What Israel must concede

by Rima Merriman

Nate Sharansky, Israel's minister for Jerusalem and diaspora affairs, is the author of "The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror", a book that is apparently being eagerly read by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Joseph Lieberman and former CIA director R. James Woolsey.

In the book, Sharansky argues that undemocratic societies (read Arab countries) can never be reliable partners for peace. But Palestinian and Arab experience has shown that democratic Israel has never been a reliable partner to peace, nor has the US (let freedom ring!) been an honest broker in this process. No amount of pointing fingers at the tactics of a few militant groups, at undemocratic Arab regimes or at mismanagement by the PNA could turn the tables around when it comes to the truth about Israel's culpability.

Because Israel is, by far, the stronger partner in any negotiations or peace talks with the Palestinians, it is in a position to "concede". This term is often used in reference to giving up territory. But "concede" also means "to acknowledge, often reluctantly, as being true, just, or proper; to admit". Israel has yet to concede what is just.

It is the Palestinians (the dispossessed) who have been told they must admit wrongdoing and mend their ways. The argument doesn't even include the adage that two wrongs don't make a right. There is only one wrong (these days it is tyranny and terror), and it is the Palestinians' doing.

As far as democratic Israel is concerned, all these decades since its creation, it has simply acted defensively, never rapaciously, and its defence of its rights is always legitimate, whereas the defence of Palestinian rights is, at worst, terrorism and, at best, misguided or easily overpowered. Whatever shreds of concessions Israel makes in peace talks are heroic, whereas the Palestinian rejection of impossible scenarios is cowardly and malicious.

After the failure of the Camp David talks, the mainstream media in the US gabbed endlessly about Israel's "extraordinary concessions" and Palestinian churlishness in rejecting them. A quick refresher here of what Israel "conceded" then (and I am putting a good face on it): 85 per cent of the West Bank broken up in three disconnected cantons, with Israel keeping most of occupied Jerusalem and 80 per cent of its illegal settlements and exercising "security control" over Israeli territory separating the cantons, as well as of "bypass roads" and the Jordan valley, thus making free travel and trade for Palestinians impossible. Sound familiar?

These concessions, renamed "independent state", are what the Palestinians are currently experiencing under occupation in a diminished form.

Israel also proposed to exchange fertile West Bank lands that just happened to contain the major water aquifers for a piece of its own territory in the Negev desert that just happened to contain a former toxic waste dump. How is that for tyranny and terror?

In reality, peace talks, for Israel, are simply ways to legitimise its illegal territorial gains. Israel should, therefore, get points for creativity, but the international community has yet to see any meaningful remedy of its violations of the rights of Palestinians and of international law.

Israel's manipulations throughout its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza have been deadly for the Palestinians. To begin with, Israel does not acknowledge that it has forcibly occupied the West Bank, because it claims that the international community had not recognised Jordan's sovereignty over the West Bank before 1967. Nevertheless, Israel touted to the world that, even though it does not consider itself bound by the Fourth Geneva Convention on Human Rights by virtue of being a "non-occupier", it was going to follow humanitarian standards and preserve local laws and institutions out of the uprightness of its moral fibre.

The reality is that almost everything Israel has done in the West Bank, it has done in pursuit of its own interests. And it has exploited the Oslo peace process in order to do so. By altering the character and legal status of the occupied territory and by outright annexing Jerusalem and its environs, Israel has left few options open for future negotiations with the Palestinians. Through the instrument of the military authority, it has acquired Palestinian land under various guises - so-called state land, "abandoned" property, land set aside for public purposes, land set aside for military purposes - and managed to transfer this land to Jewish private ownership.

Israel's settlements and accompanying bypass roads have fragmented and stunted the growth of Palestinian areas, erased the Green Line (the armistice line of 1967) and devastated the socio-economic fabric of Palestinian society.

It would be great if Bush, Cheney, et al would add Raja Shehadeh's book "The Law of the Land" to their nightstands along with Sharansky's. For that matter, I wish Sharansky, who believes "one-sided concessions only encourage terror" would read "The Law of the Land", just to learn what it is that actually brings about terror and what tyranny is.

Here is a list of international agreements that Israel has transgressed: The Hague Regulations of 1907, the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination and, last, but not least, the Oslo agreements.

Israel, the democratic country that is now preaching democracy and human rights to the Arab world through Bush's willing ears, must concede its own flagrant disregard of law and human rights when it comes to the Palestinians. It must concede the morality of the Palestinian claim and its own moral failure. Only then will trust begin to develop between the Arabs and Israelis, and only then true peace could follow.

This article was originally published in the Thursday, December 9, 2004 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.