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Don¹t make Israel the first casualty November 3, 2001 Efraim Karsh on the surprising ignorance of those who blame Jewish intransigence for the attack on the twin towers From the moment the dust settled over the ruins of the World Trade Center, Israel¹s perceived intransigence over the peace process has been presented as a root cause of the worst ever terrorist atrocity. Though this analysis is patently false (the Palestinian leadership itself has categorically rejected any such linkage), the Jewish state has come under intense international pressure to fulfil what are generally viewed as its obligations in accordance with UN resolutions. As the Palestinian Authority chairman, Yasser Arafat, stated after his meeting with Prime Minister Blair, ŒWe are not asking for the moon, only for the implementation of the relevant UN resolutions.¹ This would be a commendable position even ignoring the fact that the Palestinians themselves rejected all these resolutions when they were originally passed. But do the resolutions actually support the envisaged Palestinian solution to the conflict? And have the Palestinians been actively seeking their implementation during their peace negotiations with Israel over the past decade? Any fair-minded observer cannot but answer both questions in the negative. The foremost document used by the Palestinians to substantiate their call for Israel¹s complete withdrawal from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is Security Council Resolution 242 of 22 November 1967 (echoed six years later by Security Council Resolution 338). But this resolution does not demand Israel¹s complete evacuation of these territories but rather its withdrawal Œfrom territories occupied in the recent conflict¹. The absence of the definite article Œthe¹ from the text is anything but accidental. Issued a mere six months after Israel¹s astounding triumph over the concerted pan-Arab attempt to obliterate it, the resolution reflected the keen international awareness of the existential threat posed to the Jewish state by the pre-1967 borders, memorably described by the then Israeli foreign minister, Abba Eban, as ŒAuschwitz borders¹. Hence there was a general consensus among Security Council members that Israel could not and should not be asked to return to this line, but rather to a somewhat more favourable border that would be negotiated with its Arab neighbours. Nor does the resolution make any mention of the creation of a Palestinian state. To the contrary, since the Palestinians were widely viewed at the time as refugees rather than a cohesive nation deserving its own state, it was assumed that those territories that would be evacuated by Israel would return to their pre-1967 Arab occupiers: Gaza to Egypt, and the West Bank to Jordan. All the resolution had to say about the Palestinians was to affirm the necessity Œfor achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem¹. All this is, of course, water under the bridge. Egypt and Jordan have long washed their hands of these territories, and the creation of an independent Palestinian state seems the only realistic option to resolve the IsraeliPalestinian dispute. Yet, as explicitly noted by Resolution 242, the permanent boundaries between Israel and the prospective Palestinian state should not necessarily conform to the pre-1967 line but should rather be mutually agreed as part of a comprehensive settlement that would include Œthe termination of all claims or states of belligerency¹. This is precisely what Israel has been trying to achieve since the conclusion of the Oslo Accords in September 1993, especially during Ehud Barak¹s short-lived government. In line with these accords it has given the Palestinian Authority full control over the Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as some 40 per cent of the land, as a prelude to the final-status negotiations. Even if Israel were to make no further territorial concessions beyond this, it would still be observing the letter (though perhaps not the spirit) of Resolution 242. But then, during a span of six months, from the Camp David summit of July 2000 to the Taba talks before his crushing defeat in February 2001, Barak crossed every single territorial Œred line¹ upheld by previous Israeli governments in his frenzied quest for an agreement with the Palestinians. In doing so, he ceded virtually the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip to the nascent Palestinian state, together with some Israeli territory, and made breathtaking concessions over Israel¹s capital city of Jerusalem. As such, Barak¹s government was not only adopting a highly generous position over Resolution 242; it had also uncritically endorsed the Arab (mis)interpretation of this resolution as supposedly requiring Israel¹s complete withdrawal from the territories. Yet even this failed to satisfy the Palestinians. Rather than reciprocate Israel¹s sweeping comprehensive offer of land with a similarly generous offer of peace, the Palestinians responded with wholesale violence. At Taba the Palestinians also insisted, with renewed adamancy, on another condition that had been lying somewhat dormant in the background of the Oslo process. No peace would be possible, they declared, unless Israel guaranteed the right of the Arab refugees of the 1948 war, and their descendants, to return to territory that is now part of the state of Israel, and to be compensated financially for decades of privation and suffering, as allegedly stipulated in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of 11 December 1948. Yet a closer look at this resolution would easily reveal that it establishes no Œright of return¹ whatsoever. First, like all General Assembly resolutions (and unlike Security Council resolutions), it is an expression of sentiment and carries no binding force whatsoever. Second, its primary purpose was not to address the refugee problem but rather to create a Œconciliation commission¹ aimed at facilitating a comprehensive peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Only one of its 15 paragraphs alludes to refugees in general ‹ not ŒArab refugees¹ ‹ in language that could easily be applied to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were being driven from the Arab states in revenge for the situation in Palestine. Most importantly, far from recommending the return of the Palestinian refugees as the only viable solution, Resolution 194 put this particular option on a par with their resettlement elsewhere. It advocated, in its own words, that Œthe refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date¹, but also that efforts should be made to facilitate the Œresettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees¹. It was, indeed, just these clauses in Resolution 194 that, at the time, made it anathema to the Arabs, who opposed it vehemently and voted against it. Linking the resolution of the refugee issue to the achievement of a comprehensive ArabIsraeli peace, placing on the Arab states some of the burden for resolving it, equating return and resettlement as a possible solution, and diluting any preference for the former by means of the vague phrase Œat the earliest practicable date¹, and, above all, establishing no absolute Œright of return¹, the measure was seen, correctly, as less than useful for the Arab objective ‹ the destruction of the nascent Jewish state. It was only in the late 1960s that the Arabs began to transform the resolution into the cornerstone of a spurious legal claim to a Œright of return¹. Spurious not only because Resolution 194 in no way establishes any such right, but also because the very notion of this Œright¹ contradicts the essence of international law and behaviour. In 19489, the Palestinians and Arab states launched a war of aggression against the Jewish community and the newly proclaimed state of Israel, in the process driving from their territories hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews and seizing their worldly goods. Ever since, these same aggressors have been looking for a remedy that would undo the consequences of their own failed aggression. Imagine a defeated Nazi Germany demanding reparations from Britain and the United States, or Iraq demanding compensation for losses it suffered during the 1991 Gulf War. Both legally and morally, the idea is grotesque. All this means that Arafat¹s talk about the implementation of UN resolutions is not motivated by a desire for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, something that was virtually his to take last year. Rather it is a euphemism for a ŒGreater Palestine¹ built on Israel¹s ruins. This is the interpretation that the Arabs have consistently given to the Œright of return¹ in their political discourse since 1948 (albeit not when addressing Western audiences), and this is how the prominent Palestinian Œmoderate¹, Faisal al-Husseini, put it shortly before his untimely death last summer. Tactically Œwe may win or lose¹, he declared, Œbut our eyes will continue to aspire to the strategic goal, namely to Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea¹ ‹ that is, to a Palestine in place of Israel. ŒWhatever we get now,¹ he continued, Œcannot make us forget this supreme truth.¹ Western leaders, in their rush to impose these misconceptions on Israel, should not forget this Œsupreme truth¹ either. Professor Efraim Karsh is Head of Mediterranean Studies at King¹s College, University of London. The paperback edition of his latest book (with Inari Karsh), Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 17891923, is published by Harvard University Press. |
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