[Peace-discuss] Recognize Israel? (cont.)

Wed Sep 28 11:55:13 CDT 2011

"Today there are two options for Palestinians. One is US-Israeli  
abandonment of their rejectionist stance, and a settlement roughly  
along the lines of what was being approached at Taba. The other option  
is continuation of current policies, which lead, inexorably, to  
incorporation into Israel of what it wants: at least, Greater  
Jerusalem, the areas within the Separation Wall (now an Annexation  
Wall), the Jordan Valley, and the salients through Ma'aleh Adumim and  
Ariel and beyond that effectively trisect what remains, which will be  
broken up into unviable cantons by huge infrastructure projects,  
hundreds of check points, and other devices to ensure that  
Palestinians live like dogs.

"There are those who believe that Palestinians should simply let  
Israel take over the West Bank completely and then carry out a civil  
rights/anti-Apartheid style struggle. That is an illusion, however.  
There is no reason why the US-Israel would accept the premises of this  
proposal. They will simply proceed along the lines now being  
implemented, and will not accept any responsibility for Palestinians  
who are scattered outside the regions they intend to incorporate into  
Israel."

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20080606.htm

On Sep 28, 2011, at 11:46 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> 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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