FOR SLOWER SUICIDE?

'Road map' demands a double suicide (David Warren, June 11, 2003, Ottawa Citizen)

I would devote more attention to fine details if I thought the large ones were generally understood. [...]

Let my reader now dwell on just one crucial, historical fact. It is the single biggest obstacle to obtaining any kind of peace between Israel and the Arabs: All the Arab states, with the arguable exception of Jordan, have consistently demanded a "right of return" for Palestinian refugees and all of their descendants -- to the patch you coloured in as Israel. They have confined the great majority of these people to refugee camps for more than half a century, at the expense of the United Nations. The children and grandchildren and now great grandchildren of these refugees have thus been kept from assimilating and making new lives elsewhere, as the ultimate demographic weapon against Israel.

The State of Israel was created in 1948, by the same UN, in the face of an invasion by the armies of all its Arab neighbours. Some three-quarters of the Arabs living in what became Israel fled -- mostly on instructions from their own leaders, who promised they would soon return. The number was between 600,000 and 700,000. At the same time, Jews dispersed throughout the Arab world -- some 860,000 of them, counted on their arrival in Israel -- fled their own homes and left most of their belongings to make new lives in Israel. Forget blame -- I am only saying look at both halves of the apple.

The Jews of Israel are five million today, plus a million-and-a-quarter Arabs, the descendants of those who did not leave and, in fact, flourished. The Palestinian diaspora -- descendants of those who did leave -- has been variously estimated at now five-plus million. And almost everyone now living in the "occupied territories" can claim at least one ancestor who lived within the Green Line to clinch his own right of return. If Israel can be forced to receive them, Israel ceases to be the only Jewish state and quickly becomes the 23rd member of the Arab League.

Surprise: Israel does not agree to commit suicide. Surprise: the Arabs will settle for nothing less. The diplomatic "road map" leaves this issue to be resolved "later."

Mr. Warren tiptoes up to the edge of real insight here but then bails out to make the easy arguments. The "right of return" is not a large detail because it can never be granted. It is a mere bargaining chip, something Palestinian leaders are required to demnand for internal political prposes but which they're going to trade for statehood. So focussing on it as of it mattered is simply a way of ignoring the reality of the situation.

Here's a more fruiitful exercise based on the one he offers in his essay. Take a map of the Middle East and draw in the states today, with Israel including the territory of "Palestine". Now draw what it will look like fifty years from now--is there still a state of Israel but no second state? Now draw it one hundred years from now--still just Israel?

Now take a pencil and extend those demographic numbers that Mr. Warren mentions, where Israelis are already outnumbered by Palestinians. How much larger is the imbalance in ten years? in fifty? in one hundred? If your map of one hundred years from now still had Palestine under Israeli control, how few Israelis do you have governing how many Palestinians? How is such a place not fundamentally an Arab nation?

If, on the other hand, at any point in the exercise you've drawn two states, then you've drawn the big picture, the point of the Road Map. Everything else is just fine details. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 11, 2003 9:55 AM