Amos Oz - The Slopes of Lebanon

The non-Zionist Left is equally enslaved by dogmatism: not only does it accept most of the PLO’s positions, in large part it endorses the PLO and identifies with it. As a result, it has no chance to influence.

So it is the Zionist Left that must be involved in achieving peace between us and Palestine — on the condition that Israel’s security is guaranteed. We must make peace, but we must not start hugging the PLO with songs of praise.

Rivers of pain, grief, and anger are dividing Israelis and Palestinians. Let us not forget that for sixty years the Palestinian national movement maintained a policy of genocide against the Israeli Jews (“Idbach al Yahud!”—“Butcher the Jew!”). Until very recently it officially called for the destruction of Israel as a nation-state. Now it has abandoned (only verbally, perhaps) its demand for Israel’s destruction. We should not underestimate the importance of verbal changes (indeed, every historical change of heart is always heralded by a verbal change). Yet the dovish Left must retain its perspective. The issue is making peace with a deadly enemy, not because deep down under his wolf’s clothing he is actually a lamb, but precisely because he is a deadly enemy who now says he is ready to talk peace. We must pursue the possibilities with caution and sobriety, not with an outburst of sentimentality.

The issue is the partition of the land between its two peoples, a position which political Zionism had endorsed on numerous occasions in the past. Only with the rise of the Begin government to power in 1977 did Israel withdraw this proposal. We must reassert it in principle, while formulating our terms for such a partition: no foreign army must ever enter the territories from which Israel withdraws. If it does, this ought to be regarded as a violation of the peace treaty. The government in those territories should be held accountable for any form of attack or harassment into Israel. There must be a strong commitment to refrain from entering into military alliances with other powers. Any breach of such a commitment will be regarded as a just cause for military action by Israel. The Israeli Left ought to be the first to demand action if peace is violated by the Palestinians once they have their own homeland.

There is no room for moral agonizing about Israel’s claims for border restrictions in areas thinly populated by Arabs, since it is almost certain that one day Palestine and Trans-Jordan will be a single nation whose territory will be five or six times greater than the territory of Israel. If, in the meantime, Palestine feels crowded, let it present some territorial demands to the Kingdom of Jordan, where two-thirds of the population is Palestinian anyway, and where there is plenty of empty land.

Immediately after peace is made between Israel and Palestine, Israel must grant and guarantee full equality for Israeli Arab citizens: equal rights, equal obligations, which includes military service and reserve duty with the IDF. Israeli Arabs will have to choose, freely and unambiguously, if they want to be Israelis in Israel, Palestinians in Palestine, or Palestinian citizens residing in Israel.

In the framework of a peace treaty, it would be possible to offer a parallel, symmetrical choice to the Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. They, in turn, will have to choose between becoming Palestinian citizens, or going to Israel, or remaining where they are as Israelis residing in Palestine.

The “target audience” of the Zionist Left, the public whose reason and emotion we must affect, are not the moderate Palestinians. First and foremost, we ought to address ourselves to those Israelis who distrust the Arabs and fear that peace is a trap. We ought to converse with these Israelis without condescension or deprecation.

Let us, then, put less energy into all those asymmetrical meetings between members of the Zionist Left and their Palestinian partners in dialogue, meetings which always result in joint condemnations of the Israeli occupation, and let us, instead, focus our energies on talking with the Israelis who are suspicious of the PLO and who fear the establishment of a Palestinian state under any conditions. Such a dialogue will be fruitful only if the Zionist Left takes these suspicions and fears seriously. We must present a responsible and persuasive answer to the legitimate “hawkish” fear that “After Nablus and Gaza, those Arabs will want Jaffa and Haifa.”

A recent poll indicates that fifty-four percent of the Jewish population in Israel is willing, under the right conditions, to negotiate even with the PLO. This means that tens of thousands of Likud voters and hundreds of thousands of Labor voters are ready to talk to the PLO. So, many voters supported the Likud not in order to prevent an Israel-PLO dialogue but because they assumed that it was preferable to have the Likud, rather than the Left, do business with Arafat. Perhaps because they fear that the Left might “sell its grandmother to the Arabs.”

In the Palestinian world there is no counterpart to the Israeli intelligentsia, which is willing to enter into sharp confrontation with the Establishment and its prevailing ideologies. My intention here is not to assign low marks to the Palestinian people or to its intelligentsia but to emphasize that the Israeli intelligentsia must work to bring the statesmen to the bargaining table rather than attempt to negotiate in place of the statesmen: there is no point in negotiation between Israeli intellectuals and official or unofficial representatives of the PLO. This is not Vietnam, and there is no point in trying to imitate the gesture Jane Fonda made then (and now regrets). This is a war between Israel and the Arab world (which includes the Palestinians) — not a war between the Arabs and the Israeli Writers Association. It is not the Writers Association which must make peace with Palestine. The job of the intelligentsia is to persuade the majority of the nation that the policy makers ought to sit down and talk business with Mr. Arafat.

Israel has no legitimate and recognized leadership other than that of Yitzhak Shamir’s government. One may find this regrettable, but there is no point in deluding the Palestinians that they can avoid the necessity of direct discussions with that government. Nor is there any value in “literary” peace treaties between oppositionist Israeli artists and Palestinian artists who are, almost always, a part of the PLO establishment.

In short, the Israeli intelligentsia must conduct neither a monologue with itself nor a dialogue with Palestinians. It must press, first and foremost, for an opening in the wall of resistance of those Israelis who are suspicious and fearful of peace.

It is both false and foolish to represent the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy as a civil rights campaign. The Palestinians are not our dark-skinned citizens suffering from discrimination. They are a neighboring nation, a defeated and conquered enemy. Arafat is not Martin Luther King. The academic freedom of Bir Zeit University is not the source of the tragedy nor the focus of it. Israel entered Nablus and Gaza in 1967 because of a real and immediate threat to its existence. We did not enter Nablus and Gaza in order to suspend people’s civil rights or in order to shower them with civil rights. Once there is peace, we will pull out regardless of the status of civil rights there. The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had very few rights before we entered, and we can assume, regretfully, that they will not have much freedom, either, after we are gone.

The name of the game is not equalizing or integrating Palestinians and Israelis. The name of the game is a two-state solution. We owe the Palestinians one and only one right: the right to self-determination. Until that materializes, we must, of course, be alert and respond to any unconscionable acts that may be committed by the Israeli military government or by Jewish settlers on the West Bank and Gaza.