoke out, but I'm sure you were like most whites--you ignored it because they were black--just like the rest of the white world. And if it were not for the white europeans who were there and started this Tutsi/Hutu crap, and caused the genocide to happen, Rwanda would not have had to endured that horror. Speaking against something doesn't mean $hit if those who CAN so something just sit on their pale, flat white A$$E$! Face it--the U.S. and the rest of the white western world couldn't care less about "the fur people in Sudan".
Neither do you--dave. I can read it in your smarta$$ remark. it was only smirking, flappant, rhetorical waste.
Posted By: LogicalDave @ 05/20/2008 8:07:46 PM
Comment: You suggest that Palestinian extremism and intolerance came from Zionism, but it is hard to understand the extremism and intolerance that pre-dated modern Israel...or the butchery of the Fur people or Kurds at the hands of Arab states (with nary a whisper from the Islamic world). If you appeared more rational and less dogmatic you might be taken more seriously...neither Arabs nor Jews are all saints or all sinners...until we can look honestly at the issues on *both* sides, their conflict is doomed to continue. Have you ever wondered what the Israeli perspective is on these issues? Assume for a moment they are people just like you with families and friends and generally just want to live peacefully...do you think you might be able to work out a modus vivendi with such people? To understand each other's perspectives and fears and aspirations? Try it...you never know where it might lead...