[Peace-discuss] Recognize Israel?

[C. G. Estabrook]

At a dinner party the other evening a senior member of the local  
faculty observed, "There would be no problem at the UN if the  
Palestinians would simply recognize Israel. But the Hamas charter  
calls for the destruction of the Jewish state."

Noam Chomsky comments as follows (Counterpunch, June 6, 2008):

"Hamas cannot recognize Israel any more than Kadima can recognize  
Palestine, or than the Democratic Party in the US can recognize  
England. One could ask whether a government led by Hamas should  
recognize Israel, or whether a government led by Kadima or the  
Democratic Party should recognize Palestine. So far they have all  
refused to do so, though Hamas has at least called for a two-state  
settlement in accord with the long-standing international consensus,  
while Kadima and the Democratic Party refuse to go that far, keeping  
to the rejectionist stance that the US and Israel have maintained for  
over 30 years in international isolation. As for words, when Prime  
Minister Olmert declares to a joint session of the US Congress that he  
believes 'in our people's eternal and historic right to this entire  
land,' to rousing applause, he is presumably referring not only to  
Palestine from the Jordan to the sea, but also to the other side of  
the Jordan river, the historic claim of the Likud Party that was his  
political home, a claim never formally abandoned, to my knowledge. On  
Hamas, I think it should abandon those provisions of its charter, and  
should move from acceptance of a two-state settlement to mutual  
recognition, though we must bear in mind that its positions are more  
forthcoming than those of the US and Israel."

And on the  "one-state vs. two-states solution":

"We have to make a distinction between proposal and advocacy. We can  
propose that everyone should live in peace. It becomes advocacy when  
we sketch out a realistic path from here to there. A one-state  
solution makes little sense, in my opinion, but a bi-national state  
does. It was possible to advocate such a settlement from 1967 to the  
mid-1970s, and in fact I did, in many writings and talks, including a  
book. The reaction was mostly fury. After Palestinian national rights  
entered the international agenda in the mid-1970s, it has remained  
possible to advocate bi-nationalism (and I continue to do so), but  
only as a process passing through intermediate stages, the first being  
a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus.  
That outcome, probably the best that can be envisioned in the short  
term, was almost reached in negotiations in Taba in January 2001, and  
according to participants, could have been reached had the  
negotiations not been prematurely terminated by Israeli Prime Minister  
Barak. That was the one moment in the past 30 years when the two  
leading rejectionist states did briefly consider joining the  
international consensus, and the one time when a diplomatic settlement  
seemed within sight. Much has changed since 2001, but I do not see any  
reason to believe that what was apparently within reach then is  
impossible today. It is of some interest, and I think instructive,  
that proposals for a 'one-state solution' are tolerated within the  
mainstream today, unlike the period when advocacy was indeed feasible  
and they were anathema. Today they are published in the New York  
Times, New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. One can only conclude  
that they are considered acceptable today because they are completely  
unfeasible -- they remain proposal, not advocacy. In practice, the  
proposals lend support to US-Israeli rejectionism, and undermine the  
only feasible advocacy of a bi-national solution, in stages."

--CGE
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