Juan Cole: Top Ten Steps That Are Necessary for Lasting Gaza-Israel Peace

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/289-134/14692-top-ten-steps-that-are-necessary-for-lasting-gaza-israel-peace-or-good-luck

1. The Israeli blockade on Gaza exports and non-military imports must be lifted altogether. Ben White points out that the restrictions on goods brought into Gaza via Israel are still very substantial, despite Israeli assertions that the blockade has been eased.

2. Palestinians must be granted citizenship in a state. It is all the same to me if it is a Palestinian state or if they are given Israeli citizenship. The aggressive, far-right Likud Party is setting things up so that there isn't really a place to put a Palestinian state anymore. In any case, it is unacceptable for millions of Palestinians to be kept stateless by Israel. Stateless people have no real rights, since rights are enforced by a state.

3. Egypt should broker a rapprochement between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas. As long as these two are at daggers drawn, Palestinians are easily divided and ruled by Israel and the US, and they have fewer means to resist having their land stolen and having their lives blighted by the blockade.

4. Egypt's President Muhammad Morsi should put pressure on Hamas leaders to foreswear the use of terrorist tactics toward Israel.

[Bonobo]

1. The slant of the article was quite obvious when I read this. #8.

8. Israel must cease demanding that people recognize it before negotiations begin. There is something pitiful about being that insecure, or too clever by half in being that Machiavellian. For Palestinians, some forms of ‘recognition' involve giving up basic claims and rights that they believe should be part of the negotiations. The Israelis are trying to set things up so that the Palestinians have to give away most of what they want to negotiate about before they even get to the table. The PLO recognized Israel as part of the Oslo accords. It was rewarded by being marginalized, emasculated and betrayed. Why should any other Palestinian political force wish to be taken for a ride that way? As for Israeli complaints that Hamas wants to destroy them, that is ridiculous. It is not ridiculous that Hamas might have such aspirations in the long term, it is ridiculous that a tiny poverty-stricken and militarily virtually non-existent entity like Hamas should be taken seriously as a military threat to nuclear-armed Israel.

Common sense will tell you that you cannot negotiate with someone that doesn't recognize you as a legitimate state that exists and has a right to exist. Does anyone honestly believe that negotiations could begin with good faith with a partner that doesn't recognize you? And this author turns that around and says it is "pitiful", "insecure". This author is disguising propaganda as serious talk in this ridiculously slanted piece.

[eridani]

2. So, he's wrong about what happened to the PLO?

What did they get out of recognizing Israel?

[Bonobo]

4. Wrong question.

The correct question is -How in your right mind do you think ANYONE will negotiate with you if you fail to even recognize their right to exist.

[eridani]

7. That would indeed be a problem if anyone in Gaza actually had the power--

--to make Israel cease to exist.

[BlueMTexpat]

9. If one can't even raise these points for discussion without having someone immediately try to

discredit them by claiming that there is a "slant," the situation will go on as it is and get worse.

The recognition claim is a "straw man" - Palestinians have no real power other than rhetoric. Israelis other than those who are RW Likudists recognize this. Yes, as someone who has no skin in the game, I can intellectually agree with the concept that the Palestinians "should" recognize Israel's right to exist first. But shouldn't actions speak louder than words? If Palestinians are willing to come to the table at all, that is an implicit recognition of Israel's right to exist.

On the other hand, I've seen no recognition by RW Israelis that Palestinians even have the right to exist as a people. And Israel, with US support, has the power to wipe the Palestinians out completely.

The world outside the US sees this quite clearly. That does not necessarily mean that other countries side against Israel as the RW likes to depict things, i.e., Israel versus The World. Witness, for example, the plethora of ongoing bilateral and multilateral trade and other agreements, etc. that other nations have with Israel. But it does mean that they hate the hypocrisy and unfairness of the US position. This ongoing and festering power imbalance has done more harm to US goodwill abroad than any other single issue since WWII.

It's pretty pitiful when people in the US (as I assume you are) who are far from the situation and who have their own "slant" insist that their views should prevail over those who have to live with this situation on a daily basis. There are pragmatists/people of goodwill on both sides. Let them start talking to each other with NO pre-conditions on EITHER side! That is my most fervent wish.

Seriously negotiating is a win-win for both sides. Not negotiating at all is lose-lose. This situation only continues to destabilize the entire region. After all, it is the region that poses a much more significant threat to Israel's existence than the Palestinians themselves ever can or will.

[thucythucy]

10. "Common sense will tell you

that you cannot negotiate with someone who doesn't recognize you as a legitimate state that exists and has a right to exist."

Doesn't that cut both ways? You're saying then that Israel should recognize Palestine "as a legitimate state" before negotiations even begin? If that's so, why are Israel and the US so intent on making sure the UN doesn't recognize even the nominal existence of a Palestinian state?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

12. Slanted, Juan Cole, surely you gest

[GitRDun]

3. I think it's really 1 step!

Both sides should stop killing people!

[Bonobo]

5. Here is a typical post from his blog about the 2008 bulldozer attack on Israelis by a Palestinian

He spends almost the entire time making excuses for the attack.

I wonder if this was counted as a Palestinian attack breaking the peace or not...

http://www.juancole.com/2008/07/bulldozer-attack-in-west-jerusalem.html

The use of a Caterpillar bulldozer in the attack is probably a symbolic reversal, since Israeli authorities have been demolishing Palestinian buildings in East Jerusalem on “administrative grounds” of lack of permits. The chief cause of a lack of permits is Israeli refusal to grant building permits to Palestinians in East Jerusalem. But they have to live somewhere.

Rapid Israeli encroachments on the Palestinians in the West Bank are raising fears of a water crisis for the native inhabitants of this region. This according to B’tselem.

Those encroachments are attended by violence of Israeli colonists (many of them Americans) against native Palestinians, violence that does not make headlines because Israeli military authorities suppress video and other evidence of it.

The bulldozer operator appears to have been acting alone and was apparently seized with a fit of rage over accumulated grievances in his own mind, real or imagined. Violence against innocent civilians is always condemnable and deplored by IC.

[eridani]

6. Bulldozers are mainly Israeli weapons--remember Rachel Corrie?

Another comparatively helpless victim does one bulldozer attack for every 1000 perpetrated by Israel (mainly destroying houses and crops, though), and this does not surprise Cole for some reason.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

11. I do

horrible accident that...

[cali]

8. Yeah, this is all going to happen.