Amos Oz - The Slopes of Lebanon

Claiming that the Palestinians are entitled to self-determination once Israel’s peace and security are guaranteed, the Zionist Left doesn’t need to depict them as the “good guys” of the conflict, or to elevate them to the status of pure and innocent victims. There is certainly no reason to echo and defend every bit of nonsense or malevolence uttered by Palestinian leaders. Self-determination is not a prize awarded for good behavior. (If only good and righteous peoples, with a “clean record,” deserved self-determination, we would have to suspend, starting at midnight tonight, the sovereignty of three-quarters of the nations of the world, beginning with both Germanys and Austria.) The Israeli Zionist Left errs when it tries to persuade the rest of the nation that the Palestinians are the underdog, that they’re not really all that bad, that they don’t really mean what they say and do, that deep down in their hearts they’re nice and sweet and peace-loving.

We must not grant a “moral certificate” to the Palestinian national movement. By the same token, the deep soul-searching about the moral nature of our nationalism is not the business of the Palestinians, and we do not ask Arafat to convince his people that Israel is just and deserving of sovereignty. The matter is not one of gradations of morality, but of the decision of two enemies to choose life.

In order to persuade peace-fearing Israelis — but, even more, for the sake of its own integrity — the dovish Left must make a moral, ideological, and emotional commitment: to take up arms, to be the first to take up arms, if, after the establishment of a Palestinian state, the Palestinians try to implement what they call the “phase-by-phase strategy” by means of terror, military provocations against Israel, or the incitement of Israeli Arabs.

Spokespeople for the Zionist Left must be the first to condemn any Palestinian statement, issued in Arabic “for internal consumption,” that calls for the destruction of Israel, such as that uttered by Arafat’s second-in-command, Abu Iyad, less than a week after America’s recognition of the PLO. According to Abu Iyad’s statement, broadcast in Kuwait, an Arab state in Palestine is only the first step on the road to a completely Arab Palestine.

The Left should not leave condemnation of such statements to the Right. It should not squirm in an attempt to explain that Abu Iyad didn’t really mean it, was misunderstood, had a deprived childhood, doesn’t really represent anyone, or has no real command of Arabic….

Inasmuch as the Labor Party, under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin, does not appear to be committed to making peace, the Zionist Left will have to reach out to the hearts of hundreds of thousands of Labor voters and tens of thousands of Likud voters and try to convince them that there is no substitute for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, and that the time has come to examine what is true and what is false in the PLO’s new policy. This can be done by means of direct negotiation between Israel and the PLO. To open such negotiations, we ought to change minds in Israel itself. This cannot be done by insulting the hawks, scandalizing or infuriating them.

We would do well to separate the struggle for Israeli-Palestinian peace from other important issues. It is not wise to offer peace to the Israeli public as one part of a package deal that includes public transportation on the Sabbath, the abolishment of censorship, or the rights of nude sunbathers. There is no reason to tie the issue of peace to matters that many Israelis consider unacceptable for religious, moral, or bourgeois reasons. The correlation of peace with issues of “permissiveness” furthers neither the cause of peace nor of individual rights.

Achieving peace takes priority over the other battles that the intelligentsia is fighting. It may also affect the outcome of those other battles.

The arena is not Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. It is the neighborhoods of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. More precisely, it may be not the central square of Tel Aviv but the development towns.

The battle is not a “defense” of the Palestinians or support of their cause. Rather, we should emphasize the necessity, the logic of the partition of the land between its two peoples, and the advantages and benefits it will bring. We must recognize that Israeli gut anger at Palestinian “behavior” is at least as understandable, human, and legitimate as Palestinian anger at us. In short, we are talking about peacemaking, not a honeymoon: Make Peace, Not Love….

In light of recent polls, perhaps the time has arrived for the leadership of the struggle for peace to pass from the hands of the intellectuals — writers, artists, professors, and journalists — to other people. As long as the dovish intelligentsia was a voice crying in the wilderness, it played a courageous and pioneering role in the struggle for mutual recognition and peace between the two peoples. But since the basic recognition of the existence of two peoples and the need to talk with the PLO is now accepted by a majority of the Jews, the intelligentsia would do well to turn the cockpit of the peace movement over to other components of Israeli society — and the sooner the better. Continued identification of the cause of peace with writers, artists, and professors, as though it were their private concern, may be disastrous to peace as well as to that selfsame intelligentsia.

Although the Right will probably reject the following proposal, the Left ought to offer it as a basis for a national dialogue: Let the Right soften its position regarding talks with the PLO and compromise between the two peoples, and the Left will solemnly pledge itself to defend the borders of peace and see to the implementation of every last clause and comma in the peace treaty. In spite of the labels attached to us, we are not a “pacifist” Left nor are we doves who “turn the other cheek.” We are Israeli patriots who believe that peace is not only necessary but also possible. And when the day comes that our swords are beaten into plowshares, we will make sure that it is not only Israeli swords that are so recycled.

Yediot Aharonot, December 30, 1988

WHEN A DEMILITARIZED Palestine is established alongside Israel and is at peace with us, it will be a country whose area is one-fifth the size of Albania and whose population is smaller than that of Kuwait. Every part of its territory will be within firing range of conventional Israeli weapons.

How then can we explain the murky, primeval fear that the idea of creating such a Palestinian state inspires in the hearts of even rational Israelis? How explain the amazing fact that Israel would rather fight another ferocious war, and another, and yet another, against all of the Arab states — including Iraq with its fifty battle-hardened divisions, Syria with its hundreds of new fighter planes and thousands of tanks, and Saudi Arabia with its monumental arms stockpiles and endless resources — than make peace with a tiny Palestine? Israel behaves as though it is ready to withstand a protracted conflict against the entire Moslem world, against the entire Third World, against the Communist Bloc, the European Common Market, and perhaps even, one day, the United States — as long as it does not have to coexist with a tiny Palestine. Sometimes it seems that Israel is willing to suffer a deep internal rift that may destroy the willingness of half its citizenry to fight, rather than tolerate a two-state solution; to do anything to avoid living next to a fifth of Albania or half of Kuwait — and even that, only on condition that Palestine be demilitarized and free of foreign armies.

How can we understand this lunatic phenomenon: Israel prepared to take on the whole world in order to prevent the danger of peace with a neighbor whose actual dimensions are going to be municipal, almost? Mr. Israeli, so it seems, is brave enough to challenge the whole world — and cowardly enough to fear a coexistence with a “pocket Palestine.” Heard on a bus: “This George Bush is a big hero inside his White House. Let’s see what he’s like when he tangles with us.” And, on another occasion: “If Arafat gets Kalkilya, he’ll be in Tel Aviv within ten minutes.”