Conflicting Narratives

American President Barack Obama delivered a thoughtful speech in Israel, hitting all the high spots. Demonstrating more than adequately that he has reviewed Jewish history and heritage, empathizing over the trials and tribulations of a people constantly under duress, with the final blow of the Holocaust leaving a trauma that not time nor fortune would ever heal. He emphasized the closeness of the United States sympathies with that of Israel, their fundamental agreement on justice and morals and their similar views of the dire circumstances in which the State of Israel exists.

President Obama talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during an official State Dinner at the President's Residence in Jerusalem   Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Israel, despite its presence in the Middle East, as a Jewish state, a renaissance of its heritage status, remains a solitary, vulnerable presence within a hostile and dangerous environment surrounded by neighbours who wish it ill. Their survival is entirely dependent on their government's and their peoples' ability to circumvent the obvious threats emanating from their neighbours, intent on removing Jews from the sacred precincts of what they believe to be land consecrated entirely to Islam.

Israeli imagination and entrepreneurship, scientific prowess and technological skills have enabled it to create an environment amenable to human survival. While it must remain utterly dependent on the stalwart presence of a well-equipped and -trained military, underpinned by conscription, to ensure that their survival in the face of mortal threats and physical violence through Islamist assaults is maintained with vigorous determination and strike-back capabilities.

President Obama is not taken with hawkishness. He is president of the still-most-powerful nation on Earth, still capable of assembling an immense military force with its technically advanced weaponry able to stand off assaults from any number of determined enemies.  He is aware that the United States is threatened -- belligerently and hatefully -- but finds himself unable to believe that in the face of the humility he has displayed before the world of Islam, that another attack like 9-11 could be accomplished.

Only time will tell whether Israeli vigilance and striking power, or this American administration's low-key, high-level stand-back attitude of stern persuasion will work; Israel cannot afford the attitude of reliance on moral persuasion that America now seems to rely upon, while still holding the big stick in abeyance. Israel's Iron Dome capabilities speak only of her defence; her disciplined military has few illusions that kindly persuasion would ever be effective in the indomitable face of theocratic detestation of another faith, aligned with tribal intolerance of another clan.

When President Obama met with Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, his speech was prefaced by one that Mr. Abbas delivered, emphasizing the morbid blow that Palestinians had sustained with the Nakba. This raging resentment against the UN Security Council's and the General Assembly's agreement to a division of a territory within the Middle East that was heavy with the tradition of a biblical Jewish presence, and a current one, where the original 'Palestinians' were Jews who had never left the land speaks volumes.

AP Photo Carolyn Kaster

It does not present as a people with a tolerance for sharing anything, for as exemplified by their original disbelieving outrage and refusal to accept Partition, and the wars that followed, and then the multitude of tactics and attacks by the PLO and their viral hatred for the Jewish state, there seems no room for compromise. And Mahmoud Abbas, given the plenitude of opportunities for achieving peace, has always rejected them. The Palestinian Authority and Fatah will not surrender their demands for 'return', or for a capital in East Jerusalem.

East Jerusalem holds the sacred heritage of Judaism.Jews were forbidden to approach their own most sacred sites of worship under previous Jordanian control of East Jerusalem. Under Israeli control, with conciliatory measures given to the Palestinians and the Islamic Waqf, Jews are still not permitted to approach the Temple Mount upon which Muslims built their own places of worship, forbidden to Jewish presence. 

Mr. Abbas spoke, in his address to the President of his people's presence since ancient times in the land, when no such reality ever existed.

He spoke of the "institutions of the state of Palestine, giving an exemplary model despite all hardships and hurdles", but the hardships and hurdles were all originated from within the obduracy of the Palestinians to greet the Israelis as legitimate and rightful co-residents of the land. The hardships and hurdles were those inflicted upon Israeli Jews who suffered constant suicide attacks, and still suffer continual rocket attacks in border villages, from avenging Palestinians.

President Abbas spoke of continuing in the path of their ancestors, and they are; it is time for the Palestinians to reject the path of their ancestors, to embrace the world of the present and the reality of the presence of Jews on the land, with their own prerogatives and requirement of recognition as rightful heirs to their own history. Once that is recognized, and the Palestinians face the reality that they must bargain in good faith with Israelis to accomplish an accommodation that will serve them both, then the reconciliation of history can begin.

The first item on the agenda is a sincere admission on the part of the Palestinian Authority, speaking for the Palestinians under its rule, of its agreement that the State of Israel is and is meant to be a Jewish homeland, a Jewish state. Which President Abbas continues to deny. Within which live, as full-fledged citizens with all the rights attendant on that status equally administered, Christians and Arab Muslims, the latter elected to sit as lawmakers in the Knesset.

The Palestinian Authority has no intention, could not even begin to imagine or entertain the possibility of allowing Jews to live within what will be, if peace agreements successfully ensue, a Palestinian State. Reciprocally, it would make eminent good sense to carve out those portions of Israel with majority Muslim presence, in trade for those parts of what the Palestinians see as their future state containing what are called West Bank settlements.

And then, of course, there is the incendiary, sinister presence of Gaza, vacated by Israel as a good-will gesture, of Jewish settlements there, in the hopes that it would engender a reciprocity of recognition that the way was cleared there for Palestinians to take full possession of the Strip and make of it a well administered quasi-state, to be joined with the West Bank in the fullness of a final agreement for sovereignty. Instead of order, chaos ensued, and Hamas added chaos, then established its Islamist order.

It remains as an odious symbol of hope gone awry. And it presents still as an omen of what may continue to lie in store for the future of the West Bank as well. Compromise is never a one-way street; partners are required to reach a working accommodation suitable to each party engaged in a collaborative enterprise for optimal success.