What could Palestinians do? President Abbas could announce that he is inviting Israel to form a joint Israeli/Palestinian border force to ensure that there are no more violent attacks on Israeli civilians, in exchange for the immediate opening of "final status" negotiations with Israel before any further West Bank withdrawals are created. There were joint patrols and security coordination until Sept. 2,000 and they contributed to the low level of violence on both sides until Ariel Sharon made his famous provocative trip to the Temple Mount. Abbas could further announce that the Palestinian people who elected him are committed to a non-violent (not passive) struggle for ending the Occupation, but that anyone engaged in violence against Israel or against fellow Palestinians would be tried and, if ! convicte d, would lose their Palestinian citizenship. Abbas could tour the West Bank and Gaza preaching non-violence, implement an immediate end to anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric in the Palestinian press and in their schools, and could announce that he is determined to build a culture of non-violence inside Palestine.
What could the U.S. and other Western states do? They could immediately establish an international conference representing all the nations of the world who were willing to accept the right of Israel to exist within the 1967 boundaries and the right of Palestine to exist within Gaza and the West Bank, and let those countries impose on both sides a settlement that is fair to both sides and enforce such a settlement, guaranteeing peace and security to both sides. Each participant country in this international conference would be allowed in after it had given to a neutral international bank a deposit equal to .01% of its GDP for the purpose of creating the beginning of an inernational fund for reparations as described below.
As the Tikkun Community has outlined in the past, the terms of that settlement should include:
1. Permanent boundaries for both states that roughly resemble the pre-67 borders, with some border adjustments mutually agreed to along lines developed in the Geneva Accord (Israel incorporating some of the border settlements into Israel, in exchange for Israel giving equal amounts and quality of land to the Palestinian State).
2. Sharing of Jerusalem and its holy sites, with each side entitled to establish their national capital in Jerusalem, Israel to have control over the Jewish and Armenian quarters plus the Wall and adjacent territory, and Palestine to have control over the Temple Mount with its mosques.
3. All states participating in the International Conference! would d edicate at least .1% of their GDP toward an international fund for reparations for Palestinians who lost property, employment or homes in the period 1947-1967, and to Jews who fled from Arab states in the same period (however, reparations will not be paid to any Arab or Jewish family with current gross assets of more than $5 million dollars).
4. A joint Israel/Palestine/International Community police force will be set up to enforce border security for both sides. The U.S. and Nato will enter into a mutual security pact for both parties guaranteeing that each side will be protected by the U.S. and Nato from any assault by the other or by any assault from any other country in the world.
5. Creation of an Atonement and Reconciliation Commission which will unveil all records of both sides, bring to light all violations of human rights on both sides, bring formal charges against those who do not confess their involvement in those violations and testify to the details, and supervise a newly created peace curriculum for all schools and universities aimed at teaching reconciliation and non-violence in action and communication. The explicit goal of this Commission will be to foster the conditions for a reconciliation of the heart and a new understanding on the part of both peoples that each side has been cruel and insensitive, and need to repent, and that both sides have a legitimate natrrative that needs to be understood and accepted as a legitimate viewpoint by the other side.
Who are Israel's friends and the friends of the Jewish people? Those who support this path toward peace and reconciliation. Who are its enemies? Those who encourage it to persist in the fantasy that it can "win" militarily or politically. Just as the objective enemies of America in the 1960s were those who egged it on to persist in the Vietnam war, and those who were its objective friends were those of its citizens who actively opposed that war, so similarly today the ! friends of the Jewish people are those who are doing everything possible to restrain it from cheerleadng for Israel's militarist adventures and refusal to treat the Palestinians as equally entitled to freedom and self-determination as the Jewish people.
Who are Palestine's friends? Those who encourage a path of non-violence and abandoning the fantasy that armed struggle combined with political isolation of Israel will lead to a good outcome for Palestinians. Who are its enemies? Those who preach ideas like "one state solution" or global economic boycott without offering the Jewish people a secure state in Palestine-paths that will never produce anything positive but continued resistance by Israel and world Jewry.
As for us in the Tikkun Community who are friends of both sides, our orientation is clear. Our goal is to speak truth to both the powerful in Israel and the powerless in Palestine, to tell them that their goals cannot be achieved without a radical reversal in the strategic directions they have been following. This truth will eventually be heard - the only question is whether it will be heard without another generation of Arabs and Israelis losing their lives. Because we care very much about the human suffering on both sides, we pray that this truth will be heard, and our strateges for a solution will be implemented. And we will do more than pray - we will also demonstrate against the governments of the U.S., Israel and Palestine till they all change their directions in the ways suggested here, we will organize and educate, and will take other non-violent stepts to get our message heard.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun and national chair of the Tikkun Community/ Network of Spiritual Progressives.
People are invited to subscribe to Tikkun magazine or join the interfaith organization the Network of Spiritual Progressives-- "both of which can be done by going to www.tikkun.org
There are an awful number of sides to this story, Reb Lerner
As a Jew I have struggled long and hard with the Israeli penchant for acting like , dare I say it, Nazis.....Torture and murder, firing live rounds into crowds of rock throwing children, driving tanks through peoples homes, dropping bombs on an occupied apartment complex to assassinate one Hamas leader are all actions I simply cannot condone, regardless of the circumstances.
The current crisis was sparked, I have read, by an Israeli patrol incursion into Lebanon and not the other way around, but no matter. The response to the capture of two soldiers and the deaths of others is heinous and is an attack upon the only real democracy in the middle east! Lebanon is struggling with the efforts to end the power of Hezbollah in that nation and this attack simply gives the extremists more ammunition and more allies.
We have here a nation (Israel) engaged with groups of terrorists and not with another government. One might expect much more enlightenment from the government of Israel, perhaps treating the Palestinian people as if they WERE human in the first place might have gone a long way to defusing the volatile nature of the enmity many arabs feel towards them. Israel is nothing more or less than a tool of American imperialism and a severe and constant violator of the civil rights of far too many.
Like it or not people who have homes, jobs, a future for themselves and their children are far, far less likely to support terrorism. The government of Israel makes me ashamed to be a jew, frankly.
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments)
on Monday, July 17, 2006 at 8:12:25 PM
Another Jew, in agreement with Ardee. I'm disgusted with Zionism and its Nazi-like philosophy and tactics toward the Palestinian people--and now the Lebanese people, too. Just because the American media doesn't report it, doesn't mean we don't know what Israel has been doing. It only means that most Americans are ignorant of the facts and therefore we are all powerless to intervene and end the atrocities. It's similar to our media failing to report our atrocities in Iraq, thereby perpetuating (assisting) our crimes against humanity in Iraq and in our prison/torture camps around the world.
Some human beings apparently think they have something to gain by making other human beings live (and suffer and die) in hell on earth. What a dark and heavy burden they take upon themselves. I want no part in it.
by
Lilydove (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 26 comments)
on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 at 2:48:32 AM
2 comments
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