WORLD SEPTEMBER 28, 2011
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The Palestinians are in the process of seeking sovereignty from the United Nations, but in doing so, they are asking for more than what was offered them in any prior negotiation with Israel—including during the talks involving President Clinton and Ehud Barak in 2000 and 2001. Rather than more, it is imperative that the Palestinians get less.
It is imperative to world peace that the Palestinians pay a price—even if it’s only a symbolic price—for rejecting the generous Clinton/Barak offer and responding to it with a second intifada in which 4,000 people were killed. It is also important that Israel not return to the precise armistice lines that existed prior to the 1967 war. If the Palestinians were to achieve a return to the status quo prior to Jordan’s attack on Israel in June of 1967, then military aggression will not have been punished, it will have been rewarded. That’s why Security Council Resolution 242—which was essentially the peace treaty that resulted from the end of the Six Day War—intended for Israel to retain territory necessary to give it secure boundaries (Indeed, in the formal application submitted by Abbas, he sought membership based on UN General Assembly Resolution 1810-11 of November 29, 1947, which would put the borders where they were before the Arab armies invaded the new Jewish state in 1948. This would reward multiple aggressions.)
Yet, however important it is that aggressive and unjustified violence not be rewarded, the international community seems bent on doing just that. If the end result of Jordan’s 1967 attack on Israel—an attack supported by the Palestinian leadership and participated in by Palestinian soldiers—is that the Palestinians get back everything Jordan lost, there will be no disincentive to comparable military attacks around the world. If the Palestinians get more than, or even as much as, they rejected in 2000 and 2001 (and did not accept in 2007), then further intifadas with mass casualties will be encouraged. A price must be paid for violence. That’s how the laws of war are supposed to work and there is no reason to make an exception in the case of the Palestinians.
I support a two-state solution based on negotiation and mutual compromise. But the negotiations must not begin where previous offers, which were not accepted, left off. They must take into account how we got to the present situation: The Arab rejection of the UN partition plan and the attack on the new Jewish state that resulted in the death of one percent of Israel’s population; the attack by Jordan and its Palestinian soldiers against Israel in 1967, which resulted in Israel’s capture of the West Bank; Israel’s offer to trade captured land for peace that was rejected at Khartoum with the three infamous “no’s”—no peace, no recognition, no negotiation; Israel’s generous offer of statehood in 2000-2001 that was answered by violence; and Olmert’s subsequent, even more generous, offer that was not accepted by President Abbas.
Efforts to achieve peace must look forward but they must not forget the past. A balance must be struck between not rewarding past violence and not creating unreasonable barriers to a future peace. But the Palestinians made it clear last week that they reject such balance.
I was at the United Nations on Friday when President Abbas made his speech demanding full recognition of Palestine as a state with the borders as they existed just before the Jordanians and Palestinians attacked Israel. In other words he wants a “do over.” He wants the nations that attacked Israel to suffer no consequences for their attempt to destroy the Jewish State. He wants to get back The Western Wall, The Jewish Quarter, and the access road to Hebrew University. Only then will he begin negotiations from this position of strength. But why then negotiate if the UN gives him more than he can possibly get through negotiation? Will he be in a position to seek less from Israel than what the UN gave him? Will he survive if he is seen as less Palestinian than the UN? Abbas blamed Israel for the self-inflicted wound the Palestinians cynically call the Nakba (the catastrophe). He denied the Jewish history of the land of Israel and he quoted with approval his terrorist predecessor Arafat. He refused to acknowledge Israel’s legitimate security needs. Abbas’s message, in sum, left little or no room for further compromise.
I also sat in the General Assembly as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to begin negotiations with Abbas, with absolutely no preconditions, in New York, at the United Nations, that very day. He said he would come to Ramallah to negotiate with him or keep the door of his Jerusalem office open. He did not even require as a precondition to negotiations that the Palestinians acknowledge what the UN recognized in 1947—namely, that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Although many in the international communities and on the editorial pages of newspapers claim that Abbas wants to negotiate a two-state solution, while Netanyahu has refused to do so, the truth was on full and open display at the General Assembly on Friday: Netanyahu wants to negotiate a peace now, whereas Abbas wants to win recognition from the United Nations before any negotiations begin. As Netanyahu put it: “Let’s stop negotiating about negotiating and let’s just start negotiating right now.”
If the Palestinians accept Netanyahu’s offer to negotiate a peaceful two-state solution, it will get a real state on the ground—a state that Israel, the United States, and the rest of the international community will recognize. It will not be on the pre-1967 borders because the Palestinians are not entitled to such borders and because such borders are not conducive to peace, but it will be close. The Palestinians will get a viable state and Israel will get a secure state.
If, on the other hand, the UN were to reward nearly a century of Palestinian rejectionism and violence by simply turning the clock back to 1967 (or 1947), it will be encouraging more cost-free rejectionism and violence. The Palestinians must pay a price for the thousands of lives their rejectionism and violence have caused. The price must not be so heavy as to preclude peace, but it must be heavy enough to deter war.
Alan Dershowitz is a professor at Harvard Law School.
20 comments
And shall the international community reward Israel's continuing violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention with its illegal settlements? Human rights are not based on which state entity committed the last violation. They are enduring. Israel is entitled to secure borders, and to adequate security arrangements to make secure borders that inherently cannot be absent complete annexation of the West Bank, the one-state solution rejected by Israel in 1947 (see Judis today). Israel is not entitled to borders that legitimize its illegal theft of Palestinians' land, land secured to them by the UN partition plan on which Israel's existence is based, the Fourth Geneva Convention to which Israel is a signatory, and a multitude of UN resolutions, including 242, that Israel has been ignoring for decades, not to mention its commitments at Oslo and under the Road Map. There is no reason for the international community to ignore its entire legal order and reward Israeli perfidy at the expense of the Palestinians. Israel does not have clean hands. Dershowitz is a lousy lawyer, and tendentious advocate, when he chooses to be. Today is such a day. He can say literally anything with a straight face and has, often, if one pays attention to his defenses of some of his more odious clients.
- roidubouloi
September 28, 2011 at 8:08am
roidubouloi says it all.
- NR851651
September 28, 2011 at 8:18am
Perhaps Dershowitz can explain the ethical and legal logic behind punishing the Palestinian residents of the West Bank (even symbolically) for the actions of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and other nations in attacking Israel in '67 and '73. This is complete nonsense from, as Roi points out, tendentious hack.
- IowaBeauty
September 28, 2011 at 8:36am
Dershowitz is correct: no do-overs. no more whining. If Abbas is so unhappy, he should do the entire world a big favor and move to Somalia (who else would take him? - certainly not Jordan or Egypt), while the UN considers self-determinition for Kurdistan and Tibet and Kashmir, and the already self-governing breakaway province of Somaliland. In fact, the UN should spend all their time forcing the African Union to stop enshrining all those colonial borders that continues to plague so much of Africa.
- K2K
September 28, 2011 at 10:10am
Sorry, roi, you are simply babbling. Bib has made the best offer possible -- direct negotiaions across the table. Why do you think that's a bad idea? I believe that I know why Abbas and the other arab leaders think that's a bad idea. Because they don't want peace to succeed. They think that with growing populations and expanding wealth and weaponry, they have no interest in ending the century of fighting since they see that the present situation will give them ultimate victory, which is to say destruction of Israel and expulsion of the Jews just as we have been expelled from Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt, and just as Palestinian law today makes it a capital crime to sell land to a Jew. I had some sense of that long before the 1967 war, when I had an arab roommate. He and his friends all hated Israel, wanted it destroyed. I'm sure if still alive, they still do, as do the Palestinian leaders, regardless of what they say. The only thing stopping them is a strong Israel with, yes, nuclear capability. No one talks about that -- bad form -- but that's what it comes down to.
- PeteBeck
September 28, 2011 at 10:14am
Israel can make peace and keep it's nuclear weapons, the IDF, and require conditions that assure Palestine is not a military threat. It is not content with security; it demands Palestinian land to which it has no claim in international law. Otherwise, it would comply with that law, suspend its construction in occupied territory at which point then Palestinians would be out to the test. Israel's behavior is consistent with onlybone thesis: it seeks to be vas provocative as necessary to obstruct negotiations while doing what it can to avoid blame. It convinces only then US, and not Obama at that. You have a strange idea of babbling if you think my post is anything other than a concise refutation of Derhowitz's phony claims to concern for the system of international law. His hypocrisy, typical of Dershowitz in so much of his public writing, is laid bare in a few lines. Do you have trouble following along, Pete?
- roidubouloi
September 28, 2011 at 10:41am
"Perhaps Dershowitz can explain the ethical and legal logic behind punishing the Palestinian residents of the West Bank (even symbolically) for the actions of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and other nations in attacking Israel in '67 and '73." Did you read the following: an attack supported by the Palestinian leadership and participated in by Palestinian soldiers Your question is like asking why Americans should pay a price for the actions of the Bush Administration.
- sighthnd
September 28, 2011 at 11:06am
sightnd: if I could be so bold, I think the key to Iowa's point is that the attacks on Israel - while, yes, supported by Palestinians at the time - were 38 and 44 years ago respectively. If you temporarily put aside all other arguments - meaningful, to be sure - and simply focus on the statement "Israel is punishing the Palestinian residents of the West Bank", you must come to realize who they're punishing are the children and grandchildren of those that participated in the attacks. Should we continue to seek revenge against the Japanese? The question is rhetorical and admittedly more than a bit ridiculous... but then so is the idea of continuing to repress and alienate a group of people who's sin appears to be having been born the children of the children of the people who sided with the hateful regimes who wanted Israel wiped off the map.
- Tristan
September 28, 2011 at 12:23pm
I share Dershowitz's sympathies and inclinations on these issues but agree that the argument from the cost of war-- "The Palestinians must pay a price for the thousands of lives their rejectionism and violence have caused"--others, too, make this argument--isn't helpful. The issue is not the inapposite analogizing from the deterrence aims of criminal law sentencing policy.The way to a pragmatic two state solution that may emerge must be responsive to Palestinian aspiration and to Israeli security and should reject this argument as a principle of negotiation.
- basman
September 28, 2011 at 1:10pm
"It will not be on the pre-1967 borders because the Palestinians are not entitled to such borders and because such borders are not conducive to peace, but it will be close. The Palestinians will get a viable state and Israel will get a secure state." I've been reading that for nearly twenty years while the settlements grow and grow and grow.
- IggyPop
September 28, 2011 at 2:39pm
But the are entitled to such borders, modified by the legitimate needs of security only, because it is all, outside of Jerusalem, part of the Arab partition.
- roidubouloi
September 28, 2011 at 2:44pm
"You have a strange idea of babbling if you think my post is anything other than a concise refutation of Derhowitz's phony claims to concern for the system of international law. His hypocrisy, typical of Dershowitz in so much of his public writing, is laid bare in a few lines. Do you have trouble following along, Pete?" Roi,I have no trouble following along, but I still see your words as babble, hardly what you describe as a "concise refutation." Words like "hyprocrisy" and "laid bare in a few lines" are mere noises in the air. The fact is that "international law" is unclear on the subject. All nations have a right to defend themselves against systematic attacks, which in large measure what the settlements are all about. Also, under international law, there is absolutely no ownership of the West Bank. It had been claimed by Jordan, which abandoned the claim more than 20 years ago, and so the question of who has the right to settle there is open. Do you think that "internatinal law" says that Jews have no right to live in areas in near Jerusalem and that they must continue to negotiate in good faith with a party that refuses to even come to face to face meetings and which has not renounced the use of terrorism and violence? If so, your notions of "international law" are exactly as I have described them -- babble. The situation on the ground in and around the West Bank can only be solved by honest negotiations between the PA and Israel. Your notions and mine about "international law" -- whatever that is -- are irrelevant. The essential reason that your words are mere babble is that "law" -- any kind of law -- is something that is enforceable against parties -- nation states -- who are bound by it. Moreover, it is the law of relations between nations -- and if you think tha the PA is the government of a nation in any sense of the word and if you think that on an ongoing basis it sees itself as bound by the rule of law (international or otherwise) you really are confused, ergo writing "babble."
- PeteBeck
September 28, 2011 at 3:18pm
IowaBeauty "Perhaps Dershowitz can explain the ethical and legal logic behind punishing the Palestinian residents of the West Bank (even symbolically) for the actions of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and other nations in attacking Israel in '67 and '73. This is complete nonsense from, as Roi points out, tendentious hack." Perhaps you should read some history of the 1947-1948. The conflict was actually started by the Palestinian Arabs who attacked Jews in the country. Later a number of Arab countries invaded the nascent State of Israel.
- arnon
September 28, 2011 at 3:27pm
The Fourth Geneva Convention does not permit settlement of occupied territory "in punishment," and UN resolutions do not permit Israel unilaterally to annex occupied territory. If Israel thinks it has a case against the Palestinians, it should take its case to the International Court of Justice. So far, the rulings of that court make clear that the settlement is illegal. Even the Israeli justice agreed with that conclusion. Babble to you, Pete, because you are an ignoramus. You know nothing at all of what you speak. You think international law is what you declare it to be or want it to be. But it isn't. The responsibilities of Israel under the Fourth Geneva Convention are quite clear. It cannot settle occupied territory, including territory legally occupied in the exercise of its right of self-defense. There is no question as to the status of the West Bank as occupied because even Israel maintains it explicitly under military occupation government. Israel cannot annex the land without violating resolution 242 and without quickly finding itself guilty of the crime of apartheid (unless that is it wants to grant all the Palestinians Israeli citizenship. It doesn't matter whether the Palestinians ever make peace on the terms that Israel demands -- the legitimation of its illegal settlements. Israel still cannot settle the occupied territory. Indeed, all that Israel is entitled to do in the occupied territory is that which is necessary to its security. It is not entitled to burden the political or economic life of the occupied territory beyond what is reasonably, or at least plausibly, necessary for its security no matter how long it remains occupied. Israel is bound by the Fourth Geneva Convention because it is a nation-state party to it. As noted above, the International Court of Justice, in the context of the case about the security wall, has already concluded that Israeli settlement is illegal. Even the Israeli justice, who dissented from part of the opinion, concluded that to the extent that the barrier was designed to defend illegal settlements, it was illegal. Doubtless you think the Fourth Geneva Convention, the resolutions of the Security Council, and the opinions of the International Court of Justice are babble. But you see, Pete, to understand something about international law, including what it is and how it operates, you need to have read some and be sufficiently well educated to understand what you read. You have achieved neither. Doesn't keep you from babbling on in ignorance though. You do that quite well.
- roidubouloi
September 28, 2011 at 5:26pm
I should have added that honest negotiations with the State of Israel are impossible, because Israel holds the Palestinians hostage, not to the legitimate claims of its own security, but to its demand that the Palestinians legitimate Israel's illegal acts. Quite clearly Palestinian statehood does not depend on negotiation with Israel. It depends on international recognition. It can be recognized as a state and yet be occupied by Israel. As a state, Palestine will then have full recourse to international political and legal institutions to force Israel out of the occupied territory. Hence, Pete, your claim that the "situation" can only be resolved be negotiation between Israel and the PA falls apart. The situation might be resolved by negotiation between the State of Israel and the State of Palestine. Or it might be resolved by the intervention in one form or another of the UN. We shall see. The claim that only negotiations with Israel can lead to a solution and Palestinian statehood is but more tendentious propaganda advanced for the purpose of facilitating Israel's tactic of holding the Palestinians hostage until they legitimate Israel's illegal settlements and abandon the claims of refugees. It is that tactic, and only that tactic, that is served by trying to prevent the Palestinians from declaring their state.
- roidubouloi
September 28, 2011 at 5:36pm
Roi, I will happily match my education -- legal and otherwise -- and experience in law and business and local politics against yours any day. And your intemperate insults only point up the shallowness of your "know it all" essentially dumb thinking. Enough -- as I recall you were the idiot who thought it is OK for the Fed to cash Treasury checks in violation of the debt limit. Your boilerplate and mindless comments about international law and your dumb insults of Dershowitz and anyone else who disagrees with you show what a silly dork you are. Nuf said.
- PeteBeck
September 28, 2011 at 6:01pm
Nice try, Pete, but you're still an ignoramus. And, no, if you matched your education, experience or pretty much anything else with me, you would be the sure loser -- as clearly evidenced by your display of ignorance here. But, I don't really want to bother. Because the fundamental truth about you is that you are just an self-important asshole, without a useful thought to convey about anything. Mindless thoughts about international law? Try explaining that to the Israeli justice on the ICJ, you putz. Or at the very least read his opinion before shooting off your mouth. Then when you comment, you can at least pretend to know something. So far, it is obvious that you don't. My patience for your stupidity is completely exhausted. Nuf said.
- roidubouloi
September 28, 2011 at 10:55pm
I do recall that you could neither read nor understand the law or the nature of the arguments with respect to the debt limit either. Pure amateur hour. And boy was it tedious having to explain to you in simple terms the relationships between the various statutory provisions and the different arms of government engaged with monetary policy. Is there anything you do know about, Pete? Please share. Now that is really enough said.
- roidubouloi
September 28, 2011 at 11:05pm
As I am reminded by other posters, in the spirit of both Rosh Hashanah and standards of reasonable public behavior, I acknowledge that it was I who opened the door to the extreme abuse heaped on me by roi. And so, to both roi and to those who may have seen that our back and forth was inappropriate for this forum, please accept my honestly sincere apologies. As for the merits of the back and forth, I just note what I should have said earlier -- a mechanical application of some words of "international law" which results in a manifestly unjust result is contrary to both the purposes of international law and the peaceful resolution of disputes by non-violent means.
- PeteBeck
September 29, 2011 at 12:20pm
I agree with the author's comments, but was surprised by the poor quality of his writing. For instance, consider the phrase an attack supported by the Palestinian leadership and participated in by Palestinian soldiers. Perhaps the editors at TNR are reluctant to wield their red pen against a colleague of publisher Marty Peretz, or maybe they are simply cowed by the author's reputation. Still...
- escott
October 1, 2011 at 11:27pm