In what was to some extent seen as the political testament of an outgoing Prime Minister with only limited powers, Ehud Olmert said yesterday that Israel will have to give up the entire West Bank including East Jerusalem as the price of peace with the Palestinians.1 However, one is left wondering why he bothered to say anything. His statement is neither in line with his actions when he was in office, nor is it likely to be listened to by the majority of the military and political establishment in the country. It is also a statement that might suggest hat Ehud Olmert is suffering from schizophrenia; it is hardly in line with his curriculum vitae to date. Nevertheless, it is, of course, what Israel needs to do. In doing so they will only be accepting the UN Resolution 242 and it represents the least Israel has to do if there is to be any real peace in the area.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, when working in the Lebanon one of my older Palestinian students asked me, what the Palestinian people should do? I replied that they should try to get a worthwhile agreement based on the pre 1967 borders. Nevertheless, what I said does in fact ignore a very stark reality and that is that the person who asked me the question hadn't been a victim of the ethnic cleansing and land grabbing that has been going on since 1967, and is still going on today, but rather he had been forced out of his homeland as a child during the 'Palestinian Catastrophe', "Al Nakba", almost twenty years previously. Therefore, what I was effectively telling him was to be pragmatic, forget the place that you actually left as a child and if you do, you might get the Israelis to at least agree to your people having a state, not quite where it should be but pretty close anyway and not quite as big as it might be but bigger than it is now and not quite as "independent" as you might like it to be but more independent than it is now. Having said that, however, two and a half years later, I still believe that what I said to him is the best that the Palestinians can hope for.
It was originally the United States that blocked the placement of the word "the" before "territories" when Resolution 242 was drawn up.2 Therefore, we have this machiavellian interpretation of the Resolution where Israel thinks that it has the right to pick and choose which territories it has to withdraw from. They don't and, if Resolution 242 isn't clear enough, then Resolution 476 passed in 1980 by the Security Council3 is unequivicol in its call for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza and for those "gobbly-gookers" who are about to shout, "but God gave us this land", well, as I don't believe in God, this argument just doesn't hold and it really is nice to be living in a part of the world where God doesn't get to interfere in the law too much. The Palestinians might want to ask, which God? However, they too would be well advised to seek their salvation in the law and there is no ambiguity as far as international law is concerned; Mr Olmert, Israel should not be in Gaza and the West Bank.
Finally, it might be pointed out that Resolutions 242 and 476 sought to address the land grab from 1967. There are many, especially in Israel, who appear to believe that this meant there was an implied recognition of Israel's sovereignty within the 1949 armistice lines.4 This, however, was not the case. It is, therefore, as a pragmatist, as someone outside looking in, as a sort of realist, that I am saying to the Palestinians, , accept the State of Israel within the 1949 armistice lines, accept the existence of a state that has been established illegally on your homeland. On January 23, 1904, when Theodor Herzl put forward his request for a Jewish state at a conference in Tripoli, the Italian King, Victor Emmanuel III said, "Ma e ancora casa di altri" (But it is still the home of other people).5 In 2008 it is time to move on even if that moving on means me offering my Palestinian friends advice and telling them to accept what amounts to one of the biggest stings in the history of mankind. It is, however, also time for Israel to stop its bullying and to end its illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. For once I find myself agreeing with Mr.Olmert.
1 http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=96422
2 John Quigley, 'The Case for Palestine' Revised and Expanded Edition 2005, p170
3 http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/3822b5e39951876a85256b6e0058a478/6de6da8a650b4c3b852560df00663826!OpenDocument
4 See John Qigley above, p171
5 Ibid p46
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