Solutions Waiting For Recognition

Again and yet again and forever still, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refuses to utter those fateful words admitting that Israel "is a Jewish state". Israel is a Jewish state just as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and all the other nations barring Iran are Arab states. But it is forbidden for Israel to view itself as a Jewish state. Perhaps the reason may lie in the fact that the Jewish state has embraced the presence of Druze, Christians, Muslims, B'hai and others among the Jews residing in Israel.

It is forbidden, on the other hand, for an Israeli to enter the Palestinian Authority city of Ramallah. Ramallah is the capital city of the current Palestinian Territories, although the Palestinians aspire to claim East Jerusalem as their capital in defiance of Israel's historical, heritage, religious claim to a unified Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Palestinians and by extension all Arabs in the Middle East see East Jerusalem, where the most sacred site in Judaism lies, as their very own.

If and when the tale of two states ever reaches reality, it will be forbidden for Jews to live anywhere in the territory that Palestinians claim as their own. Palestinians, on the other hand, Muslims and Christians both, are welcome to live peaceably in Israel, as citizens if they wish. There is no need for Israel to defy the reality of the Palestinian Territories as representing an Arab state, but obviously the obverse represents a tendentious affront.

The Palestinians, with good cause, are offended, angered, frustrated and rage against their oppressive state of 'occupation'. Which people would not react with anger against the fact of their occupation by a foreign element, after all? The cause of the 'occupation' is not, however, an integral part of the equation as far as they are concerned. The need to guarantee security for the population of Israel against violent attacks slaughtering Jews, the prevention of which is occupation.

The majority of Israelis, though they would like to believe that two states, existing side by side without rancour or threat is possible, and that it would benefit both states, and that it represents a much-preferred option to the status quo, are losing faith that it is attainable. The majority of Palestinians look instead to a one-state 'solution' to the current, ongoing dilemma. That one state would of choice and necessity be a Palestinian state.

The per capita Gross Domestic Product in the Palestinian Territories is less than $3,000. The Israeli figure is close to $30,000. Israeli-Palestinian cooperation in all manner of ways is conceivable and in fact is reality, but it could be increased to the point where the Palestinians could realize their independent dream of self-sufficiency, a state of self-respect and accomplishment they have thus far evaded in their dependence on the UN responding to their plight as 'refugees'.

Refugees are what Israel has welcomed to its territory. The refugees of a world declining to make a place for Jews in safety and security, from the displaced of the post-war 2ndWW refugee camps to those fleeing oppression in countries like Russia, growing anti-Semitism in Europe, and the Sephardic Jews whose presence in Arab lands was rejected after the impertinence of Zionism in claiming a land for Jews.

Philanthropy in the form of a massive infusion of investment by Qatar and a wealthy Palestinian, in building a new Palestinian city modelled upon a highly successful Israeli city expected to house some 45,000 upper-middle-class Palestinians in a total of 23 different neighbourhoods, is nearing completion. They will receive their water from Israel. They have depended on supplies from Israel to enable the construction of the city of Rawabi.

Does common sense not predicate that sooner or later Palestinians would recognize that hostilities must come to an end, and their attention given instead to the serious work of making a success of their futures together, rather than mounting violent 'resistance' against the 'occupation', which could readily be dissolved once the need for vigilance -- the defence against suicide killings and rockets come to an end?