Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state
Aug 27th, 2009 by MESH
From Robert O. Freedman
In his June 2009 Bar-Ilan University speech, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asserted that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” was one of Israel’s requirements for agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Both Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat,immediately rejected the requirement. However, if there is to be a long-lasting peace between Israel and a Palestinian state, Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is a necessity.
Palestinians have three official objections to Israel being recognized as a Jewish state, as well as a fourth objection about which they do not speak openly, but which lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The three official objections are as follows:
- It is not the task of the Palestinians to determine the nature of the Israeli state, but that of the Israelis.
- Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state would jeopardize the position of the Israeli Arabs, who form 20 percent of the Israeli population.
- Israel did not demand recognition as a “Jewish state” in its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.
The fourth Palestinian objection—which they do not assert openly lest it destroy the chances for a peace treaty with Israel—is that many Palestinians simply do not accept the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism (Zionism). For the Palestinians, and for many other Arabs as well, a Jew is defined by religion, not nationality or ethnicity, and given the position of Jews as dhimmis, or second-class religious subjects in Muslim history, the Palestinians feel that Jews have no right to be rulers, let alone rule over what they consider Muslim territory.
These attitudes, partially latent during the heyday of the Oslo peace process (1993-2000), were reinforced by the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which transformed what had been a conflict between two peoples over the same piece of territory into a religious war between Muslims and Jews, and which greatly strengthened Hamas in the process. Indeed both Hamas and non-Hamas religious leaders stressed that the Palestinians were fighting the Jews, just as Muhammad had fought the Jews who they allied with his enemies as he sought to unite the Arabian Peninsula under the banner of Islam.
What the Palestinians—and other Arabs—fail to understand is that Zionism arose as a national movement among Jews in Europe in the 19th century. Very much influenced by the national unification movements of Germany and Italy (as were the Arab nationalists of the time), as well as by the increasingly precarious position of the Jews in Eastern Europe who were beset by pogroms in Czarist Russia, Zionist thinkers such as Hess, Lilienblum and Herzl asserted that just as the French had France, the Germans had Germany and the Italians had Italy, the Jews deserved a state of their own where they could lead a “normal, national life,” and the ancient Jewish homeland of Israel, then occupied by the Ottoman Empire, was chosen as the site of the future Jewish state. To be sure, the land which the Zionists wanted was already populated by Arabs; however, the Arabs who lived there at the end of the 19th century had not yet developed a national identity (that was come during the British mandate of 1922-48), and at the time primary saw themselves as Muslims or Christians, or as “Southern Syrians” or as Ottoman subjects.
This being the case, one can respond to the Palestinian reasons for not recognizing Israel as a “Jewish state” in the following manner:
- While the Israelis alone can and should define the nature of their state, as the existential nature of the state is a central factor in the conflict (unlike, for example, the conflicts between France and Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries), then Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish State becomes central to ending the conflict.
- There are many minorities in the Middle East, and the often negative treatment of these minorities, whether religious (such as the Copts in Egypt and the Shi’a in Saudi Arabia) or national (such as the Kurds in Turkey and the Azeris) is, in fact, linked to the nature of the country in which they live. However these minorities could be protected by treaty arrangements (currently they are not, although Turkey has begun the process of trying to address its Kurds’ aspirations)—so long as they swear allegiance to the state. Indeed, should a Palestinian state which recognizes Israel as a “Jewish state” emerge, that could make it easier for Israeli Arabs to solve their own identity problems, which have become increasingly serious in recent years, as some Israeli Arab leaders have openly backed Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria in their conflicts with Israel. Thus, as part of a peace treaty between a Palestinian state and Israel, the protection of the rights, albeit not the national rights, of the Israeli Arabs could be stipulated.
- While acknowledgment of Israel as a Jewish state was not a component of Israel’s peace treaties with either Egypt or Jordan, in neither case was Israel involved in the type of existential conflict with these countries as it currently is with the Palestinians—a conflict in which it often appears that the assertion of one people’s national aspirations negates those of the other people. Thus it is necessary for both sides to recognize the legitimacy of the other’s national aspirations. For the Palestinian side, this involves recognizing Israel as a Jewish State.
- Finally, and perhaps most important of all, it is necessary for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state to replace the image of the Jew as dhimmi, or second class citizen, with the image of the Jew as a member of a national group exercising legitimate national rights, just as the Palestinians themselves do. Once this is done, the chances for a long-lasting peace between Israel and a Palestinian state will be greatly enhanced.
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4 Responses to “Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state”
I agree in very large measure with Robert O. Freedman’s post. He’s absolutely right not only about the three official objections by the Palestinian Authority’s leadership to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s requirement, in his Bar Ilan University speech, that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He’s also right, I think, about the fourth, unstated, objection to Netanyahu’s stipulation, which he summarizes very well.
But I think that the importance of this unstated objection deserves some elaboration because of the degree to which it has become a core issue of the conflicts between Israel and its neighbors—not only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but also the larger Arab-Israeli conflict. In fact, this core issue may even be more central, and more difficult and crucial to solve, than the traditionally-recognized core issues.
Until now, those core issues have been identified as the division of Jerusalem, and the disposition of the dwindling number of actual refugees of the 1948 conflict as well as their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all of whom have been granted refugee status. As a result, the number of refugees is now, officially, in the millions, making their “return” to an Israel in which they never lived, perhaps for three generations, the poison pill, for Israel, of any peace agreement.
A few comments about Freedman’s post might clarify why the issue of the Palestinians (and other Arabs) recognizing Israel as a Jewish state may be even more important to the effort of achieving a peace treaty (that actually works) than these two traditional core issues.
Freedman is right that “for the Palestinians, and for many other Arabs as well, a Jew is defined by religion, not nationality or ethnicity, and given the position of Jews as dhimmis, or second-class religious subjects in Muslim history, the Palestinians feel that Jews have no right to be rulers, let alone rule over what they consider Muslim territory.” And he’s right that these attitudes, latent during the heyday of the Oslo process, were reinforced by the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
But it’s important to note that the increased support for this Hamas position—not only by Palestinians but also by others in the Muslim/Arab world—was accelerated and broadened in the post-9/11 atmosphere, when this ideology was ever-more-frequently articulated and emphasized by clerics and others in that part of the world, both Palestinian and non-Palestinian.
Other factors aside from the Al-Aqsa Intifada helped accomplish this transformation. One of these was the Islamist emphasis on the importance of expelling non-believers from (and reclaiming) what they considered Muslim lands, and the increasing focus by Islamists, including Al Qaeda, on what they saw as the popular issue of Palestine (using, in great measure, religious arguments, including the argument that it’s forbidden for Jews to have any kind of hegemony in what they consider a Muslim lands).
Freedman rightly notes that the Palestinians and other Arabs “fail to understand that Zionism arose as a national movement among Jews in Europe in the 19th century.” More importantly, I think, they fail to understand—or, to be more precise, actively deny—that religious Zionism (as opposed to the political Zionism to which Freedman refers) is far older than that, and betokens a Jewish connection with the land that’s very real and very ancient.
In fact, the Jewish claim to the land, including Jerusalem, is so old, and so far predates Islam or the Palestinians, that it’s extremely threatening and elicits repeated denials of historical reality. Thus the repeated insistence, not only by Palestinian political and religious figures but also by political and religious figures throughout the Muslim/Arab world, that the Jews have no historical basis for their claim to Israel.
A few examples confined to the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount—a tiny selection of numerous examples—tellingly suffice.
During the British Mandate, the Supreme Moslem Council in Jerusalem stated that the Temple Mount’s “identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.” Yet at the Camp David summit in 2000, Yasser Arafat was adamant that a Jewish Temple had existed not on the Temple Mount but in Nablus, while Saeb Erekat—who, as Freedman notes, together with Mahmoud Abbas rejected the call by Netanyahu that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state—said, also at Camp David (and to the astonishment of President Bill Clinton): “I don’t believe there was a temple on top of the Haram [al-Sharif], I really don’t.” Later, Mahmoud Abbas agreed with this position, as did the Mufti of Jerusalem. And Arafat himself later decided that there had never been a Temple in Israel, the West Bank or Gaza, including Nablus. A few years ago, a Palestinian official in charge of the Haram al-Sharif also insisted that there had never been a Jewish temple on the site. Interestingly (and not accidentally, I suspect) it was under this official that numerous artifacts from the Temple period were removed from under the platform of the Temple Mount and dumped in the valley behind the mount.
Freedman is absolutely on-point in noting that a recognition by the Palestinians—and, I should add, all other Arab states that would be parties to a peace treaty—that Israel is a Jewish state would be necessary for Israelis to believe that, in exchange for evacuating numerous Israeli settlements, they’ve achieved what they’ve been seeking in every serious negotiation: a true end to the conflict, in which there are no further claims.
Although Freedman believes that recognition of Israel as a Jewish state might actually, and paradoxically, be good for the Israeli Arabs (or, as they increasingly call themselves, Palestinians), I’m not convinced of this. Freedman believes that a peace treaty that included the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state could redound to the benefit of this group, which comprises some 20 percent of Israel’s population, by protecting their rights. I think that Freedman hopes that as a result of such a peace treaty, members of this group would swear their allegiance to the state. Some might, but certainly not all, or perhaps even most.
Freedman also believes that the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is important because it would replace the image among Palestinians of the Jews as dhimmi, or second-class citizen. But given the religious currents that have become manifest across the Arab/Muslim world in recent years—and the non-stop insistence for many years in sermons, textbooks and other teachings, especially in the West Bank and Gaza, that Jews are evil usurpers and will never have a right to be in Muslim lands—I don’t see that happening, either among Palestinians or elsewhere in the Arab/Muslim world, for a very long time, probably generations.
Still, given the advantages of an official recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and of a peace treaty—whether or not it results in a durable state of peace—I think such a recognition and such a peace treaty are, for Israel, worth the uncertainty in a neighborhood that, unfortunately, has been marked (and, with the imminent ascendancy of a nuclear Iran, will be ever more marked) by the certainty of war and the possibility of extinction.
Walter Reich is a member of MESH.
I would respectfully differ with my good friend Robert Freedman on the importance, necessity—and attainability—of formal recognition by the Palestinian leadership of Israel as “a Jewish state.” This is not to contest the desirability of such a move, were it possible; Palestinian acceptance of Israel’s Jewishness, even if only declaratory, would be a good thing. But from a strategic perspective there is little for Israel to gain in giving this demand a high priority—or by making it a sine qua non.
Recognition of one state by another, in traditional international diplomacy, generally depends on the recognized state having effective authority within its borders and showing willingness to abide by international commitments and rules (reason enough to oppose, for example, recognition of Hamas rule in Gaza). Sometimes the recognizing state has imposed additional criteria regarding the internal arrangements of the state being recognized. But it is hard to think of cases where the state being recognized has imposed additional conditions, even as part of peace agreements. In putting such an unprecedented condition at the top of the agenda, Israel will find little understanding or support in the international community.
Moreover, putting such weight on verbal formulae does not really address Israel’s core security concerns. I’ve had occasion in the past, on this weblog, to cite my mentor Hans Morgenthau’s diplomatic precept: “Give up the shadow of worthless rights for the substance of real advantage.” Governments can make verbal commitments and then ignore them; what counts in any peace agreement are the concrete arrangements left in place that give both sides an incentive to keep the peace. The vulnerability of Sinai to Israeli reconquest helps to reinforce Egyptian observance of the peace. In any Israeli-Palestinian settlement, the concrete arrangements on the ground—demilitarization in particular—will be of much greater import than any particular words extracted from the lips of the Palestinian leaders of that particular moment in time. Better real advantage than verbal shadows.
It may seem contradictory to question the value of mere words while pointing out that these words are one of the hardest concessions for Palestinian leaders to make, and may in fact be a deal-breaker. (A cynic might claim that this was the purpose, in which case the demand has been brilliantly conceived and executed.) But life is full of seeming contradictions. It is pointless to contend with what others may continue to believe in their heart of hearts, but it is within the realm of possibility to ensure that they do not have the means or opportunity to act on those beliefs.
Alan Dowty is a member of MESH.
I apologize in advance for having a simpleton’s view of this issue but here it is, nonetheless.
If it is to be successful, a Palestinian-Israeli permanent status agreement will end all claims that each national group has on the other. Territory is a major element of these claims, but not the only or even the most important one. Unlike most international conflicts, which are about land, resources or national ambition, this conflict is about something deeper: rights, identity and legitimacy. Or put into a historian’s lingo, a permanent status agreement–if it is indeed to end all claims, once and for all–will have to address not just issues raised by the 1967 war (e.g., what prompted Israel to act preemptively and what the repercussions of that action were) but issues left unaddressed from the 1948 war. There are many such issues, but there can be little debate that the first and foremost is recognition of what the relevant UN resolutions repeatedly called “the Jewish state.” Without such an unambiguous statement of recognition, it is difficult to imagine that any agreement will indeed have ended all claims. (Of course, Israelis and Palestinians can reach many different types of accords short of a “permanent status agreement,” but we should not fool ourselves into believing that the latter doesn’t require what it clearly requires to live up to its name.)
To me, it is not surprising that an Israeli government has made this demand a sine qua non of a permanent status agreement. What is surprising is that no Israeli government has made this a sine qua non until now.
The United States voted for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine 62 years ago in the UN General Assembly. The United States should not be indifferent to Israel’s request that endorsing its status as the Jewish state be enshrined in a permanent status agreement designed finally to end the conflict over Palestine, once and for all.
Robert Satloff is a member of MESH.
I find the comments by Bob Freedman, Walter Reich, Alan Dowty and Rob Satloff fascinating and helpful to me. I do not wish to remark on all the points that have been raised, but to discuss just a few.
I think Bob Freedman has the facts right, though I share Walter Reich’s skepticism about the implications of Palestinian acceptance of a “Jewish state” on Israeli Arabs. No one seems to doubt the desirability of such an acceptance; there are differences over whether it can be secured and whether it is worth a high price, or any price, to secure it. My two related concerns, in a sense, precede this question.
First, it seems to me that asking the Palestinian Authority to accept Israel as a Jewish state borders on asking its permission for Jews to be who they (most of them, anyway) say they are. Jews do not need permission from anyone to define themselves either as a people or a nation (of which more below), nor do they need from the Palestinian Arabs what they already have from the (so-called) international community, namely, legal title to most, though not all, of Mandatory Palestine—final borders pending negotiations among the parties, of course. What the current Israeli government, or any Israeli government, can and should ask is for the Palestinians to recognize the legal status of the State of Israel in international law. To ask more than that is to ask for a Palestinian intellectual consensus on an esoteric point in the philosophy of history, and that, it seems to me, is asking too much.
Second, it is asking too much because even Jews do not agree fully on what a Jewish state means. This is an old argument, as everyone should know. There are three ways to mean “Jewish” as attached to the noun “state”: Jewish as an ethnic description, Jewish as a cultural description, and Jewish as a religious (in the narrow Western definition) description. These correspond to Jews as a nation, a people, and a faith community. As far as current international norms go, a nation and arguably a people can have a state; a faith community cannot.
These definitions generally overlap, but they are not the same things. Moreover, Zionism in its many forms has never entirely come to terms with this definitional ambiguity. In its essence, Zionism is nationalism and Jews are defined as a nation. But that doesn’t quite work for all purposes at hand, because conversion into Judaism as a faith community over the centuries is what has created a population that goes well beyond an ethnic group as such. The concept of peoplehood is broader than that of nation, and it is both the essential rabbinic and (suitably secularized) the Bundist definition. And note: one can affirm Jewish peoplehood and not be a political Zionist (Asher Ginsburg, Albert Einstein, George Steiner, etc.). Ah, but as already suggested, to travel from nation to people one must engage faith community, for conversion is a religious ritual, and it is what makes the human subjects of Jewish “nationalism,” lo these many centuries on, different from, say, German or Japanese nationalism, for one cannot and never could convert to be a German of a Japanese. It is, needless to say, a complex matter.
In this light, asking the Palestinians to affirm that Israel is a “Jewish state” could well bring forth a question in response: “What exactly do you mean by that?” And that could well turn out to be more trouble than it’s worth to answer under current circumstances.
Just to illustrate how not-so-simple this is, Daniel Pipes in his blog recently defined Jews as a faith community. I asked Daniel if that were some sort of error, perhaps an error of haste. He replied “no”, that he had given it thought, and that, in his view, this was the original meaning of the term anyway. He also said that an ethnic definition was “Nazi”-like. I am not sure he’s right that the original definition was a religious one (see Shaye J.D. Cohen, The Origins of Jewishness [1999]), and if an ethnic definition is Nazi-like, how is it different from that of strictly secular political Zionists—who are certainly Jews as far as I am concerned?
I am by far most comfortable with the peoplehood definition, not just because I think it is the most historically accurate, but also because it excludes the least. It includes Ben-Gurion, say, who would be “out” if faith were the definitive core. It includes George Steiner, who would be “out” if nationalism were the definitive core. But the peoplehood definition is, in a way, admittedly pre-modern, pre-compartmentalized, and so hard to explain, particularly to those unaware of the peculiarities of Jewish history. (We went through all this before with the “Zionism is racism” business, of course.)
To me, this suggests that if the current Israeli government wants to exert an effort to explain why and how Israel is a “Jewish” state, it should first decide what it means by that and then have a discussion with Jews throughout the world. If anyone else cares to eavesdrop, fine. But to insist that some do (Palestinians, say) and that they affirm the result—this is highly unusual, if not to say rather Jewcentric.
Here anyway is the acid test: If the Palestinian Authority should come one day to grant all of Israel’s terms for an end-of-conflict peace accord except recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, would you advise the Israeli government of that day to walk away from the deal? I would not.
Adam Garfinkle is a member of MESH.