------------------------------------------------- Peace through integration in Palestine/Israel: A Jewish reply to the Rabbi Michael Lerner by Margo Schulter ------------------------------------------------- Responding to the recent and all too familiar wave of violence in Gaza, including the targeting by Israel of civilian electricity and water supplies, the Rabbi Michael Lerner has sounded a wise and welcome call for people instead to wield the weapons of committed nonviolent struggle. He has championed the Jewish commandment to "love the stranger," a precept shared by the other Abrahamic traditions of Christianity and Islam, and by many world religions. In keeping with Rabbi Lerner's call for nonviolent struggle, I would like here to consider some of the implications of "loving the stranger" and "privileging love over power" in the setting of Palestine/Israel, a land of two inextricably intertwined peoples, the Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews. As a Jew, I would like especially to focus on the traditional Jewish concerns of universal human rights, equal citizenship, and the rights of refugees and the dispossessed. To address these concerns means not only stopping the deadly cycle of physical violence, but decisively addressing the forms of insidious structural violence which have plagued the land of Palestine/Israel since 1948 -- and also those involuntarily displaced from it. In seeking a solution through creative nonviolent struggle and daring compassion, we must begin by acknowledging that each situation is unique. Palestine/Israel is not Mississippi in 1960, nor South Africa in 1984; yet these conflicts can be instructive in pointing to equal human and civil rights, with "peace through integration," as central themes for creative peacemaking. While Rabbi Lerner urges Palestinian Arabs favoring nonviolence to focus on the conventional agenda of creating a separate state in the West Bank and Gaza, I shall assert that the Jewish values he so eloquently champions require a closer focus on the need for full multiethnic democracy and "ethnic uncleansing" in Israel proper. --------------------------------------------- 1. Charity and justice call for binationalism --------------------------------------------- The simple fact, as the Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, founder of Hebrew University in Jerusalem/al-Quds, stated 60 years ago, is that both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs have a strong attachment to the whole country of Palestine/Israel. It is to Palestinian Arabs their rightful homeland, and to Israeli Jews the beloved Eretz Israel. Thus the beginning of charity and justice is to appreciate that the basic problem is one of power-sharing: two peoples in one land. The presence of some 1.3 million Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel proper, and of something over 200,000 Israeli Jewish residents of the West Bank, emphasizes the intertwined nature of these peoples. It is also vital, from a viewpoint of charity and nonviolence, to recognize that both peoples are "wounded" nationalities. For Israeli Jews, the European Shoah or Holocaust of 1933-1945 still casts its shadow of genocide and terror. For Palestinian Arabs, the Nakba or Catastrophe of 1948 and its aftermath, in which thousands were deliberately killed and perhaps 750,000 displaced from Israel and then denied their right of return, is a calamity still unfolding. Therefore a power-sharing scheme based on nonviolence should fully recognize and guarantee the national identity of each people, an arrangement known as "binationalism." This means that any state formed or maintained in Palestine/Israel, including the present state of Israel, must be equally "owned" by people of both nationalities, with each nationality guaranteed certain national rights in addition to civil and ethnic rights for each citizen. For Israeli Jews coming from a history of 2000 years of oppression, explicit binationalism means a guarantee of their national as well as ethnic identity. It addresses their fear of losing this national identity as the "demographic balance" in Israel shifts toward a larger Palestinian Arab percentage of the population -- as seems inevitable given both the trend in birthrates and the imperative of refugee return under international humanitarian law (see below). For Palestinian Arabs, binationalism means equal rights, a point underscored by the many Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel who have sought recognition as a national group, like their fellow Israeli Jewish citizens. Binationalism has a special meaning for two groups of people both illustrating Rabbi Lerner's imperative to "love the stranger." In Israel, the ultimate stranger is the Palestinian refugee of 1948 or descendant who wishes to return and live at peace with her/his neighbor, but has been illegally denied that right for almost 58 years. Binationalism means that all who wish to return are welcome to do so, a process that might involve the immigration to Israel of some 1-2 million refugees over a period of 10-15 years. At the same time, binationalism also means that Israeli Jews now living on the West Bank are welcome to stay, provided only again that they are willing to live at peace with their neighbors. Further, whether the 1967 territories promptly are incoporated into Israel proper or have a separate status (at least for a while), such Israeli Jews under binationalism are entitled not only to equal citizenship but also to full national rights as Israeli Jews. Further, it is important to recognize that while most victims of ethnic cleansing in the 1948 war were Palestinian Arabs, Jews were also displaced and dispossessed from portions of the West Bank or Gaza. If any or their descendants have not returned to these territories, and wish to do so, they also are embraced by the binational principle. Finally, as a Jew, I feel an obligation to say something about Gaza, for almost 60 years the "land of absentees" (i.e. Palestinian refugees stripped of their rights by Israel's Absentee Property Law of 1950) and the house of the dispossessed. From a binational viewpoint, the Israeli "withdrawal" from Gaza last year was at once the welcome end of a direct military occupation -- and yet a profound tragedy for both peoples, with the destruction of synagogues an ugly portent that must be overcome through a struggle for justice, equality, and diversity. The renewed presence of a substantial number of Jews in Gaza on a basis of equal citizenship will be a sign of health for both peoples -- in contrast to the brutal inequities of the "settler" system there. The recent crisis is a reminder that Gaza is still under military oppression, and should invite us to seek and remedy the cause of the crowding and deprivation there among "the poorest of the poor." --------------------------------------------------------- 2. Binationalism means the "ethnic uncleansing" of Israel --------------------------------------------------------- A just appraisal of refugee rights in Palestine/Israel begins with two simple facts. The first fact is that we can confidently predict that people will continue to debate just who should bear responsibility, and to what degree, for the 1948 war and the Palestinian Catastrophe of displacement. The second fact is that under international humanitarian law, the right of return for refugees, Palestinian Arabs or otherwise, does not depend on such issues of fault or responsibility. It is a predictable consequence of war that civilians are forced to leave their homes and communities; and a basic human right that these civilians have the right to return, if not to the same house (which might have been destroyed, or occupied by others), then to the "vicinity" of that home. The right of return for Palestinian Arabs displaced in 1948 from Israel, and their descendants -- or Jews displaced from the West Bank or Gaza in that same conflict -- is a human right, not an historical assessment of fault or responsibility. In Israel, it is also an "ethnic uncleansing" likely restoring the demographic balance between the two peoples to something like that envisioned for the "Jewish state" defined by the United Nations in 1947, with an initial ratio of perhaps 60-40 between Jews and Palestinian Arabs. In the short run, that ratio was expected to shift toward the Jewish side because of the anticipated immigration of Holocaust victims from Europe; in the longer run, it might have been expected to shift in the other direction because of higher Palestinian Arab birthrates. Taking some recent middle estimates, there might be in Israel about 5.3 million Israeli Jews and 1.3 million Palestinian Arabs. If we assume that about 1-2 million Palestinian refugees, including many in the nearby West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon, would actually choose to return to Israel, this means a closer parity in the two populations, a demographic situation inviting the binational partnership which justice in any case demands. While refugee return is in itself a simple imperative of decency, Rabbi Lerner's comments about injustices to 1948 refugees and Palestinian citizens of Israel bring to mind an additional consideration. The most sincere repentance for injustice is to correct that injustice. Thus desegration in the U.S.A., and the end to apartheid in South Africa, were nonviolent responses to remedy violence and oppression, as is full implementation of the Palestinian right of return for 1948 refugees who wish to use it. Specifically, the right of return means that the 1948 refugees making up the majority of the population in overcrowded Gaza will be free to relocate to their ancestral areas in southern Israel, with many likely taking up communal farming in a now thinly populated region which they can easily share with some scattered kibbutzim and other Israeli institutions. As Gaza returns to a more natural population density, Israeli Jews wishing to live in Gaza on a basis of equal citizenship can and should fulfill this desire. The building of new synagogues by these immigrants would indeed be a sign of ethnic uncleansing and peace. ----------------------------------------------- 3. Binationalism means full democracy in Israel ----------------------------------------------- Rabbi Lerner draws a contrast between those such as himself who see the "fundamental crime" of the conflict as Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, and certain Palestinians who see it instead as Israel's "coming into existence in the first place in 1948." There is, however, a third point of view which needs clearly to be voiced before the world in the name of nonviolence and justice. First, in appreciating the multi-sided responsibility for the tragedy of 1948, we should recognize that in the early 1940's some courageous Palestinian Arabs and immigrant Jews were proposing a binational state in Palestine based on equitable power-sharing. Intransigence among others on both sides sadly aborted this movement toward sanity. Let us, recognizing that ethnic exclusivity and discrimination is a "fundamental crime" to which both sides are susceptible, resolve that 60 years later a different outcome will prevail. Secondly, whatever our views on the wisdom or equity of the plan adopted in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (29 November 1947), let us recognize the "fundamental crime" in the period of 1948-1967 of Israel's violation of this resolution's human and civil rights guarantees for its rightful Palestinian Arab citizens, including those displaced in the 1948 war and then denied their right of return. This right under customary international law was affirmed in General Assembly Resolution 194 (11 December 1948), passed the day after adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Resolution 181 requires that Israel adopt a written and democratic Constitution guaranteeing equal rights for all citizens, including property rights, and prohibiting discrimination by "race, religion, or sex." These basic human and civil rights provisions have become "forgotten guarantees" for 58 years -- rather like the provisions of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments in a place like Mississippi during the long era of 1877-1964. Suffice it to say that injustices in the Israel of 1948-1967 included the Absentee Property Law of 1950 which not only denaturalized refugees displaced from the country, but made "present absentees" out of many Palestinians who had managed to remain, permitting confiscation of their property. Home demolitions in the following years destroying the peaceful Palestinian communities of Iqrit and Kafr Birim, and the massacre at Kafr Qasim on 29 October 1956 whose 50th anniversary approaches, reflected a brutally discriminatory policy. Further, Palestinian areas were under military rule from 1948 to 1966, with devices such as "security zones" and closures used in effect to force the ceding of Palestinian lands, tactics since familiar in the 1967 territories. Thus any literate history of the conflict must include a recognition of the realities of pre-1967 Israel as compared with the human and civil rights guarantees of Resolution 181, and also the aspirations of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. That Declaration proclaimed equal citizenship for Palestinian Arabs as well as Israeli Jews, and promised that the ideals of the "Hebrew prophets" would prevail. It is time that those promises be fulfilled. It should be added that the ethnic cleansing and exclusion of Jews from the then Jordanian-controlled portions of Palestine/Israel, including East Jerusalem/al-Quds, were also violations of Resolution 181. Thus a binational perspective does not seek to place all blame on one side, but calls for both sides to pursue a single standard of equality, hospitality (Rabbi Lerner's "love of strangers"), and common citizenship. Today a binational solution means giving first priority to a democratic Constitution for Israel recognizing full and equal national rights for Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and based on equitable partnership between the two peoples. This must happen regardless of what might be decided regarding the 1967 territories. The question of full democracy in Israel proper belongs at the center of the "peace process." Far from destroying the state of Israel, full democratization will bring it into accord with the human and civil rights provisions of Resolution 181, and with its own Declaration of Independence. The paradox of democracy is that in order to be a true "Jewish democracy," Israel must become equally a Palestinian Arab democracy, since democracy can be truly possessed by any only if it is possessed by all. ------------------------------------------------ 4. Binationalism means the 1967 territories, too ------------------------------------------------ In suggesting that both sides must make compromises for peace, Rabbi Lerner is absolutely right: but it is important to seek compromises that promote the spirit of nonviolence, neighborly hospitality, and love. Requiring that _any_ state formed or maintained in any part of Palestine/Israel be based on a fully binational constitution is such a constructive and liberating compromise. The simplest and most efficient solution would be for the 1967 territories to be incorporated into a binational state of Israel. As in post-apartheid South Africa, this approach would have some advantages for both peoples. Jews would at least for some time have dramatic advantages in terms of economic and political as well as military power; at the same time, the rough demographic parity of the two peoples, with Palestinian Arabs likely becoming an absolute majority in the expanded Israel, would serve as a counterbalance. The goal, of course, is prosperity for both peoples under a Constitution assuring national as well as individual rights regardless of the demographic balance at any given point. If unification of Palestine/Israel as a single binational state of Israel is delayed, however, then the binational principle would require that Israel and any other entity that might be formed should have constitutions based on equal national as well as civil rights for the two peoples. Political parties such as Hamas and Likud or Labor should be scrutinized under this single standard. Far from being an idyllic solution, binationalism requires real concessions from both sides. Palestinian Arabs must abandon any desire for a return to the Palestine of 1947: refugees will instead be returning to 21st-century Israel. Israeli Jews must abandon the variety of Zionism calling for Jewish predominance rather than partnership with the Palestinian Arabs -- but remain free to embrace and fulfill the "cultural and spiritual Zionism" of Albert Einstein and the Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, whose essence is binationalism. A binational approach to the 1967 territories means that the problem is not how to get out all the Israeli Jewish residents, but how to integrate those who wish to stay as equal citizens. It is vital to distinguish between the structural and often physical violence of much of the "settler" movement, and the nonviolent potential of Jews remaining in the 1967 territories as peaceful partners in rebuilding. While the resolution of the 1967 occupation remains a knotty problem, it becomes much more approachable once one realizes that the full democratization and ethnic uncleansing of Israel proper is a first priority. Once Palestinian citizens of Israel become indispensable partners in any Knesset coalition, the fate of Palestinians in the 1967 territories should become much more pleasant to contemplate. The reluctance of some Palestinian Arabs in these territories to embrace Israeli citizenship might also change when Israel becomes a truly democratic and binational state: thus the rather divided opinion regarding unification now might become much more favorable. In the meantime, a binational approach calls for replacing the current military occupation with some lawful arrangement for maintaining public order and meeting basic human needs, possibly under the aegis of the United Nations. An interim system of self-government in the 1967 territories, with full participation by Israeli Jewish as well as Palestinian Arab residents, would permit a democratic and binational structure which could later merge into that of the state of Israel. ----------------------------------------------------------- 5. Binationalism means a unified and open al-Quds/Jerusalem ----------------------------------------------------------- While General Assembly Resolution 181 provided for a unified al-Quds/Jerusalem under a special international regime, this provision has been disregarded since 1948, with the peace of the Holy City so often violated. It is time to move from the project of carving up al-Quds/Jerusalem to the endeavor of uniting it as a binational and international city of justice and peace. One lesson of the last 58 years is that a binational Holy City implies a binational Palestine/Israel: let us seek a new peace process built on these foundations. ---------------------------------- 6. Binationalism means nonviolence ---------------------------------- Rabbi Lerner's arguments against violence become yet more powerful if our goal is a just binational solution which seeks integration of the two peoples and challenges structural injustices within Israel proper as well as in the 1967 territories. The command to "love your neighbor" takes on a special significance. While from a religious or humanitarian view any attack on a civilian target is an attack on my neighbor -- or an attack on a military person, for that matter -- a binational perspective makes the force of these words especially concrete. Suicide bombing, for example -- like the truck bombing of public places used by members of both sides in the 1947-1948 conflict -- is the poor person's equivalent of strategic bombing from the air. One might consider how strategic bombing often has tended to solidify the will to resist of besieged civilians, and at the same time has made them more dependent on their governments. However, these considerations should carry special force for a Palestinian Arab who, like me as a Jew, is not satisfied with the goal of a "separate but equal" Palestinian state but correctly insists on the full democraticization and ethnic uncleansing of Israel proper, whatever its borders. Advocacy of the right of return, and of a binational constitution, must overcome many historical Israeli Jewish fears -- some of them quite irrational or even based on anti-Arab racism, and others connected to the real history of anti-Semitism, however perverse a basis this might be for treating other refugees as the Jews have traditionally been treated. Each human bomb attack is ironically an attack on the very neighbors that Palestinian Arab refugees are struggling for the right to live with, and a negation of the trust that equal citizenship demands on all sides. Similarly, Israeli Jewish soldiers bombing civilian infrastructure in Gaza are attacking people with whom they might soon be living alongside -- whether because many Gaza residents who are refugees of 1948 exercise their right of return to Israel, or because the soldiers decide to live in Gaza, part of Eretz Israel as well as of the Palestinian Arab homeland. Further, a unified nonviolent civil rights movement by Palestinian Arabs in Israel proper, the 1967 territories, and refugee communities -- joined by likeminded Israeli Jews -- offers the most effective strategy for overcoming prejudices and fears rather than aggravating them. A critical drawback of any "mixed" strategy combining armed and nonviolent elements is that a movement tends to be perceived as its most violent part. Soldiers or civilians in fear of their lives are less likely to appreciate the message that nonviolent action can so powerfully deliver in a more receptive climate. However, love of neighbor also requires appreciating the asymmetries of the situation, and the tendency of many observers to give more attention to the violence of Palestinian Arab insurgents than to the military and structural violence wielded by the state of Israel. All violence is our common enemy, and breaking the cycle of violence requires a movement for justice and democracy in all parts of Palestine/Israel and for all of its residents, as well as for refugees who wish to return. This does not mean lowering our standard of nonviolence, but heightening our standard of justice. ------------------------------- 7. Nonviolence and human rights ------------------------------- In addition to calling for binationalism as a protection for the rights of both peoples, we must as world citizens (Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Jews, and others) hold all sides to certain universal human rights standards such as the rejection of the death penalty, extrajudicial killings, and torture. This means objecting to the legal death penalty as maintained by the Palestinian Authority as well as in such a nation as the U.S.A., and also opposing extrajudicial killings as a routine Israeli policy, and torture as used by both sides. We must also support the struggle of Palestinian Arab women against the domestic violence of "honor killings," whether the victims are women seen to have transgressed against "traditional standards," or simply devalued because they have been victims of crimes such as sexual assault, or even sexual abuse within a family. --------------------------------------- 8. A forward-looking agenda: Conclusion --------------------------------------- The current crisis, and the imperatives of neighborly love and hospitality to the "stranger" voiced by Rabbi Lerner, lead in my view to a resolute struggle for a democratic and binational future in Palestine/Israel for all its people. What is required is not the destruction of Israel but its preservation and strengthening through equal citizenship for all of its present residents plus those 1948 refugees who choose to return. A binational framework, as Rabbi Magnes pointed out 60 years ago, will indeed maintain Israel as a uniquely Jewish state where Israeli Jews are a founding nationality rather than merely a minority group; and at the same time accord to Palestinian Arabs an equal national status, thus fulfulling the best Jewish values. Such a solution leaves open many questions to be resolved between the parties. For example, the state of Israel -- and any interim Palestinian state or the like -- might adopt a system of federal districts or cantons to represent not only the binational but also the multiethnic diversity present. Such a system, adopted in an Israel incorporating the 1967 territories, might present the best compromise between unification and partition. For example, Palestinian Arabs and Mizrahi Jews of Arab origins might find that they have common interests, and form electoral alliances or coalitions in certain cantons or districts. The idea of a cantonal or federal system has attracted supporters ranging from the Rabbi Magnes to the Palestinian attorney and scholar Lama Abu-Odeh. Also, there is the delicate question in a binational system of balancing the theme of national rights for both peoples with the theme of common citizenship in a shared democracy. As the South African peace process of 1990-1993 suggests, good agreements are hard to craft -- but possible, once the parties establish a viable basis. That viable basis is peace through integration, an alternative to the violence of the last 60 years and a road not yet taken which could transform the Middle East and give a new meaning to the Hebrew ideal of _tikkun olam_ or healing a ravaged world. Most respectfully, in peace and love, Margo Schulter mschulter@calweb.com