The
Arab Israeli conflict has become a religious war. Politicizing the
Bible’s Genesis 15:18: “The Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying,
unto thy seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt unto the
great river, the river Euphrates” politicized the Quran. Defeated,
humiliated, and powerless, Arabs took refuge in Islam; invoking hostile
Quranic Verses, recounting purported stories of the Prophet Muhammad’s
troubled relationship with the Jewish tribes in Medina, drawing lessons
from the symbolism of substituting Friday for the Sabbath and the
direction during prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca.
For
thirteen centuries, however, these were non-issues. Hundreds of
thousands of Jews lived harmoniously among Muslims in Algeria, Egypt,
Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen.
Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Britain’s first and thus far the
only person of Jewish parentage to reach the premiership (1868 and
1874-1880), described in his novel Coningsby the “halcyon centuries”
during the golden age of Muslim Spain in which the “children of Ishmael
rewarded the children of Israel with equal rights and privileges with
themselves.” Disraeli described glowingly how Muslims and Jews alike
“built palaces, gardens and fountains; filled equally the highest
offices of the state, competed in an extensive and enlightened
commerce, and rivaled each other in renowned universities.”
Later, in 1492 the Muslim Ottoman Sultan Bayezid-II (1481-1512)
encouraged great numbers of Jews to settle in the Ottoman Empire
following their expulsion from Spain and Portugal.
Islam
venerates Judaism. Arabs believe they share a common ancestry with the
Jewish people going back to the sons of Abraham, Ismail and Ishaq. The
Quran praises Abraham as the first Muslim, describing Islam as the
Religion of Abraham. The Quranic Chapter 14, with its 52 Verses is
named after Abraham and to Joseph the Quran names Chapter 12, with its
111 Verses. Muslim men are allowed to marry Jewish women, without the
need to convert them to Islam (the children must be Muslims). Today,
Jewish-derived Arabic names like Daoud, Ibrahim, Ishaq, Mousa, Sara,
Sulaiman, Yacoub, Yousef, Zakariyya are common in every Arab society.
Politicizing the Bible politicized the Quran; creating a vexing
religious confrontation, pushing the moderates among Arab Muslims into
orthodoxy and the orthodox into Islamism and Jihadism. The victory of
Hamas in the January 25, 2006 parliamentary elections in the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip, as well as the popularity of Islamic Jihad, are
reminders that this conflict has been delivering the Muslim masses into
the hands of the Islamists. History suggests that this religious war
could go on for a thousand years and that military actions alone
against the Jihadists will breed more Jihadists.
Unless the Arab
Israeli conflict is resolved justly and quickly, Islamism and Jihadism
will multiply. Avraham Berg, speaker of Israel's Knesset in 1999-2003 and former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, articulated the prerequisites for a resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in sobering terms.
For a durable solution, the Bible and the Quran must be de-politicized
The
two-state solution, currently in vogue, is inherently unstable. A
single democratic and secular state for Jews and Palestinians promises
a more durable long-term solution locally and regionally. The two-state
solution is capricious for four reasons:
First,
demographically, a purely Jewish state is impossible to attain. The
Zionist dream of creating an exclusive state for the Jewish people in
Palestine is unsustainable in the long-term. Presently, more than 1.3
million Palestinians are citizens of Israel, or 25 percent of Israel’s
5.2 million Jews. Due to their high population growth rates the
Palestinian-Israelis will eventually become the majority. The
Palestinian-Israelis are in addition to the 4.2 million Palestinians
who live under Israel’s occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Outside Palestine, 2.6 millions are registered in refugee camps in
Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, plus 1.5 million scattered worldwide.
Unless the Palestinian-Israelis somehow vanish, Israel’s Jewish
population will eventually become the minority and the
Palestinian-Israelis the majority; the population growth rate of the
Palestinian-Israelis is twice that of Israeli Jews. The number of Palestinians in
Israel in 1948 was about 150,000. If Israel would allow
the future Palestinian-Israeli majority full citizenship rights,
they’ll control the government. If Israel subjects the majority to an
apartheid regime, the system will unravel. Apartheid regimes have short
lives: Witness Rhodesia and South Africa.
Secondly,
intractable issues stand in the way of a two-state solution: Jerusalem,
borders, security for Israel and for Palestine, water rights,
settlements, and the refugees’ right-of-return. Since the signing of
the Oslo Agreement on September 13, 1993, none of the thorny issues has
been resolved. When Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, and Yasser Arafat
attempted in July 2000 to tackle these issues at Camp David, the
negotiations collapsed, leading to the second intifada.
Thirdly, even if a miracle patches up a two-state agreement, the
extremists on both sides would undermine the agreement.
Fourthly, the Arab masses will shun a Zionist state. Judging from
Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt (March 26, 1979) and Jordan (October
26, 1994), relations among the Egyptian and Jordanian masses and
Israelis failed to develop beyond small diplomatic missions.
A single state is the solution.
Western democratic and secular ideals should inspire a single,
democratic, and secular state for Palestinians and Jews for three
reasons:
First, the intractable obstacles that have bedeviled the two-state solution would disappear.
Secondly, a single state will commingle Palestinians and Jews into an inseparable mix. The Jewish
settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, estimated at about
half a million in more than 125 settlements, could become instruments of
integration between Palestinians and Jews, not segregation; a mixture
of Jews among Arabs as difficult to unscramble as removing the
Palestinian Israelis from Israel. A
single state would lead the Arab governments to recognize the new
state. Muslims everywhere, Arabs especially, would no longer have an
excuse to boycott their Jewish “cousins.” Economic, cultural,
educational, and social interaction would follow. The two sides would
quickly learn how much they could benefit from one other.
Thirdly, a single state solution would allow Arabs and Jews full access to the entirety of Palestine.
The secular democratic one-state solution has been gathering pace.
A well attended conference by Arabs and Israelis at London University’s
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) was held on November
17-18, 2007 to address the various aspects of this concept.
Arab and Jew can live together in peace
Around
the time of Israel’s creation, more than 850,000 Jews migrated from
Arab countries, 600,000 going to Israel. The charge that the Jews
migrated because of Arab maltreatment is an unfair political
expediency. The migration happened in the course of Israel’s creation.
During this period, 531 Palestinian villages were depopulated and
805,000 refugees lost their homes, according to Palestinian sources
(650,000 to 700,000 refugees, according to Jewish sources).
Had Zionism adhered to the stipulation in the 1917 Balfour declaration:
“Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious
rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” the
Muslim/Jewish conflict would not have developed.
Durable
peace and the long-term prosperity of the Jewish people in the Arab
World require the genuine welcome of the Arab masses. Smart bombs and
nuclear weapons cannot force Arab peoples’ acceptance of a Zionist
Israel. The 600,000 Jews, who had lived in Arab countries for centuries
and are today a major proportion of Israel’s Jewish population, could
become a positive link with the Arab World. They share with the Arab
peoples many customs, habits, values, food, music, dance, and, for the
older generation, the Arabic language.
Whether it would be a good bargain to exchange a partial and
declining Jewish exclusivity in an unstable two-state solution for a
durable single state embracing Jews and Muslims is a question Israel’s
Jewish people alone can answer.
In provoking the enmity of
their age-old Muslim friends, Zionism has disserved the long-term
interests of the Jewish people.
