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News & Letters, June 2001
'Open Tent' conference on Israeli-Palestinian crisis
Los Angeles--The "Open Tent Middle East Coalition" held a conference on "The
Israeli Palestinian Crisis: New Conversations for a Pluralist Future" on
the campus of UCLA, on May 20. While Ariel Sharon's government was bombing
innocent Palestinians with F-16 warplanes in retaliation for a suicide
bombing in Netanya, about 200 participants were involved in meaningful
discussion about the crisis. The panels featured Jewish and Palestinian
scholars and activists and ranged from "Why Oslo and Camp David II Failed"
to "Solving the Crisis: the Future of Coexistence."
Dr. Mahmood Ibrahim, a Palestinian historian who teaches at Cal Poly
Pomona, argued that a fundamental defect of Ehud Barak's offer to the
Palestinians was that it did not offer them the entirety of the West Bank
and Gaza. Barak's offer would have still allowed Israel to hold onto its
settlements, West Bank communities surrounding Jerusalem, roads, army bases
and nature preserves. This violated the very idea of a viable Palestinian
state free of Israel's army presence.
Dr. Rashid Khalidi, director of the Center for International Studies at the
University of Chicago and author of the book, PALESTINIAN IDENTITY,
reaffirmed these problems. He argued that the Oslo agreement as well as
Camp David II failed because they did not address three "pre-requisites":
1) The acceptance of U.N. Resolutions 242, 181, and 194 which signify the
principles of land for peace as well as compensation for refugees; 2) The
recognition that both peoples have the right to self-determination and
independence; 3) The acceptance of the pre-June 4, 1967 border as the only
mutually acceptable basis for partition.
Khalidi emphasized that no fruitful peace negotiation could take place
unless the following issues are understood: 1) The return of land taken for
Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. 2) The acceptance of
Jerusalem as the capital for both peoples, with Palestinian sovereignty in
East Jerusalem, Israeli sovereignty in West Jerusalem, as well as complete
access to the entire city by all people. 3) The acceptance by Israel of the
return or monetary compensation or restitution for Palestinian refugees.
Furthermore, Israel would have to acknowledge its share of the
responsibility in creating the Palestinian refugee crisis while others,
including the United Nations and the Arab governments, had a role too.
Without the recognition of these fundamental issues, Khalidi thought, there
is a possibility of endless conflict which might turn the region into a
wasteland.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine, reported that he is
now the target of a death threat issued by right-wing extremist Jewish
organizations, because of his activities in defense of Palestinian
self-determination. While he agreed with Ibrahim and Khalidi on the need to
dismantle the Israeli settlements and return Israel's borders to the 1967
Green Line, he distinguished his point of view on the following issue:
"Israel would have to admit its part for what happened to Palestinians in
1948. But I say part because Palestinians made a moral mistake. They kept
the Jews out of Palestine when we were being put in the crematoriums. But
that was also no excuse for us to hurt the Palestinian people. When we
jumped from the crematoriums on their backs, our pain was so much greater
than theirs, that we could not see they had a justified anger too. We only
saw their anger as a manifestation of the world being against Jews. It was
a complex reality."
On the question of the right of return, he believed that it would be fair
to allow 25,000-30,000 Palestinian refugees to return to Israel every year
for the next 25-30 years or, as an alternative, to offer compensation for
those refugees who do not return.
Lerner argued that for the Israeli public to be convinced of this position,
the Israeli Left would have to reassess its shortcomings: "The Israeli Left
has not been able to understand the needs of Mizrahi and Sepharadic Jews
and has lost them to the right-wing Likud. That is because the Israeli Left
does not understand the hunger for meaning in a society in which the
solution being offered is free market capitalism. Israel has become the
Taiwan of the Middle East." Lerner concluded by calling for massive
teach-ins in the U.S. and an international peace force composed of
civilians who understand the complexity of the situation.
The conference concluded with a report by Gila Svirsky, an Israeli feminist
peace activist whose writings have often appeared in NEWS & LETTERS.
Svirsky reported that a week before the conference, she and a group of
Israeli peace activists who had organized a caravan of food and medicine to
Palestinian villages, were warmly greeted by villagers who shook their
hands. She also emphasized that between 1,000 and 2,000 Israeli Army
reservists are currently sitting in Israeli jails because they have refused
to fight in the occupied territories. She asked the conference participants
to start a letter writing campaign to their local newspapers to oppose
Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories by calling for returning
Israel to its 1967 borders, advocating a just solution on Palestinian
refugees, and a shared Jerusalem.
The Open Tent Middle East Coalition in Los Angeles can be reached at
www.opentent.org
--Frieda
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