I remember in 1968 inviting Israeli and Palestinian representatives to our high school to speak about the Middle East conflict. Things have gotten worse since then. The nuanced solutions proposed over the years have failed to gain traction from either side. Possibly a solution which will make both sides unhappy but might lead to peace would include the following:
1. Include Palestinians in the Right to Return Law
2. Over a five year cooling off period Palestinians and Israelis become citizens of a new state called Israel-Palestine.
3. No law shall diminish the right to practice Judaism or Islam.
4. No religion shall advocate violence.
5. No reparations for Palestinians.
6. No laws which advocate or support religious or secular apartheid.
Obviously this is an imperfect solution and there would be plenty to argue and posture about but it might be enough for economic self interests to take root and temper the
religious fervor on both sides.
2
As evidenced by almost 70 years of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, the Arab world tried to use these "hopeless" people as a wedge against Israel. With Iran now knocking on the door through Iraq and Syria and advancing to the Mediterranean Sea, these same countries now see Israel as their defender and the calculus has changed. By forcing the Palestinian hand by cutting funds and befriending these same Arab countries, Trump and Kushner have begun to push all sides to the "middle". While Hamas is a lost cause, the PLO with Abbas may be permitted to save face and establish their own demilitarized country. Time will tell.
4
Ever since Rabin's assassination, there has not been an Israeli leader actually interested in peace -- only a peace "process" -- a naked cover for continuing the occupation, expanding settlements, building walls, and complaining they have no "partner" to negotiate with. And with Trump, there is no credible US broker to mediate a peace. But I disagree with some of the commentators here... the current situation is unsustainable, explosive.
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The general beneficent effect of Jewish immigration on Arab welfare is illustrated by the fact that the increase in the Arab population is most marked in urban areas affected by Jewish development. A comparison of the Census returns in 1922 and 1931 shows that, six years ago, the increase percent in Haifa was 86, in Jaffa 62, in Jerusalem 37, while in purely Arab towns such as Nablus and Hebron it was only 7, and at Gaza there was a decrease of 2 percent
– Peel Commission Report, British Government, 1937
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@Rla In the period mentioned, Jews owned no more than 3% of the land and did not have the means of production (or desire) to affect the general economy. Pretty much all of the factories, orchards (orange and olive), shipping companies, etc. were Muslim. Jews owned some kibbutzes and small Mom and Pop businesses like tailors and bakeries. So your theory that Arabs were attracted to (or benefited by) Jewish immigration just doesn't hold water.
3
@sharpshin
I don't see how you view the Peel Commission Report, written in 1937 and on behalf of the British Government, as somehow having become the product of my opinion.
@sharpshin
According to historical record, tens of thousands of Arab economic migrants from neighboring areas illegally crossed into Mandatory Palestine following WW1, The British noted the onslaught but turned a blind eye.
In 1948, the UN relaxed their refugee eligibility residency requirements (for this population only) to 2 years residency. Those tens of thousands of illegal migrants residing in Mandatory Palestine for the two years between 1946 to 1948....and their descendants....now call themselves ‘Palestinian refugees’.
2
Peace between Israel and the Palestinians? Not in this lifetime.
2
September 19, 2018
It makes surely everyone weep that is peace loving -and what we have makes up have body counts and so the message of the success back forty years ago - is not the catalyst for advancing the minds, souls and leadership for all that engage in this blood bath of chaos and evil.
What is broke is all that is obtainable and their in the solution: governing in this new century is retro to agendas that are pre Abraham intervention in the spirit of the living and those that carry the failure to define and interpret the narratives of what Camp David should teach the world and did in the awards of this success but yet to many refuse to the study, learn, and ask more of leadership to give enlightenment and courage to what we best capable of - in a shared world that from space is one and true for all to study and take deep reflections and breaths to live for life and truth that means love our neighbors for better or worst but in the end to save our own - everything - thru by and for peace in hearts....
jja Manhattan, N.Y.
1
I'm no fan of Zionism of any stripe, mainly because I believe a political order based on nothing more than ethnicity has no place in the "modern world," so-called. Even so, I'm wiling to live with a "Jewish state" that is in fact a state alongside other states and nationalities. But as Mr. Friedman so painfully demonstrates, this isn't what Israel is. It is, instead, a supremacist political passion attached to a nuclear-tipped high-tech military establishment that is gorged on American dollars and weaponry--and it has an eschatology that is mired in empty dreams of an absolute veto over the political and military life of the other nations of the Middle East. The root of this problem is an insane dream that will someday explode in an ongoing set of disasters. Who in Netanyahu's Israel--or in Trump's America--will listen to reason? The answer today is--Nobody.
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@David A. Lee . Have you ever ben to Israel, David? I think you will find average people that just don't want to be blown up.
8
It seems that both sides want to play long games. The Israelis appear to want land and resources while making the Palestinians disappear. I can't imagine how they will do away with the Palestinians. The Palestinians are working to deploy a demographic time bomb such that Israel will someday have to absorb them and cease to be a Jewish state. Overall, I suspect that the Palestinians are winning by allowing the Israelis to make a Palestinian state impossible. Israel needs to come up with a very enticing offer, and soon.
4
@VaDoc
Israel doesn’t ‘have’ to do anything vis a vis the Palestinians....and they certainly don’t have to waste their time making any further offers. Land for peace? Not anymore. That ship has sailed.
Likewise, there is no “demographic ticking time bomb” because Israel will never absorb Palestinians into Israel as citizens.
3
@VaDoc No better way to disarm your enemy than to offer a just -- and even generous -- peace.
"The right of return." The Jews of Israel have a right of return for people who never lived in Palestine/Israel/Judea or any Biblical term you have for that part of the world. A Jew born and raised in Los Angeles of European heritage can go to Israel and get citizenship. A Palestinian born in Israel can't return to his home. How are they going to deal with a policy that seems unfair on its face value? Good luck.
5
@Steve . There are consequences to starting and losing wars. Meanwhile, there are several Arab or Muslim states in the world and there is only one Jewish state. That is, only one place where Jews' freedoms and safety are guaranteed.
The true tragedy is that Palestinians in Lebanon, Kuwait and elsewhere are treated as second class citizens by their Arab governments. Good luck reading about that in the NYT though.
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The right of return for victims of war is enshrined in international law...maybe you haven't heard? You'd like Palestinians to simply self-deport, even though their roots in Palestine run centuries deep. It's not going to happen.
Jews living in America (about half the world population of Jews) would probably dispute your claim that there is "only one place" where they live in freedom and safety. Palestinians living abroad treated like "second class citizens?" They aren't "citizens" of those countries at all. It's Arabs holding Israeli citizenship who are treated as lesser citizens.
1
Trump is more worried about the future of his son and son in law than of the Palestinian people or the future look of Israel.
The damage being done throughout the world by the lack of a plan is a crime against humanity. In South America Venezuela , and Brazil, In Africa, Sudan, Congo, Nairobi, Midle east Yemen, Syria, Near East Turkey, Far East China's Muslims and Tibetans, etc.
Not only has he been a threat to the world, he is a threat to our Democracy with his support to white nationalists.
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@tom All of these situations preceded Trump. I am no supporter but Obama and other previous Presidents didn’t have a good plan either.
3
The Palestinians will never sign any agreement that requires them to recognize and live in peace with Israel . If history has taught us anything it is this. As a frequent visitor to Israel I believe that this opinion is shared by the majority of Israelis including many who formerly believed peace was possible. Crisis management and maintaining the status quo is all that is reasonably possible. The idea that Israel will be forced to govern the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza as full citizens of Israel is absurd and not a reasonable or necessary scenario based on reality
8
This is like getting a brilliant forensic analysis of a horrifying death scene. Well done, Mr. Friedman....if only those in power would listen, reflect, and nudge themselves and their people into a postures of accommodation and peace.
2
Every cabinet member in the Trump administration was selected to destroy the agency they lead or as a thumb in the eye to those that need it. Coal lobbyists running the EPA, Federalist Society members running the FDA and planted on the courts, Nitwits like DeVos, Carson and Perry selected for their ignorance and willingness to hurt the people the agency serves. It is all so over the top that the script would never be approved for its fantastical premise. But the most over the top pick is a mediocre boy with no government experience and a questionable security clearance who leaves his money laundering business to bring peace to the Middle East. If this doesn’t get the US to the polls en masse there really is no hope for us.
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The two-state solution already exists, called Israel and Jordan.
Let’s not pretend that Jordan doesn’t occupy 80% of the former Ottoman province, aka Palestine...granted by the British Mandate to the Arabs in 1920 for their exclusive benefit.
What the Arabs want is the three-state solution...but only as a prelude to a one state solution, with Israel destroyed... an Arab-majority greater Palestine-Jordan.
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@Shenoa Jordan doesn’t want Palestine, they just prefer for Israel not to exist either. This is why Israel is able to pretty much do what they want with only cursory resistance from the Arab world. The land just doesn’t have enough value for Arab nations to invest much to try and conquer it. It’s all speeches and funding of small terrorist organizations. They want the UN to do what they are unwilling or unable to accomplish.
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@Shenoa Yup. Jordan was promised to the Hashemite kingdom in 1915 - pre-Balfour. Why? Because the Arabs fought and died alongside the British in WWI. (The Jews didn't, obviously). Present day Jordan wasn't known then as "Palestine" but as Transjordan, point of fact. And the Jordan was excluded from the "Jewish homeland" scheme in two separate treaties, before the mandate was authorized by the League of Nations.
Jordan had its own government by 1924, was never administered by the British under the mandate but was autonomous, and was an independent country by 1946, two years before Israel. It has a peace treaty with Israel and in 1988 ceded its territorial claims in the West Bank to the PLO.
It's very clear that what has been at issue between the native Arabs of the Levant and the immigrant Jews is historic Palestine, west of the Jordan River. Palestine wasn't "granted" to the Jews, either, only the right to settle there as Churchill made plain. It was conflict between the two groups that generated four partition proposals and the ruling that both Arabs and Jews were entitled to a state there.
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Why re recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital call Trump. "chump" and or art of the give awsy when it's clear his policy is pro settlement.
1
The Arab world rejected peace in 1967 with the Three No's of Khartoum. Arafat reject peace when Clinton negotiated a remarkably good deal for him at Taba in the last days of Clinton's term in office.
The Arabs of Gaza rejected peace after Israel gave them an independent state by withdrawing unilaterally in 2005 when they elected Hamas.
Palestinians are the only independence movement in history that has rejected an independent state of its own because of a boundary dispute.
Why should this be? It is because if there were an independent Palestinian state it might justify Israel's right to exist.
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A Palestinian state will be created when ONU will recognize a Palestinian state -same way the state of Israel was created. There is no sense for the Palestinians to talk directly to the Israelis. The French will do it, other countries will follow, leaving the US in a bind and alone like with climate change and everything else.
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@Grosse Fatigue The problem with that notion is that the Palestinians do not currently control the land that the UN might consider as the Palestinian state and the French and other UN nations are not going to force Israel to leave that land. Unless the UN is willing to enforce the boarders, the fictional Palestinian State would be hypothetical. The UN has a hard enough time with skirmishes between and within small nations with limited resources. The UN has no real power or clout on climate change for that matter. US emissions decreased last year outside of the agreement while European emissions increased within the agreement.
2
@Grosse Fatigue
The UN does has neither the power nor the authority to create states. And no, the UN did not ‘create’ Israel.
2
@Grosse Fatigue
The UN has neither the power nor the authority to create states. And no, the UN did not ‘create’ Israel.
2
Here's a real scoop from the place Friedman keeps talking about. I may be censored – I frequently am – but I'll share the thinking taking hold in the underreported sections of liberated Israel.
Following the cowardly murder of Ari Fuld z"l by a Muslim terrorist, many don't think even a cold peace is possible anymore. Especially since many that have Israeli citizenship harbor a hate that far surpasses the affluence they've achieved. Does Islam not control 99% of the Middle East? And yet, despite the overwhelming evidence (historical, biblical, legal etc) of Israel's right to this land, most of the Islamic world rejects Jewish autonomy in any part of Israel.
What should Israel do if an entire town rises up to kill Jews on the street or at the shared supermarket? The mercy towards those that would kill all Jews without hesitation if they could, is wavering.
Hence: Saudi Arabia must begin taking in its coreligionists and provide a homeland for them there, at Islam's holiest place. Refuse to stay peaceful in Israel, perhaps plan to murder a Jew? You'll be "hajj'ed" to Mecca on a one-way trip, where you can live out your life in Islam's holiest place. Israel will be happy to help "green-up" that dusty old Saudi Arabian boot, can help build the cities of New Mecca and New Medina. I.e., Muslims who cannot live peacefully here will be invited to fulfill one of Islam's five pillars. Only permanently.
Is this thinking 10 years ahead of its time? We shall see. It's God's movie.
5
To assess Mr. Friedman's proposal for Israel-Palestinian peace, it's important to raise a question he neglected to ask: how should "world opinion", Israel, and the US react if Palestinians violate the "separation" he envisages. In such a case, the "separation" would not be a peace accord.
We have a relevant historical example: Gaza. Israel withdrew its forces and Israeli citizens from Gaza Without any preconditions (and, perhaps unfortunately, without negotiations). The principal result, in my opinion, was the enabling of terrorist Palestinians and attacks on Israel. This kind of result could occur – on a larger scale – under a "separation" of the kind Mr. Friedman sketched.
What terms of a "separation" would prevent such an outcome? If that outcome were to occur, what Israeli defense measures would so-called world opinion, the EU, the US, and others support (not merely condone or accept). This must be addressed explicitly, so the "separation" does not become an Israeli suicide agreement agreement.
The example of Gaza demonstrates the extent to which enormous care is required.
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@Michael N. Alexander What Mr. Friedman’s opinion really fails to realize is that a significant percentage of Palestinians will most likely want the option to continue living in Israel vs choosing to live under a Palestinian government with a poor economy and little prospects for success. Will the world expect Israel to keep those Palestinians in their boarders to live and work? What happens to peace once Palestinians get a nation and government of their own only to find it comes with continued poverty and misery?
4
@John
The Palestinian leadership and their minions were never interested in statehood. They’re interested in destroying Israel for the sake of Arab ‘honor’....or rather their skewed notion of ‘honor’.
2
One problem with arriving at an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal is that the Palestine Authority (PA) always insists upon Israel accepting the Right of Return, and Israel will never accept it in a million years. Another problem is that Netanyahu's administration insists that the PA accept Israel, not just as a state, but as a Jewish state. This is a cynical, bad faith condition, since Netanyahu knows that the PA will never accept it. (About 15% of Israelis are non-Jewish Palestinians.) As long both sides insist that these two principles be recognized as preconditions to negotiations, nothing will be accomplished.
4
@Kevin McCaffrey so no right of return for Palestinians who were chased from their home 70 years ago, but the right of return for anyone living anywhere who claims to be the possible descendants of someone living in the region 2,000 years ago..Netanyahu's insistence on Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is his trump card against peace. The PLO recognized the state of Israel at Oslo, then netanyahu did his best to destroy Oslo agreements. Even Shimon Peres and Rabin increased the colonization of Palestine immediately after Oslo. So, no, the Palestinians do not have a partner for peace.
3
Does anyone know if the Palestinian street wants anything other than ending the existence of Israel? Is the presence of Hamas and its obstinacy regarding recognition of the existence of Israel something of which the people of Gaza can't rid themselves or a true reflection of Palestinian sentiment? If Palestinians truly reject Israel's existence, is there any hope of a two state solution or will Israel eventually have to take the road of South Africa and Zimbabwe and give full rights of citizenship to non-Jews perhaps eventually ending its Jewish character?
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@James Egel The two state solution fails in so many ways. Creating a 3rd world Palestinian nation will do nothing to Palestinians happy. Many would still want to live in Israel where their prospects of success would be greater than that under a self rule Palestinian government. People who choose to live in the newly created Palestine would have poor prospects for making a good life for themselves and their families leading to resentment and terrorism.
2
@James Egel Hamas has said within recent memory that it would abide by a peace treaty. And the Palestinians recognized Israel's "right to exist in peace and security" on multiple occasions, most recently in 1993. You can read those documents, as I did, on the website of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
Also in 1993, the PLO voided objectionable clauses in its charter (which was replaced in 1994 by a constitution -- something Israel still does not have, although one was promised by 1949). There has been little change in Palestinian peace parameters -- a contiguous independent state in the West Bank and a free Gaza, with a capital in East Jerusalem.
3
40 years,70 years Palestinians have refused 6 peace agreements with Israel, the PA continues to incite to terror and to pay salaries to convicted terrorists and their families.Stolen Billions, for the leaders, while the peasants go hungry and illiterate, and living some in a hovel, but the best tunnel system in the world. What exactly are they expecting?The Palestinian people's fundamental enemy is not Israel. Their enemies are poverty, ignorance, and manipulation by corrupt leaders who are only to happy to see them suffer and die, all the while blaming the Jews in order to distract attention from their shortcomings. Wondering when the Palestinian people will decide for themselves that enough is enough and stop being cannon fodder for their corrupt leadership. For those that remember history after the 67 war,Levi Eshkol offered to return both Gaza and the West Bank, no one wanted them, WHY?
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Like all well intentioned cajoles for peace, this opinion is predicated on the assumption that Palestinianism is a nationalist movement rather than an annhilationist movement. A nationalist movement would be able to carry through on Mr. Friedman's suggestions, an annhilationist one will not. Bibi correctly sees that Palestinians -- at the leadership level -- are only serious about a Two-Stage Solution (A Palestinian state in the west bank as a 'stage' to conquer Israel) and therefore correctly resists. Just see Gaza, or visit the indoor playground in Sderot.
Peace will come when there is overwhelming support for a Palestinian nationalism comprising frequent and fair elections, respect for women by at the very least policing honor killings, respect for religious minorities (yes Virginia, why can't "Palestine" have a Jewish minority if some of the "settlers" stay?), at least some tolerance for LGBTQs, freedom of speech and press and an overall ethos of prosperity and growth rather than victimization and support for terrorism.
The above is big 'L' classic Liberalism. Obviously, this should be an inner-Arab or inner-Palestinian movement, but at the very lest the rest of us can use our rhetoric and demand that the PA make peace now. It's a shame that so few voices do.
6
Thomas, the real reason why peace can never be made between Israel and the Palestinians is mainly because the Palestinians keep refusing to sit down and negotiate with them. Keep in mind that they were offered a chance for their own state countless times in the past, but have always refused on each of them especially when it meant putting an end to terrorism and recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. As long as the Palestinians continue to have this vendetta on Israel and Jews, a state for them will never occur. The only real way to free Palestine is to be free them from the real oppressors that are both Hamas and Fatah, who are known for ruling the Palestinian territories with iron fists in both of those lands. Another problem is that elections in the Palestinian territories are such a rare event that makes some of their politicians serve almost for life while Israel holds elections on a regular basis and has seen their politicians come and go a lot. More importantly, I'm tired of hearing the story that a PM such as Bibi has hard to work with for Abbas in that he is right wing, because I can still remember when he didn't want a peace deal with Olmert back in 2008 and he was clearly left wing and was willing to even make compromises that even Barack wouldn't do in his 2000 deal. More importantly, until the terrorism and riots from Hamas stop, there will never be peace, plus I'm tired of hearing those being killed are unarmed when they clearly weren't and had weapons.
6
The only way we have a fair peace process or negotiation is to cut off US aid to Israel. That will bring them to the table. Nothing else will.
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@right US aid to Israel is not just about Palestine. Israel has more enemies in the region than that. Additionally, Istael is a strategic partner in the region. Cutting off aid hurts American interests as well as Iraeli interests.
2
@John What makes you think that the US lacks strategic assets in the region? We have full-blown military bases in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, our NATO ally. Jordan has given us invaluable intel since 9/11, according to the CIA.
This article presumes there is interest in good faith negotiations, meaning mutual agreement. However, the first sign of ulterior motives was to dispatch pro-Israel 'family & friends' with no experience to negotiate among the world's most complicated peace terms with a fragmented Palestinian state. As such, the "Deal of the Century" has evolved into the "Steal of the Century." Israel's far-right now takes every opportunity to gain as much holy ground as possible, de jure & de facto. The crown jewel of Jerusalem having been won without negotiation, authentic peace is DOA.
8
Friedman writes that “Hamas is pursuing a strategy of human sacrifice in Gaza — throwing wave after wave of protesters against the Israeli border fence to die without purpose or even much notice anymore. It is shameful.” How does Hamas manage to do that? Brainwashing? Nice try, Tom. Actually, not a nice try. It is shameful.
4
Libya was completely broken by US and NATO air power under the Obama administration, but who would notice, unless David Geffen parked his yacht in the Gulf of Sirte?
2
"May I make a suggestion?
The Trump team keeps saying that it wants to get America’s Arab allies to endorse its peace plan. The Arabs won’t do that if that plan does not meet some minimum Palestinian demands...
Mahmoud Abbas... should go to America’s four key Arab allies.. and propose that they collectively say “yes” to engaging Trump and Kushner if the U.S. plan includes two criteria: It calls for a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank — not a bunch of disconnected cantons — and it grants Palestinians some form of sovereignty in predominantly Arab East Jerusalem, where 300,000 Arabs already live. (The authority will also have to agree that its state will be demilitarized.)"
Mr. Friedman. How long will it take you to understand that you do not understand the Middle East.
Your suggestion is just dandy, but not for the Middle East. Start with a minimum proposal, and watch that minimum become enshrined as reality. The Palestinians under the best of circumstances will start only where they want to be and that includes a "right of return" to 1948 Israel and (East) Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. And your suggestion does not include any discussion of settlements. If they remain in the initial proposal, they remain. And a demilitarized state? unlikely.
Everyone needs a new strategy, but you Mr. Friedman will not be the one to provide solutions. Ironically, your proposal could have been written in Mr. Netanyahu's office and are doomed.
3
@Joshua Schwartz Strangely, Friedman doesn't even mention the Arab Peace Initiative, which has been on the table since 2002, renewed in 2011. It calls for a "reasonable" solution to the "right of return," probably repatriation of a limited number of Palestinians and compensation for seized property to the rest. It offered Israel full diplomatic relations with all 57 Arab nations. Netanyahu claims to not even have bothered to read the plan.
1
Mr. Friedman, it should be evident that with Trump and Netanyahu in office in their respective countries, absolutely no progress will be made on Middle East Peace. We may some overtures made for show or to distract viewers but there will be nothing of substance. The reality is that Netanyahu hopes to take over the West Bank while hoping nobody notices. Trump could not care less. I doubt he could find the West Bank or Gaza on a map. Further, his evangelical base will not support humane and balanced treatment of Palestinians.
There is a good case to be made that the United States has very little if any credibility left as an "honest broker in peace talks." The Republican Party has become a tool of the Israeli hardliners.
Perhaps in 50 years progress can be made. For the time being, this tragedy will unfold. And to be clear, our own democracy is under siege and highly unstable. Let's put our own house in order rather than concerning ourselves with a problem that Israel does not want to solve at the moment.
3
Unfortunately, we have reached a point in time where no one trusts Donald Trump for any reason. Think of it, The President of the United States is not to be trusted.
Just now it appears that things that we have wanted to do for years could at least be talked about, but no, a stupid and childish person sits in the oval office, and nothing can be done.
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@Islander
Of course something can be done --VOTE!!!
1
British established Mandate Palestine between 1920 and 1923 in partitioning the defeated Ottoman Empire between France and Britain - 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement. The British formalized their control via a mandate from the League of Nations in 1922. British Mandate for Palestine had 2 administrative areas: Palestine, west of Jordan River and Transjordan, east of Jordan River. The British promised the Arabs (all Arabs under Ottoman rule) independent rule if they revolted against the Ottomans via 1915–1916 McMahon–Hussein Correspondence. The British also promised (to a British Zionist banker, Rothschild) a Jewish "national home" (not a State) in Palestine (not all of Palestine) in 1917 Balfour Declaration. The Greeks called the region Palaistinē, Romans ruled Syria Palaestina, the Byzantine Palaestina Prima, and the Islamic provincial district of Jund Filastin. The Ottomans ruled from 1517 to 1917 - 500 years of the most peaceful history (Jews, Christians and Muslims) in Jerusalem’s 5000 year history. Independent Jewish rule - 75 years with David/Solomon, 1000-925 BCE (Isreal, spilt to Judah and Samaria; total including as vassal states - 400 years, 597 BCE); Independent Hasmonean Kingdom 47 years, 110-63 BCE (103 years, 140-37 BCE total including as vassal state); 70 years as Israel since 1948 (includes Occupied Territories): total independent Jewish rule of 192 years (in 5000 year history). BOTH Jews and Palestinians have legitimate nationalism claims - a two-state solution.
2
@MC. According to your history, the Palestinians already have their state: it is Jordan which was part of the original League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922. It could have been called East Palestine, for that is all it was.
And, for what it’s worth, the Arabs currently rule over 99.75% of the lands lost by the Ottoman Empire to the UK. So, it’s really hard to see the unfairness in recognizing the rights of the Jewish people to self-determination on one-quarter of what the world community recognized as their historical homeland.
I know of no principle of international law that requires land taken from one imperial conqueror (the Ottomans) to be returned to the prior imperial conqueror (the Arabs) to the detriment of the indigenous groups still living on the land. The Jewish people are the only indigenous people to have successfully taken control of part of their land. The Kurds, Assyrians and others were not so lucky.
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@Charlie in NY Just coincidence that the only 2 comments to mention the Assyrians are yours and mine in sequence? I had the Kurds in mind too since Sykes Picot did not give them much either. Larry L.
1
Im not a Thomas Friedmann fan, but your article was in fact, very good. Well done.
1
''Hamas is pursuing a strategy of human sacrifice in Gaza — throwing wave after wave of protesters against the Israeli border fence to die without purpose or even much notice anymore.''
This must be the single most disgusting sentence I have ever read by Mr Friedman, a man I have often disagreed with before but nevertheless respected. When 2000+ UNARMED protesters are shot at ON PURPOSE in a single day killing 167 of them you blame the protesters?
If instead of non armed protests the Gazans had used ARMED protesters they would be called terrorists so what Mr Friedman is essentially saying is that ANY form of protest and defiance DESERVES to be met by mass slaughter! This attitude to ISRAELI inhumanity and blaming everything wrong in the world on Russia, without any honest assessment of OUR culpability in the appalling state of the ME, is why I no longer buy the NYT and have switched to Haaretz. So that I can get ACTUAL news and learn what is really going on in the world.
I have been repeatedly accused (libeled) by arrogant ill informed readers here of being a "Putinbot' just for mentioning the corruption and neo Nazis active in the Ukrainian Government, one created by a US backed coup against a democracy we did not like, just as we backed Sisi in Egypt and the brutal Honduran one.
Those of us who still back the true FDR democrats like Sanders or Cortez are accused of being 'traitors' while Israel backed by the US turns in a Judaic version of Iran with more brutality.
5
Trump has appointed radical Jewish Zionists, like Kushner and Freidman, to negotiate on a Middle East peace deal and, we wonder why we're not seen as an honest broker.
It's beyond ridiculous.
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Even though not a one of us could possibly know the truth of what goes on between Trump-Kushner and our Arab allies, just using that phrase Arab llies as Friedman does tells me that Friedman has entered a fantasy world.
I am reading and re-reading Nicole Krauss' Forest Dark and since I see no hope of a settlement that will be in any way somewhat fair to the Palestinians all I can suggest here is that Nicole Krauss take one of the themes in that novel further - When a belief in making reasoned decisions is lost, then what? She seems to know as much about Kafka as any living novelist, so perhaps she can give us the only fiction that can portray the end of the world there - Israel and Palestine as a Kafka vision.
Part of the above has its roots in reading yesterday about Yom Kippur and the Jews' relationship with the Assyrians in Nineveh and what Jonah thought of them. Alll empires end and the Assyrian empire was one of them. It happens that about 15 years ago I served as photographer at an extraordinary pageant held here in Linköping SE by the large Assyrian community and ever since I have been fascinated by the history of Jews and Assyrians since I used to live in Brighton , New York- Commenter Mancuroc can probably explain that for you.
Nicole in Forest Dark goes off into reflections that become essays, so just to enjoy writing instead of replying to countless comments I do the same here.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE.
Only-Never
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It's surprising to get such drivel from someone with a reputation for being highly knowledgeable about the Middle East. Not one Arab state either wants to, or can do anything to promote the establishment of a Palestinian state. The Palestinians are the Arab world's lightweights, which means they can never negotiate a two state based final agreement unless they have the Arab world's heavyweights by their side, signalling to the entire Muslim world that the Arab world is behind it. Problem is most of the heavyweights are indisposed at the moment. Syria and Iraq (Damascus and Baghdad), two historical heavyweights have exited the Sunni orbit. Egypt is an economic basket case, more concerned with an Islamist insurrection and relations with Sudan and Ethiopia over allocation of Nile waters than the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia fears that any Palestinian state would be taken over by pro-Iranian Hamas, and probably drag Jordan down with it. Bottom line, nobody wants it, so it ain't gonna happen.
The only viable solutions are either a Palestinian-Jordanian federation/confederation, or a federal Israel that gives full citizenship to the 1.6 million West Bankers (Friedman's numbers are factually incorrect, Palestinian propaganda not facts).
http://www.federation.org.il/index.php/en/
2
Just like Tump told Tillerson, everybody is wasting their time with any plans for a Peace Initiative in the Middle East.
Tump and Kushner are incapable of doing anything of any significance. Kushner was appointed because he is family but he has no interest in the subject unless it is handed to him in a silver platter. He is only motivated by things that would help his businesses. He has no experience or preparation for the job given to him. At best he is a business man but basically he has demonstrated so far that he is a nobody.
1
Why is there no coverage on the congressional vote to give Israel 38 billion dollars in aid? Ed Royce Republican from California said, "This is a floor not a ceiling". Why does Israel receive more aid than all the countries in Africa? The US is complicit in killing a peace deal.
5
I don't believe your numbers. What is your source?
1
@SAGE
Haaretz news reported
US Israel Security Assistance Act of 2018.
1
It is time to abandon the chimera of an independent state never to be on offer.
Rather, the struggle now has to be for citizenship & full rights in every respect, for all indigenous peoples living in the greater Israel, with equal status to any other citizen.
Equal rights for all in greater Israel. Has a nice ring to it.
3
As per usual, the extremists have won again...on both sides.
1
Many believe that sanctions brought an end to apartheid in South Africa. This is naive, and wrong. The end of the Cold War in 1989, and nothing else, led to Mandela’s release from prison in 1990. The apartheid South African government, long supported by the USA government as a strategic ally against communism in Southern Africa (white South Africans’ terror of communism, which supported numerous black African independence struggles, was greater even than America’s) lost that support virtually overnight when the Berlin Wall came down. Suddenly, South Africa became strategically unimportant. Sanctions were a fig leaf.
In the mid-80s this sudden end was inconceivable, unthinkable. 1n 1988 police in armored vehicles were firing at township residents as they had for decades. In 1994 Mandela was president! Six short years later.
Conditions in Israel will similarly not change for any reason other than another global political realignment, because the issues there are similarly an outpost of a bigger struggle (USA, Iran, Russia). Let’s hope for a similar loss of significance in the region at some point. That’ll tamp down all local craziness and get people to find a way to live side by side. There’s nothing like finding oneself to be suddenly insignificant on the global stage to cause peace to break out.
As a diaspora Jew whose ancestors were slaughtered wholesale in the Holocaust,I love and support Israel, and I wish this for it, because it will bring normalcy to the Jewish state.
2
Moderate left wing Israeli here.
Friedman is being simplistic and misses the point, unless he feels that he can negotiate for both sides.
The big story here is corruption. Bibi is not an extremist so much as corrupt. He faces several criminal graft investigations. He is trying to stay in power and disrupt the investigations, which may well land him a stiff prison sentence (as it did his predecessor, Ehud Olmert). The current political calculus in Israel, with its 11 factions in paliament and a badly splintered and dysfunctional opposition is to lurch to the right, so that his far right coalition members won't find it advantageous to call for early elections. Bibi is a master of political scheming, and if he thought it would serve his short term political goals and help keep him out of jail, he'd be Mr. moderate in a heartbeat. That's the entire story, nothing ideological or strategic.
Friedman should really read Israeli newspapers more carefully.
As for the Palestinians, their internal politics are even worse. Gaza is controlled by the extremist Hamas which can negotiate cease-fires but nothing else. The Palestinian authority suffers from widespread corruption, and reports suggest that President Abbas suffers from cognitive decline and works two hours a day.
And of course, the US has Trump, who has his own limitations.
Now, go have substantive peace negotiations which require hard decisions and sacrifices under those circumstances.
10
Yes Hamas is a disaster but people should realize or remember they didn't even exist until 1987, almost 40 years after the formation of Israel. Israel initially nurtured and protected the creation of Hamas with the purpose of undermining the secular PLO. The monster they helped create still serves Israel's purposes. They kick the hornet's nest anytime they want to advance their expansion agenda.
4
You forgot to mention that to incentivize the likud party to make a deal, however painful to them but potentially much less painful for the rest of the world, the U.S. could cut our subsidy to Israel by 50%, after which, by the way, we'd still be their best friend.
Say Friedman, how's your Iraq invasion going these days anyway?
3
Friedman's sensible proposal rests on the idea that the issue is land. Palestinians get a contiguous state and control of east Jerusalem.
But this conflict is not about land. If it were it would have been resolved long ago.
The conflict is about whether there will be a Jewish state in the heart of the Middle East. That is why Gazans try to storm the borders of pre-1967 Israel. That is why all Arab and Palestinian proposals entail a "right of return" to pre-1967 Israel. For its own survival Israel cannot agree to such a thing.
That is why there is no peace.
6
The diverse and conflicted comments on this discussion board are a good example of why little can be done by outside parties. Some historians will tell you, no matter how much they preach compromise and understanding in a classroom, that for a protracted and intractable conflict one side has to win. The conflict between the Palestinians and Israel is a war--whether in open conflict or (temporarily) on simmer.
Is it possible for those two sides to compromise? Is that all wishful thinking? I suspect the latter.
Ideally, U.S. presidents will stop promising a peace deal. There won't be one. The best case scenario would be something that the U.S. hasn't really tried in the Middle East which is to support positive developments (no matter how small or who does them) and try to thwart negative ones. Instead, our foreign policy is almost always about picking sides. With Trump, the strategy seems to be to inflict pain and put maximum pressure on the Palestinians to relent. Good luck with that.
3
The unfortunate reality may be that, in the short and medium term (and despite growing dissent from progressives), substantial American support would continue even if Israel becomes more clearly a bi-national state that deviates more fully from democratic norms. This has largely proven to be the case, so far, with the expansion of settlements and the nation-state law.
4
Friedman says ... Hamas is pursuing a strategy of human sacrifice in Gaza — throwing wave after wave of protesters against the Israeli border fence to die without purpose or even much notice anymore. It is shameful. I disagree, it’s with a high degree of purpose … put the crisis in front of the world that Israel is slipping into an apartheid state. Imagine what official policy will be for integrating Palestinians into the nation of Israel. There is no wall high enough to accomplish that feat. What a strategic success!
2
If you ask me, Netanyahu has no interest in any permanent solution at all. Just when things were really beginning to heat up against him in the center and center-left of Israeli politics, Trump came along and pulled his chestnuts out of the fire. As long as he has Trump and his brood doing his dirty work for him - especially "free of charge" - he has no incentive to even set his alarm clock.
There's no question in my mind that Trump's racism extends deeply into the Arab world.
1
Fact is, Arabs have been perpetrating war and terrorism against Israel for seven decades...and against Jews in the region long before Israel’s independence. Despite failing in their objective to destroy the Jewish state, they contIinue these hostile, homocidal efforts while simultaneously ‘dictating’ to Israel and the international community their demands...i.e. demands for territory that never rightfully belonged to them in the first place, for cash (half of which goes to terrorist stipends), for UNSC resolutions against Israel, for boycotts against Israel, for ICC judgements against Israel, for UNESCO judgements against Israel, for special refugee status in perpetuity.
The international community enables this mendacity to continue decade after decade. Stop it!
3
Hmm. To bring this up at Yom Kippur. Subtle, as always.
2
Tough words about Israel's Apartheid's dilemma. Impunity seems rampant as Hamas plays into it, delaying the urgent need for a reasonable solution. And the emergence of a real peacemaker that may, just may, call to order all rascals involved. Can we gather the will? And if so, the courage, and hard work, and perseverance, to see things through?
Any plan that depends on DJT being serious is doomed.
The real and only solution is for the Palestinians to surrender and give the Israelis everything they claim to want. Hamas, the PLO and the PNA should declare that they are dissolving themselves, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over all of mandatory Palestine, and forming a new organization dedicated to full citizenship and full political and economic rights and participation for all persons subject to the writ of the Israeli state.
The Palestinians are better off under the status quo than agree to permanent all around domination by Israel. If the Palestinians wait long enough, they won't have to settle for that. Anyway, they have no place else to go.
Bibi & Hamas seem to be two sides of the same "reckless coin."
As Mr. Friedman says Bibi has been brilliant in quelling Iranian infiltration in Syria but totally failing in coming up with a workable solution in dealing with the most important issue for Israel, a permanent solution to living with the Palestinians next door to Israel.
If “Hamas has been a curse on the Palestinian people,” Bibi has been a slow-growing cancer on the Jewish State.
Leaders of Hamas maybe thinking that if they had a waited a year before unleashing the rockets on Israel, they might have been able to inflict real damage on Israel – Hamas was incredibly successful in building tunnels & gathering rockets to rain on Israel, before they started (prematurely) firing those rockets (True, they could only inflict substantial casualty on Israel, but no way of making any headway towards any military success.)
As Hamas is too shortsighted, Bibi also is not wise enough to see what could happen fifty years from now when so many unexpected things could visit upon the Middle East.
Israeli politics is quite murky, but left-leaning leaders like Ehud Barak, Yitzhak Rabin or Golda Meir maybe better for negotiating with Palestinians towards building a two-state solution there. Instead of thinking about immediate future Israel ought to worry about long-term outcome, thirty or fifty years down the line.
1
We have been meddling in the Middle East since the Second World War and have little to show for it beyond a couple of dubious Nobel Peace Prizes. How about trying a new strategy, minding our own business and letting the inhabitants of the area to settle their own destiny.?
5
Why does anybody think that Netanyahu wants anything other less than a Jewish nation that includes the West Bank and a solution for the Palestinian problem based on expelling them if they resist or subjugating if they stay? And now that he has essentially unconditional support from Trump, that’s exactly where this is going.
4
American commentators love to play the game of blaming both Israel and Palestinians for the lack of a peace deal while forever ignoring the elephant in the room - the unqualified diplomatic support of Israel by the US, particularly its frequently issued veto in the UN security council. Without that, Israel would have gone the way of apartheid South Africa decades ago.
When Ike told Israel to get out of the Sinai in 1956, they couldn't pull their tent pegs quickly enough. Likewise, the Israeli settlements in the West Bank would disappear overnight if the US stopped providing cover in the UNSC.
It's the US, not Israel or the Palestinians, that is the principle roadblock to peace, and until that changes, Israel will continue with its creeping annexation of remaining Palestinian territory to the usual chorus of insincere tut-tutting from apologists like Friedman.
5
Great article; but still does not answer the question (which is the same question as always); what to do about Hamas? If all the criteria you name were achieved, it still does not address this spoke in the wheel that can undo it all.
2
I consider Thomas Friedman to be an intelligent man. He must therefore surely understand that the idea of a "Jewish Democracy" is an oxymoron.
It may be so that a nation is a democracy and that its population is entirely or mostly Jewish and in that case it would be a democracy in which the will of the people would align with the concerns and the concerns of its majority. However, to suppose that it is possible for a nation to be and to remain both Jewish (or indeed Muslim or Christian or Buddhist or... ) and a democracy as that term is mostly understood today, is fanciful. The composition of the population may evolve over time. The affiliation of said population with a particular religion may also change.
In other words, Israel is nearing a point where it will have to choose whether is finds it more important to be Jewish or a democracy. Of course, given the circumstances on the ground and more particularly the self-defeating propensity of the Palestinians to channel their anger into violence rather than peaceful agitation and organizations, buys it some time. Nonetheless, the question will arise.
It is also remarkable, and deeply sad, that Tom identifies the four key US allies as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Paragons of democracy each and every one of them, as we know... I don't know whether it is intentional, but if one recognizes someone by the company he keeps, the US is in a bad way...
3
@Rudy Flameng "Nearing a point where it will have to choose...."
The "Jewish nation" bill recently passed, which privileges Jewish citizens above all others, has answered this question, hasn't it? Making "Jewish settlement" a national value. Confirming exclusionary housing. Diminishing the language (Arabic) of 24% of the population.
2
Why are we so surprised by the current situation. With the backing of the Balfour declaration, thousands of zionists emigrated to Palestine with purpose of creating a Jewish state. Their reason was the biblical right of return to the kingdom of David. With the riots of the 1920,s 1930,s and 40,s the indigenous population Made it clear that they did not want to live in a Jewish rabbinical state. Against their wishes the country of Israel was formed. That conflict still continues.
4
So much is wrong with this analysis. First Israel's partition at Gaza is not an international border. It is a cage designed to keep the Palestinian owners of their land out of what Israel has claimed by force. . Gaza's can see their stolen former land across the divide. Before Hamas, what was the peaceful strategy that Israel was pursing during the deportation of any Palestinian leaders who tried to organize against the occupation? Rabin had the "breaking the bones" strategy. While colonies in the West Bank were built for settlers and Palestinians were forcibly denied the rights to their property, what were the peaceful efforts that Israel used?
6
This is the best piece on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I have read in as long as I've been reading the news. I would vote a thousand times over for every bit of this plan. And I say this as a staunch supporter of Israel who thinks the Palestinians nurture total religious war and whose treaties aren't worth the paper they're written on. A common-sense, level-headed, centrist strategy based on the Palestinians' genuine national aspirations and Israel's genuine security needs.
Please, Tom, take time out from your column to help negotiate this deal. You have neither the left's poisonous victim obsession nor the right's might-is-right idiocy. This is the kind of thinking we need for the benefit of Israel and the Palestinians alike. Please help.
2
First, to the minds of all Palestinians, Hamas leadership are true freedom fighters. To them, Hamas is the only light of Resistance. We may disagree on how Hamas needs to be portrayed, but we must be sincere on accepting how Hamas is perceived by the Palestinians. [One reason that any vote, even municipal ones, are being postponed ad infinitum]
Secondly, you have been saying for the last ten years that we are heading towards a one state solution. Why not take accept that as the final solution. Why not work towards a written constitution for Israel based on liberty, equality and fraternity?
2
Mr.Friedman your wrong there was no "giveaway", Israeli's paid for the embassy move. Kushner Company investments by Menora Mivtachim and the Steinmetz family sealed the deal.
This is a typical pseudo-neutral liberal piece, supporting Israel.
We start with "everybody is to blame".
We then go to the first indictment: Hamas the curse. Hamas is in fact, point 1 of virtually every allegedly even-handed US article on peace in Palestine-Israel.
Then come the crocodile tears: Hamas' greatest crime is wasting the lives of the poor Palestinians, by throwing them to meaningless deaths in human wave attacks.
A couple of thoughts occur.
The Palestinians, marching against the snipers at the fence, weren't driven by Hamas overseers. In fact, they spoke with quite a bit of pride and determination in facing their executioners.
Moreover, the human wave sacrifices so distasteful to Friedman are reminiscent of the drown-them-in-our-blood strategy that defeated the British in India, the Segregationists in the South, and the Nazis in Russia.
Then comes the second indictment: Likud the curse. Well, actually not Likud, and not a curse, but a person, the Israeli Premier, Netanyahu. Well, actually we know him by his affectionate diminutive, Bibi. He's a very smart dude, who handles most concerns quite correctly. He does need to get smart about this one. Time to move on to:
The third indictment: President Trump. Who is most welcome in the discussion, since now we need not talk about the Democrats, who helped dispossess the Palestinians in the 1940s, or the regular Republicans, who signed on with Israel some years later.
4
Tom, the two-state solution is dead. Nothing less can be hoped for than to:
End the occupation and colonization of Arab lands and dismantle the Wall.
Recognize the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality.
Respect the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
7
@Cran
Arab Lands? That would be the Arabian Peninsula. Anything beyond that is conquered stolen plunder....
The ‘refugees’ are free to return to any of the now Arab states from which their forbears originated....Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon....
5
@Shenoa
So Shenoa can you enlighten me? How did the Jews come to ancient Israel? Did Jews just spring up our of the ground in Jerusalem? Or did they perhaps conquer it from the people who were already living there?
Assuming you believe the bible, the Jews murdered every man woman and child of Canaan on the orders of their God. Im betting they kept some of the women and children as slaves, as was customary at the time. So let be clear, Israel is "stolen plunder" for the Jews too.
@Joe
Not quite, Joe. Jews are indigenous to the Levant. The Arabs, not so much. Per archeological and linguistic evidence, the ancient Israelite and Canaanite tribes merged to become one people.
History did not begin, nor end, with the Arab Conquest of the Levant, Joe. Israel is tiny, only 8000 sq miles...while Arabs control 5 MILLION SQUARE MILES of territory in the ME. That ain’t enough for them?
1
Thomas Friedman’s proposal for establishing the ground rules of a peace making process is an excellent one: balanced, rational, practical, entirely doable. Or at least it would be if the parties to the process were all interested in a lasting peace. Presently, none of the parties is willing to commit to peace process that does not give his side all of the marbles.
All parties—including the US, posing as a neutral mediator—prefer the status quo over a possible loss of power, face, influence or territory. All parties see the world as a zero sum place: one where might rules; where my side gains only if your side loses; where human compassion is seen as weakness.
Decades ago, Tom Friedman, quoting Golda Meir, said that peace will come to Israel/Palestine only when the disputants decide they love their children more than they hate each other. By this measure, peace appears no closer now than decades ago.
1
It doesn't help that the United States has given a disproportionate amount of money to the Israelis each year in the billions of out and out aid, military aid, and armaments, and loans, all the while looking away from Israel seizing land from the Palestinians that didn't belong to Israel, only because Zionism, and it's misplaced idea to bring Jews from all around the world to a place that has little land to put them on. All of it only shows how very primitive people are to begin with, not evolved, only religious.
1
@MaryKayKlassen 80% of Israelis live on just 20% of the land within the Green Line. It isn't that there isn't land -- they just covet the more "convenient" and fertile Palestinian land in the central district.
1
@sharpshin
Apart from Jordan...the defacto Arab Palestinian state...there is no such thing as ‘Palestinian Land’....and never was. There might have been, but the Arabs rejected UN 181, preferring to wage endless war in their efforts to annihilate the Jewish state.
They lost.
@Shenoa The League of Nations appealed to the International Court of Justice for a ruling regarding the future of the mandate.
Here is the court ruling: "A legal analysis performed by the International Court of Justice noted that the Covenant of the League of Nations had provisionally recognised the communities (Jewish and Arab) of Palestine as independent nations. Judge Higgins explained that the Palestinian people are entitled to their territory, to exercise self-determination, and to have their own State."
Israelis have a state. They should learn to live in it. (80% of Israelis live on just 20% of the land within the Green Line.)
There is a sad truth here.
Neither Bibi, nor Trump, nor Hamas REALLY care for a peaceful solution of this Gordian Knot. Just read Friedman's analysis!
Add to this the instabilities and serious internal problems facing every Arab country today (look at Syria, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Qatar...) all one can see is a bottomless black hole in the entire ME...
1
what does "say what you will mean" in this context? It was a historic accord.
Say what you will about Anwar el-Sadat and Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter 40 years ago, but they came to a point at Camp David where there were only hard choices — and they made them, and they made the right ones.
1
And look what happened to Sadat!
1
''At a time when the key to any Palestinian breakthrough with Israel is for Palestinians to make Israelis feel strategically secure but morally insecure about holding occupied territories...''
Correction
At a time when the key to any Israeli breakthrough with the Palestinians is for Israel to recognize human rights are for all, to stop encroaching illegally with the settlements, and to come to the bargaining table in good faith.
Glad to be of help.
10
Sadat, Begin, Carter? No Arafat. The problem is obvious, the key player was M.I.A.
1
What Friedman says is very sensate and rationale, but will the Palestinian crowds eventually sponsor such a plan? There is an elephant in the room that Friedman fails to mention, which is the "Right of return". Where would it stand in this plan?
1
'Jewish democracy" is mentioned twice in the op-ed, that's two more than it should be mentioned in anything but a SNL skit. You either have a secular democracy for everyone in the region or you have apartheid / US supported Israeli settler colonialism. BDS is the only viable non violent way to force Israel to stop this war of prison guards against prisoners.
7
Mr Friedman's assumption that there is some set of "minimum Palestinian demands" that can be agreed to by the parties is not supported by history. It is hard not to conclude that the minimum demand is the elimination of the State of Israel. While that goal may be deferred for short-term advantages, its abandonment does not seem on the table.
7
I haven’t read a better summary of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The Palestinians need their version of Ghandi. Violence isn’t the solution. It would be much more productive to have the same number of Palestinians killed by having women march peacefully to a border crossing than to protest violently and get shot.
1
@Rob F So...you're saying there is only violence on the Palestinian side? Regular military attacks by aerial bombs, tanks and snipers, including the use of chemical weapons and exploding bullets, "mowing the lawn" and demolishing homes and villages -- that's not violence?
1
Take off the rose-colored glasses, Mr. Friedman. The conditions for peace are not present at this time. The best we can do is what Trump (much as I hate to say it) is doing.
Stop lavishly financing the Palestinian cause, such that their numbers grow and grow and grow and the problem becomes more intractable. There are, what, 9 million "Palestinians" now from the original group of 450,000? We have to make being a Palestinian less appealing, and manage the problem down.
6
I hear only rhetorical daydreaming reaction to the article. First I must applaud the attention focusing onto sad and dangerous issue; the huge Human problem that exists in the present. The number of "Refugees" has Quadrupled in 5 generations after some 600.000 Arabs fled their homes. Great number of these MUST be resettled in other country. Gaza could flourish if it's main resource; the shores of Mediterranean sea, with many thousand tourists as well as fishery. It needs Housing at an Enormous scale, needs to revamp it's agriculture sources. Fifth generation of Refugees is not refugees any longer, they must resettle in other country, many countrys should share the burden of offering that. Trump should re-rout the millions he stopped for UNRA into education at all levels and investment in fresh water, electricity, houses and so on. Offering Gazenss these, not sanctions will topple Hamas; the bigger adhering to Hamas; the better the offering should be. Arabs should stop educating their next generation towards hate of Jews and Israeli Minister of Education - an American born, Gun Happy extreme right Sinister politician, should put in place a program in Israeli schools that Teaches next generation of Jewish kids to learn about the culture, history, grievances and Arab language. An EASY investment in the future is at hand. Trump and Sheldon could pocket all this easily. Winning Gaza is a necessary step for winning a greater scale of peace. Step by step.
5
Why would anyone trust the Trump administration as a peace broker in the middle east when Trump and his acolytes have demonstrated that their plan is serve to the needs of the extreme right in America and Israel? There will be no peace in the middle east until Trump and Netanyahu are out of office.
By the way how can you have peace when the far right in America, which controls congress and the executive branch, are hoping for war...that is the only way they can get the "rapture."
It's time the two state idea is dropped. It has not worked and will not work, mainly because of the hostility from Israel. Let Israel have the responsibility of the entire population of Palestinians. That should have happened a long time ago, but cannot wait any longer.
4
@Frank G
Neither side wants it.
1
Let's compare and contrast. Mr. Obama saying there can be no Jewish state of Israel. The courage and unwavering support of President Trump ensured that there is a Jewish state of Israel. Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Obama defying history and overwhelming will of the American people in pretending that it is not possible to recognize the eternal Jewish capital Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. President Trump said to all the snakes and hypocrites, that not only it is possible, it is the only right thing to do. And he has done just that, and moved our embassy where it belongs. Mr. Obama gave our money to the violent thugs bent on perpetrating hate and terror against Israel and America, but President Trump cut the funds that where used to fuel the hatred. But, most importantly, recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Jewish state of Israel CANNOT BE UNDONE. That's what drives our enemies so mad. Thousand years from now, when NY Time would not be even a foot note in history, Jewish people will be telling a story of Jerusalem, the capital of Jewish state, and a visionary leader who made it possible in the same way we tell the story of Hanukkah (the triumph of faith over secularism and globalism). This is the history, and unlike contemporary history books or NY Times stories, it can't be changed.
3
Friedman is working off of the wrong operating assumption. He is making his wish and hope serve as that operating assumption, but that is not the case. Bibi actually wants to assert full control over the territories and render the Palestinians second class citizens of Israel, causing them to all leave and go to a place where they can be full citizens. That is Bibi's long term solution. It is not a two-state solution at all.
Trump is on board with that decision and the Arabs, who never cared for the Palestinians in the first place, could care less if the Palestinians lose their homeland, as long as Bibi keeps Iran at a distance with its willingness to strike Iran whenever it needs to be struck.
It is not a democratic solution. It is an Andrew Jackson solution of taking the land by forcing the people on it to go away (The Trail of Tears). It is no small accident that Trump keeps Jackson's portrait in the Oval.
7
"Jared Kushner ... is working on a Middle East peace plan for President Trump"?
Do we need any more reason why the peace "seems to be inching closer and closer to a total breakdown"?
The process needs skilled, honest diplomats from the USA to facilitate it, not corrupt, little know-nothings given a role by their father in law!
5
Over the years people with sound minds have not been able to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problems. Now we have Donnie and Jared getting in on the act. Does anyone really think that these two fools are capable of making anything better?
1
Friedman is playing into the de facto strategy that Trump has already put in play by debilitating the Palestinian bargaining position through cutting off aid & denying various means of official recognition. So Abbas should now ask "America’s four key Arab allies (to) propose that they collectively say “yes” to engaging Trump and Kushner"? Why not the opposite, Trump asking Netanyahu to propose a contiguous & sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank? If Netanyahu backed it up with lifting the embargo & freezing settlements, negotiations could resume & the US might earn some credibility as a party to the negotiations. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are more interested in keeping the US engaged in their battle with Iran than in brokering peace. Israel is operating from a position of strength, so Israel should be the first to offer concessions. There is an excess of hubris.
Trump boasted he would bring about the “ultimate deal”, and told Abbas that the peace process was “maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years,” when Abbas visited the White House in May 2017. Leaked details of Kushner's plan have already been rejected by the Palestinian Authority. Having ceded so much to the Likud coalition, the question now is what will this Trump plan demand in return from Netanyahu. So far the answer seems to be, nothing. It is fatuous to believe that our Arab allies will risk publicly negotiating with Netanyahu, especially before details of the Kushner plan are public.
3
“Making progress toward peace requires telling everyone the truth.”
So, while Friedman lays out many truths, he always avoids telling this truth: Netanyahu represents a branch of Zionism that has never accepted a two-state solution; as long as there is Jewish control of all of what the British defined as Mandate Palestine - that’s 1948/1967 borders Israel, West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem - an undemocractic and Apartheid State are fine. The only other alternatives: ethnically cleanse the area of non-Jews - Arab Muslims, Christians, non-religious; or have all diaspora Jews migrate to Israel since, per Zionism, Jews are ultimately only safe in Israel (not safe from anti-Semitism in Europe or even America). Likud charter rejects a Palestinian State west of the Jordan River, rejects Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem, states only Jews have the right to settle in “Judea, Samaria and Gaza” - it mirrors Hamas rejection of a Jewish State. Both groups want only one state - Jewish State for Likud, Islamic State for Hamas. Carter forced Begin to sign Camp David accords, but Begin never fulfilled creation of Palestinian State. Secular Likud Zionists are joined by Religious Zionists, some want Eretz Israel (from Nile to Euphrates borders)/to rebuild the Temple/full Jewish theocracy. Secular Revisionist and Religious Zionists are now the majority of Jews in Israel, they have only 30% support (Kushner, Adelson, etc) from American Jews, but 90% support from American Evangelicals.
8
Mr Friedman is an expert at calling out everyone’s bad deeds, but cannot see the forest from the trees. Mr. Trump is only interested in winning the next election, Mr Netanyahu is only interested in a greater Israel and preserving the status quo, the Palestinians are not a people with an identity without any claim to a piece Jerusalem and the holy sites. Mr Kusher is an extremist partisan posing as a mediator. The same handwringing op Ed’s have made careers for a lot of people over the last 70 years. Can we just STOP?
1
The 11 years old dead boy in the picture? He was killed by a rock thrown by the Arabs on the Gaza side of the fence. This comes from the Arabs, not Israel.
6
what a way with word - After 40 years, Israelis and Palestinians seem to be inching closer and closer to a total breakdown. How fast have they been moving up until now?
1
For internal political reasons, the leadership of both the Israelis and Palestinians are happy with the status quo. Trump merely wants to keep his contributors happy and has no idea of what is at stake or how to bring about a resolution.
The Israelis have military power and thus some measure of control. A possible, but unlikely, solution is a semi-autonomous region for Palestinians under the control Israel. Consider Quebec in Canada. To be workable, Israel would need to devote resources to improving the economic lot of the territories and the Palestinians would have to give up spreading hatred and talk of revenge. So it is not happening.
In 1948 a new state was carved out of Palestine and the Palestinian people displaced by Zionists were offered no compensation. The atrocities committed by the Zionists were kept out of view of the American public. Even today the press barely notices the weekly killing of Palestinians in Gaza shot with hollow tipped bullets, and were given muted reports of Palestinian deaths and maiming in the West Bank. You have to read Haaretz to find out. If only Israel had kept the promises it made to Jimmy Carter concerning Palestine thousands of lives would have been spared and the quality of life would have been better for all. U.S. politicians follow Israeli orders on what to do in the Middle East: keep funding Israel and protect it from UN opprobrium, invade Iraq, and now it is egging us on to attack Iran. The little state of Israel costs the US enormously in lives and money. The US has never been an honest broker, we have never offered the Palestinians peace with justice. We should disengage and let the UN deal with the problem.
9
@an observer Actually, there was no Palestine. The British controlled the region from 1917 to 1948 after the World War 1 defeat of the Ottoman Empire.
4
@John
Actually, the British established Mandate Palestine between 1920 and 1923 in partitioning the defeated Ottoman Empire between France and Britain - 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement. The British formalized their control via a mandate from the League of Nations in 1922. British Mandate for Palestine had 2 administrative areas: Palestine, west of Jordan River and Transjordan, east of Jordan River. The British promised the Arabs (all Arabs under Ottoman rule) independent rule if they revolted against the Ottomans via 1915–1916 McMahon–Hussein Correspondence. The British also promised (to a British Zionist banker, Rothschild) a Jewish "national home" (not a State) in Palestine (not all of Palestine) in 1917 Balfour Declaration. The Greeks called the region Palaistinē, Romans ruled Syria Palaestina, the Byzantine Palaestina Prima, and the Islamic provincial district of Jund Filastin. The Ottomans ruled from 1517 to 1917 - 500 years of the most peaceful history (Jews, Christians and Muslims) in Jerusalem’s 5000 year history. Independent Jewish rule - 75 years with David/Solomon, 1000-925 BCE (Isreal, spilt to Judah and Samaria; total including as vassal states - 400 years, 597 BCE); Independent Hasmonean Kingdom 47 years, 110-63 BCE (103 years, 140-37 BCE total including as vassal state); 70 years as Israel since 1948 (includes Occupied Territories): total independent Jewish rule of 192 years (in 5000 year history). BOTH Jews and Palestinians have legitimate nationalism claims.
@MC Spot on. Thank you for the accurate history.
Any advice from Ross - who has been making a very good living without accomplishing anything in the mid-east for many years - is useless!
5
Why did Tom write this column? As long as the answer to the question: Would you rather be a Palestinian or an Israeli?- - remains; an Israeli, there is no motivation for Israel to change the status quo. That is the truth.
As it relates to Trump and the Middle East, the situation is of no import to Trump.
6
The to state solution has never been viable. Producing a new third world nation is not going to ease tensions. The best answer is the out of the box long shot that everyone should be working toward. The Israelis and Palestinians need to live and work together under a secular government. Taking religion out of governance is truly the only way to a sustainable peace. Everyone could practice their individual religion but laws and rules would be foster a neutral, regulatory role that protects its citizens of all religions. That’s my thoughts anyhow.
4
If you demilitarize the Palestinian Authority, who will have the power to prevent a rebellion by Hamas or an invasion by Hezbollah? If the answer is Israel, the plan is a failure.
If the answer is the U.S., the plan is a pipe dream because everyone in the region considers the U.S. to be an untrustworthy partner.
If the answer is the Arab states, if fails because they are impotent, corrupt and self-serving - completely unreliable. Then again, there is their human rights track record.
This proposal just can't fly.
1
@John Hurley Any authoritarian or religious based government plan will fail to achieve peace. They all want the same land. The only way to give the most people what they want is a secular government for all in the same nation.
2
You have not answered the question. Why would the Palestinian representatives accept disarmament?
A democratic and secular government is the desired outcome of the peace process. It will be
be the number two target for the rest of the region. Neither Ira nor Saudi Arabia and their proxies will respect the peace. Invasion and rebellion will be the immediate result of an agreement. A disarmed state cannot defend itself and the hoped-for peaceful, secular democracy.
At this point it's just sadness that I feel reading this essay. It's a lament for Israel's situation, while Gazans starve and die for lack of medical care and West Bankers lose their homeland. The prospect of equality among people in Israel/West Bank is seen as a disaster for a Jewish democracy. The desperate Palestinians of Gaza are depicted as unthinking pawns shifted from place to place by Hamas leaders. The Palestinians are depicted as mistaken for not engaging with Donald Trump, as if anyone who engages with him comes out the better for it. I don't believe that Thomas Friedman is engaging intentionally in propaganda. But what assumptions about fundamental rights to liberty as well as to levels basic human intelligence between Israelis and Palestinians underpin such ideas?
4
The Israelis have illegally occupied and "permanently" settled much of the occupied territories since 1967. The Israelis are too well armed, ruthless and bank rolled by the u.s. with near carte Blanche. The Palestinians with an exploding population and little to nothing to do with all these young people has an unlimited resource of expendable cannon fodder to throw at the Israelis. The really good news is that god has told both sides they are right and are justified in doing anything to the other side to attain "their land" and goals. Trump is clueless and has made things worse with his blundering, but we shouldn't kid ourselves. under these conditions nothing is going to change no matter who gets involved or what they propose. A secular awakening and birth control might be a start, but that isn't going to happen, so the stalemate and killing goes on.
7
@Al A secular government is the only way forward. The people can have religious freedom but the government needs to be neutral. Someday this will be the answer. Getting there will take many years of pain, suffering, and reflection.
4
@John. Agreed. The entire world, including us, could benefit from this.
There is an implicit assumption that Trump gives a hoot about Israel and Palestine. He only cares about getting applause from end-of the-world evangelicals, Jewish extremists and money from Sheldon Adelson. Netanyahu modus operandi is to keep Palestinians bottled up and settlements grow for as long as he is Prime Minister, let his successor worry about what happens afterwards.
Palestinians suffer from poor leadership, a moronic Hamas and the bad faith of interlocutors. Overall, it looks like this horrible situation will fester for another 40 years. Friedman’s proposals have as much chance of success as the Oslo accords.
1
A reality check, please. "Jewish democracy" is an oxymoron. A society that elevates one race above others is not a democracy.
I think the US needs to give Israel the ultimatum--one state or two? Do you want to return the settlements and East Jerusalem and allow Palestinians to have a sovereign nation, or do you want to take over all the land, allowing Palestinians to be completely assimilated with full citizen rights, including equal opportunities and voting rights. Until, Israel decides, no aid, military or domestic.
8
The two state solution would fail. Creating a 3rd world nation for the Palestinians isn’t going to make them good neighbors for Israel. Only a single secular nation can support an actual peace.
1
My plan. Israel annexes the West Bank, provides the social services at least to present levels (may need US money). Long view strategy: Open businesses, employ Palestinians, promote them as they qualify, have dinner at each other's homes. In short, socialize the Palestinian population.
At the end, Israel a Jewish state with a multi-ethnic population, governed by a single law consistent with Jewish values, whatever they may be at the time. As for Palestinian citizenship, treat Palestinians originally as immigrants with a path to citizenship, as yet to be determined.
2
TF offers sensible proposals for peace-building from the ash-heap that now defines the Middle East "peace" process. The problem is that Friedman's ideas are proffered in an environment of senselessness led by blind men beholden only to the illusion of total victory.
The key player in the process continues to be the United States. Unfortunately, American foreign policy rests in the hands of a president whose word cannot be trusted.
There are consequences to having a president who chronically and serially lies. Nobody will take him seriously and he therefore has no moral or diplomatic authority to make commitments big or small.
Add to that the gratuitous punishment with which the Trump Administration is saddling the Palestinian side, and any Middle Eastern resolution will need to await a new team in Washington.
1
It’s the borders. Lebanon, Syria, Jordan have to meet, adjust borders. Gaza goes back to Israel. In exchange, Israel’s northern border drops down to north of the lake. Syria and Jordan cede an eastern strip of land connecting to the West Bank territories. Lebanon, the new strip, and the West Bank then become the new Palestine. Simplistic? Sure....but these old borders, old identities can adjust, adapt and grow. The leaders need to meet, look at new boundary ideas.
As I’ve argued before, the 100-year anniversary next year of the 1919 WWI victoryfest is an ideal time for the Mideast to set its own borders, it’s own needs. For peace.
2
Why should Israel be a Jewish democracy? We reject the idea that the US should be a Christian democracy. There were progressive and successful Jews in Palestine and throughout the Middle East before the West backed the terrorists organization, the Irgun, and set up the present state of Israel. I suggest we close our embassy in Israel, and cut off aid to them, the Saudis and others supporting this present horror. But I doubt any of us will see peace in the Middle East in our lifetimes.
8
@Paterson. Much of Israel is fundamentalists. They also have the bomb. Backing them into a corner may not work out well for anybody.
So long as Bibi can rely on his stupid big brother to back his every vile whim, there will be no viable option for peace.
Israel is the bully here; better armed, more war-like, greedy, grasping in the extreme, ladled out with insufferable arrogance and contempt.
Israel believes it can beat Palestinians into submission, winking and grinning at US the whole way, as they play "Poor me" and whimper about existential threat.
If there's a threat we need to be concerned with its that Israel is better than fine with things as they stand; profits mightily from the situation, in fact.
One may blame Palestinians all one likes, one can repeat endlessly "the ball is in their court", but this is Israel's game and they play it without qualm or conscience.
Israel is no friend to America, the opposite.
Israel is not the Great Western Hope in the Middle East, its a provocateur deluxe and shows no awareness of the international situation or the lethal trouble it chooses to bring upon itself.
All this is based on our mindless Conservative and Evangelical obsession with a bizarre interpretation of a Bible that, more than any other thing, cries out for compassion, understanding, forbearance and tolerance. They mock their own religion as they make a mockery of us.
We need to cease our involvement. Jared needs to sit and be quiet
If Israel is as mighty as they pretend let them show us. Alone.
To secure Israel's future, we need to cut them loose.
8
Judaea Capta coins (also spelled Judea Capta) were a series of commemorative coins originally issued by the Roman Emperor Vespasian to celebrate the capture of Judaea and the destruction of the Jewish Second Temple by his son Titus in 70 AD during the First Jewish Revolt.
4
So, Israel, what is the solution? Keep standing on the necks of the Palestinians until until their anger becomes so great that they, collectively, turn into the terrorist beast you claim they are? Until the flaming kites become rockets filled with sarin? Until the attacks come from Gaza AND the West Bank? Until Abbas is gone and there's noone on the Palestinian side to keep a lid on the anger? What then?
1
Mr. Friedman once again draws out all of the anti-Israel crowd who, with him, want to rule the region via their diurnal dreams. Demilitarize, and voluntarily? Get the millions of weapons out of the hands of unstable Americans. Reduce the annual murder and other violent crime rates in the US first so as to prove it's possible. In other words, Mr. Friedman and his groupies who love to comment in sync with him need to first implement satisfactorily the same social and political problems mentioned in this article stateside, do an excellent job at that (and we'll all be long deceased if or when that ever happens) providing by example proof it can be done at home so to speak, as well as anywhere. Demonstrate by example the feasibility of your sycophants' collective dreams for a stable peace between Israel and its current enemies.
None of us and possibly, our grandchildren will be alive on this planet when or if that dream ever materializes.
Mr. Friedman experiences boredom and frustration every so often, so his fantasy of how Israel finds eternal peace needs a public outlet via his online opinions.
1
Until and unless Israel removes all illegal settlements from the West Bank, they have zero moral credibility, and deserve every attack that comes their way. The USA should withhold all support for Israel until and unless they deal with their land thievery against the Palestinians. But instead, we avoid speaking truth or enacting justice for another day-- and continue to blame the violence on desperate, angry Palestinian. It's sickening.
1
Mr. Friedman, with due respect you sound as if the Israeli-Palestinian problem is something new, whereas in fact the dilemma of "... choosing between bi-nationalism and apartheid, both disasters for a Jewish democracy" was carved in stone by Ben Gurion, Israel's founder and head of the World Zionist Organization:
"“We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.”
David Ben-Gurion May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, a Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978."
This has been the rallying cry of every Israeli Prime Minister, Rabin being the big exception, ever since. Netanyahu is merely the product of Israeli extremism, as Trump is a sordid extension of America's.
And you go on to recommend that "Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, should go to America’s four key Arab allies — Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — and propose that they collectively say “yes” to engaging Trump and Kushner."
You might just as well suggest they negotiate with Laurel and Hardy. At least the latter would provide some laughs.
10
Why, why, why must the Palestinians give, concede, offer, compromise ANYTHING to talk, when, right now, bulldozers continue to carve up purloined land for additional settlements? Why is the cost of admission to a ME bargaining table always borne by the Palestinians? Why should the PA authority speak even a single word to a completely unqualified real estate hack like Kushner, after shoving the embassy move in their faces? Why should the Palestinians always have to be the bearer of the olive branch when its their trees that have been uprooted?
6
Netanyahu takes most of the blame for killing Israeli-Palestinian peace, though Trump put the final nail in its coffin by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and putting his idiot son-in-law in charge of negotiating a solution. Cutting off U.S. aid to the Palestinians to starve them back to the negotiating table is just additional and unnecessary cruelty from a moronic buffoon without an ounce of empathy in his makeup. Israel is now left with a one-state solution, meaning the end of a Jewish state, or no solution at all and thus endless war.
2
"Jewish democracy" is an oxymoron. If it's a Jewish state, it can't be a a democracy, it's for the Jews. The problems in Israel go way back, so the solution does as well.
2
Camp David. Big in the news back then. I have always found it ironic that the terrorist Menachem Begin would sign a peace agreement with the murderous Egyptian President Anwar Sadat - and that they would share the Nobel Peace Prize. The world forgets that Mr. Begin was one of the leaders of the terrorist group IRGUN - which sought the creation of the state of Israel. During WWII, they staged multiple attacks in the Holy Land against the British - at the very same time the Brits were fighting Hitler's Nazi Germany. The state of Israel was founded soon after the war. Menachem Begin later was elected PM of the country. The attacks worked for the Zionists. Yet nowadays, all they can do is condemn it. Do they ever look in the mirror? All sides in that part of the world should just "fade away." But they never, ever will.
1
OK Tom, we won't mention the 800,000 Jews living across the 1947 line in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
3
The evidence is clear that an agreed plan for some sort of accord between Israel and Palestine is impossible. The place where three religions have their origin apparently cannot agree on how to live amicably. From the Balfour Agreement to the flaying off of Arab land from the Palestinians with continued settlements in spite of earlier agreements to the contrary, the current conditions in this beleagured land are starkly clear. Evangelical Christians, Jews, Lots of money from the USA over the years and now Trump trumps all with his decision to cut off aid to the Palestinians, move the embassy to Jerusalem, and as Birdygirl wrote, appoint a 24-carat nitwith like Jared Kushner to deal with this. And of course there's Hamas. First the Brits in the Middle East and their bungling of so much; now the USA follows in the same hapless manner.
1
The leaders of the Palestinian Authority should be forced to watch the movie "Gandhi" 7 or 8 times or more until the message sinks in. Massive, peaceful civil disobedience would succeed where flaming kites, burning tires, knives, and suicide bombers have failed and will continue to fail. No democracy can withstand peaceful disobedience whether it's Britain or America during the civil rights era or Israel.
Of course the PLO will never follow this strategy since the leadership group has displayed no strategic thinking to date and I doubt this will change.
2
"The Trump team keeps saying that it wants to get America’s Arab allies to endorse its peace plan". Next time, ask for an admission: There is NO COORDINATED framework (with the remote possible exception that Israel showed SOME of its "unacceptable" cards).
Our embassy moved, and silence on new settlements. What about Bolton just drawing a line-in-the-sand with US & allies (Israel) on one side and the International Criminal Court / supportive E.U. nations on the other? Seems ominous.
Yes, Mr Friedman, "(Trump is) eliminating U.S. aid for Palestinian development, hospitals and education programs as punishment". Plus this, "Major European countries have warned that flattening Khan al-Ahmar poses a grave threat to the already fading prospects of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.news.com.au/world/middle-east/palestine...
Bottom line: Our idiot has hitched our wagon to the Israeli Security State. When it breaks through the thin ice, we're following it into its hole. That hole is scary dark.
2
From my studies on this issue it seems to me that the Zionist never planned to share political or economic power with the indigenous people of Palestine. Israel was to be a country for Jews and run by Jews. That attitude is still in place today. The wishes of the indigenous population were never given much concern.
3
Saudi Arabia proposed Arab countries normalize relations with Israel if Israel returned to 1967 borders. Obviously Israel couldn’t do that. However Israel could demand they do that first and let them establish embassies outside Jerusalem on the West Bank and then negotiate and let Jordan and the West Bank Palestinians figure out how to divide control. The idea below about ROR would be an excellent good will gesture. Let Egypt do the same with Gaza. Israel, Jordan and Palestine could form a common defense unit with NATO backing. Then we can see how serious everyone is about accepting a Jewish State. And yes then they can add Egypt. Jordan and Egypt have treaties already
Tom - Very disappointed that you’re fueling anti-Israel sentiment by throwing around the term, “apartheid”.
Having to contain and defend against a group of people (outside your border) who want to kill you, is nothing like South African apartheid and you know it.
7
@Max
The South Africans tried to "fix" the borders so that their enemies were outside their borders too. That way they could claim to just be "defending themselves."
The world saw through that charade. What Israel is doing to the West Bank is apartheid. Theres a reason so many South Africans make that comparison, because they know what its like.
3
My thoughts: Contrary to Mr. Friedman's analysis nothing is going to happen until Trump, Likud, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are all gone or removed from power. Each one has their own political agenda which is incompatible with Mid East peace. Until then we will have the same dreary humanitarian crisis and the same columns - different words - from Mr. Friedman.
@C.G.
Nice list: "Trump, Likud, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas ".
You left off the biggest problem: Bibi.
1
@C.G. This is because everyone is working from a perspective of protect and defend my or our people. There are two sides and that is an insurmountable problem. It needs to be tackled the way the western democracies have. Get religion out of government and allow for free individual practice of religion with an agnostic, secular government. All of these people should be able to live in the same nation together so long as the rights and responsibilities for all are the same.
2
The Palestinians do not -and should not- trust the Trump administration as far as they could lift it...especially with Mr Kushner as its chief negotiator (or whatever his title is). This conflict will fester for many years to come, and Israel will gradually realize that the path it's currently pursuing will never lead to any peace. What is being foisted on the Palestinians is inhumane, unjust and unworthy of Israel and the US.
And by the way, Mr Friedman ought to call the Israeli Prime Minister by his real name which is Binyamin Netanyahu...rather than by this childish sobriquet of Bibi.
2
Not mentioned here is Israel's co-opting of Palestinian attempts to build any sort of industry, especially in the high-tech field, to attract global investment in Palestine. Netanyahu has blocked this consistently. Israel gets tremendous financial aid from the USA and the Palestinians get bupkes, even less than bupkes with #45 & cohorts in power here. Trump is a disgrace and Kushner a joke in the Middle East. This needs to be pointed out also. Israel has been thwarting any Palestinian prospects for advancement for many generations now. Just ask Europe and Asia.
6
While I am totally unimpressed with the Palestinians and their leadership, it is totally inappropriate to blame them for the current situation since they have lived the last fifty years under the Jackboot of Israeli occupation. The Israeli attacks on their neighbors in 1956 and 1967 were illegal acts of war. Thousands of Israeli assassinations of Palestinian leaders have left few options for qualified leaders. It is cruel to blame victims of unending assaults for striking back at their attackers. Israel should either remove its citizens to the recognized borders given it by the United Nation in 1947 or abandon a two state solution and give full citizenship to all people living within its borders and the refugees and their descendants outside. The Israeli public relations technique of assaulting their Palestinian neighbors and using their retaliation as a justification for further assaults is a farce. For people, many of whose families were harmed by the holocaust, to engage in this behavior is a crime against humanity. I'm sure I will get responses saying Israel is the victim. I can think of another 20th Century war criminal who rose to power saying he and his people were victims. It is unacceptable for the powerful to beat up on the weak and then blame the weak for fighting back. It is time for a one state solution. Universal citizenship for all inhabitants of Israel, the West Bank, and the Refugee Camps.
7
Netanyahu’s goal is genocide of the Palestinian areas to be occupied by Israelis. They are slow and steady, but if you look at the settlements it is undeniable. We are giving Israel almost $4 billion a year for weapons. Our tax dollars are paying to kill Palestinian civilians.
The US does not care much about human rights around the world. We are also supporting genocide in Yemen, where the Saudi’s are blockading the country from receiving food, medicine and supplies. Thousands of civilians have died, millions starving and 18.4 million are expected to die by the end of the year from starvation, making it the largest humanitarian disaster ever. Of course our military is supplying air support and weapons to the the Wahhabist Saudi regime. Again our tax dollars at work.
To bad that not much is reported about these humanitarian disasters.
5
Trump/Kushner. Simply impossible to wrap one's head around the utter absurdity of seeing these two names cited in an article discussing Israeli-Palestinian affairs.
1
It is over. There is no Jewish or Israeli democracy. Sensing disarray within the Muslim world, Israel is taking advantage of the situation by peeling inch by inch from the Palestinian livelihood. Note that I am not using Nethanyahu’s name since he is Israel and Israel is Nethanyahu. Israel is very short sighted not to negotiate from a position of strength. With the advance of technology which miniaturizes powerful machines and affordable, it is possible new threats will emerge which would be highly indefensible.
3
Where is Jared the Conqueror’s much ballyhooed peace plan? In the same drawer with Trump’s “secret plan” to win the never-ending Iraq and Afghan wars? Pathetic nonsense.
3
As long as Israel exists, it will be used to explain all the failures of the Palestinian people.
Were it to ever disappear, their failures would continue and another scapegoat would be blamed.
3
Mr Friedman mentions corruption in the Palestinian Authority. It's also worth noting that in the last twenty years, four Israeli Prime Ministers have been subject to police investigations concerning bribery and other financial crimes, the latest being Netanyahu. See the New York Times timeline for all the juicy details:
https: //www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/world/middleeast/israeli-prime-ministers-struggles-with-corruption-a-timeline.html
3
Thank you Mr. Netanyahu for:
-- remaining vigilant and proactive to the continuing threats posed to the existence of Israel by Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah;
-- promoting the interests of freedom and democracy in the Middle East;
-- working to maintain Israel as a place where women's rights and gay rights and freedom of the press and freedom of religion and speech are valued and flourish;
-- providing a safe haven for Jews fleeing from assaults and discrimination in Europe and other places in the world;
-- helping to make Israel a place where Muslims, Christians and persons of other faiths can live a safe and decent life;
-- standing with the United States wherever our interests and values are threatened;
-- helping to make Israel a world leader in medical and scientific research and computer technology that provides new cures and new medical treatments for people everywhere;
-- freely sharing the important military and political intelligence Israel gathers with the U.S.;
-- combating the spread of terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere;
-- working tirelessly to prevent Iran from developing nuclear capabilities that would threaten Israel with nuclear annihilation and result in a massive nuclear arms race in the Middle East;
-- and for always remaining open to the prospect of a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians that would provide an independent demilitarized state for them alongside a Jewish State of Israel with secure and permanent borders;
5
"At the same time, though, a March poll by the respected Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey found that 78 percent of Palestinians believed that the Palestinian Authority was hobbled by corruption."
Sadly the palestinians have long ago turned into docile sheep manipulated by combinations of viscious and or corrupt leaders.
ANY effective governance or administration on their side would have made a grandly beneficial peace with Israel decades ago!
This sad situation has been aided and abetted by those tens of millions of Jew haters and their ill informed allies who have never ceased the ahistorical drumbeat against Israel as an imperialist colonizer who would bend under the pressures of international condemnation.
Governance by Israel and the destruction of Hamas is the only possible solution.
2
@dave
"...those tens of millions of Jew haters and their ill informed allies"
Really?
This is where your troubles all begin.
Wake up. Grow up.
Help Israel to begin acting like a real country, with real concern for (all) its people, and a desire to use its unmatched power to create the peace it coyly pretends to covet.
That drumbeat your hear (louder every day, isn't it?) is not hatred for Israel, its people, or its existence, it is against their insufferable behavior and their beastly attitudes. And Bibi.
Perhaps you should try listening, for once.
What I hear you saying is that I should just shut up and take it.
2
Sorry Tommy. Your ideas about "Arab cover" for the Pslestinians, were the right ones for when Barak tried to ram a "take it or leave it" option down Palestinian throats.
Now? Who in Israel cares? Does Bibi really give a hoot if anything "exposes" his underhanded plans to make impossible a Palestinian state? If he were Muslim, we would say he has the fanaticism of ISIS. The guy is a complete extremist and couldn't care less about reason.
Trump believes in power being used to force others to do the powerful's bidding. Bibi is his twin on this.
The morally bankrupt and the powerful are doing what they want, to Palestinians and Israel. Maybe the process matches human history. But wasn't democracy supposed to help change such impulses? Oh well!
3
Americans don't realize:
Jordan currently hold 70% of "palis lands"
Syria Currently holds 15% of "Palis land"
Egypt currently holds 10% of "Palis land"
Isreal currently holds 5% of "Palis land" Which it captured from JORDAN.
Arabs currently control 95% of "Palis land". They could have a nation tomorrow
6
@shrinking food
Lying with statistics, I see, and doing it quite well.
How about this: Israel occupies 100% of Palestinians' former home, and ruthlessly grabs for more.
None of this leads us to peace.
1
@shrinking food
Yes and Jews could have had many states in Poland, Russia and Ukraine. They could have had a country in Europe but instead they decided to fight Arabs over lands in the middle east.
I have relatives who live in Israel. They support Netanyahu because he's an unapologetic realist. For all his faults he has had the courage to abandon the so called Peace Process. It's not in Israel's self interest. Imagine a scenario where the Arabs won the 1948 war they initiated against Israel. What would have happened? Here's what Arab League's Secretary-General Azzam Pasha promised would happen: "This will be a war of extermination & a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres & the Crusades." How can Israel negotiate with that kind of mentality? They can't. Palestinians don't want peace. They've had a chance for peace many times. They've chosen violence. They're where they are today because of past actions. I'm not a fan of Trump. But he's right on Jerusalem. He had the guts -something liberals & progressives don't have- to recognize reality. The so called "Peace Process" is a fraud & the people who have pushed it are self-deluded charlatans. In the past 70 years trillions have been spent trying to solve this problem. We've engaged in horrifying wars with no end in sight because of our involvement in the "Peace Process". A 2013 Harvard study estimated that future medical care & disability benefits for veterans of these war will exceed $900 billion. What do we have to show for it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The Peace Process was a sham pushed by people who should have known better. Netanyahu isn't going to waste time on this anymore.
5
Thought provoking. Thank you Mr Friedman. The Arab Israeli conflict is America's longest war. Not Afghanistan.
"So many people are acting badly."
Mostly Palestinians, who never seem to miss a chance to breach the border, whether by concrete tunnels built with international aid, or by torches attached to the legs of hawks flown into Israeli fields.
Forty years wasted. Forty years of textbooks depicting Jews as pigs and snakes, forty years of money going not for real education and industry but for weaponry, forty years, essentially, of parasitism rather than innovation.
Some neighbors.
6
Negotiations with Kushner-Trump?
Come on Thomas.
An ultra-orthodox Jew who has donated money to Israeli settlements should be trusted by Palestinians?
2
There is really so much wrong with this .. Do you really think Jared Kushner & Trump have some plan? Do you really think either one is even capable of understanding the huge problems & complexities of this? That's why I call Friedman the wild eyed schoolboy.
What is shameful is Friedman's interpretation of the protest's at the fence. Doctors and children being murdered for nothing. Plus the one sided view of Hamas. Doesn't Hamas also provide services where they can in the Gaza.? Hospital, schools, etc? No mention of horror of living in the Gaza Strip, the hopelessness. No mention the indignities faced by the Palestinians day in & day out in the West bank also. No mention of the stealing of land & settlement building.
And Netanyahu has been brilliant regarding Iran & Syria. Are you kidding? The deal negotiated by Obama was the best way forward for everyone, including Israel. All Netanyahu wants to do is start a war with Iran, which would be disastrous. And in Syria he was warned by Russia to cool it. What's so great about siding with the Saudi's everywhere.
Mr. Friedman basically writes alot of nothing here. Trump just does what Adelson, Netanyahu & the Ultra-Right Christians tell him to do. They have cut off almost all aid to the Palestinians. That's the big plan, Starve them & kill them off. Meanwhile Israel gets it's 4 billion to mostly invest in weapons to cause mischief everywhere. Trump could care less about Mid-East Peace. It's foolish to think otherwise.
2
The myth of middle east peace resting on Israel's shoulders lives on. Meanwhile, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Libya, and Syria are on fire with muslim on muslim violence. Middle east peace is not just about Israel and neighbors. Israel remains a rare place of democracy, human rights and peaceful intentions.
4
What's the difference between "Jewish democracy", which Friedman mentions twice to be at risk, and "democracy"? Is Jewish democracy different from "Israeli democracy"?
1
The "crazy, poor Middle Easterners " have lots of problems but the greatest of these is the US' involvement in that benighted region. Time to leave and let others try. Jettison the hypocrisy and admit the failure, one among many in the developing countries.It would even be nice if there was some atonement....but that is asking too much of the narcissistic US. Its always 'all about us'.
After decades of intractable and internecine hatred among and between the theocrats who rule the Middle Eastern tribal countries, I have concluded that the current state is exactly what they want in the Middle East.
Certainly all of the Islamic theocracies want to keep the religious warfare alive for the simple reason that it justifies their rule. Toss in complicit clergy and you have a cradle to grave indoctrination of people that spans generations. There really is no chance of Islamic theocracies ever accepting "others" because as soon as they accept "others" they lose their raison d'etre for their "god given" right to rule. Please note that "others" not only include Christians, Jews, pagans, Hindus but also Sunnis or Shiites depending on whose side you're on.
The Israelis are marginally better in that they just want to be left alone by their Islamic "neighbors." They are just as theocratic as the Muslims and just as adamant that theirs are the "chosen people" of "god" whose destiny is ... what exactly? Who really cares other than the ideologues.
The extreme irony of all of this is that most of these tribal states would even exist if not for the British and the French. With the exception of Egypt and maybe Iran, none of these tribal nation states would have the borders they claim as their divine right today.
A pox on all their houses. They are an unfortunate distraction to civilization. If it were not for the oil in the region, they'd all be herding goats today.
3
'Hamas has been a curse on the Palestinian people. '
Is it OK to state that Netanyahu 'has been a curse on the Israeli people', or is that a no-no?
3
One of Hamas's favorite tactics is the parading of dead children in front of the news media. This article features one such picture - an 11-year-old Palestinian killed during a protest. One must wonder how the editorial decision was made to feature this photo. The child's name is Shady Abdel-al. The legend of the photo doesn't clarify the cause of death, but the implication is that he was shot by the IDF. All the initial reports about his death stated clearly that he was shot by Israeli troops. But it turns out that he was actually killed by a rock thrown by one of the rioters, and even the Gaza Health Ministry backed down from the claim that he was shot. To their credit, Reuters - the source of this photo - corrected its captioning to reflect the reality. I request that the caption of the photo in this article also be amended to accurately represent what happened.
6
I don't think its going to happen Peace that is. The right wingers in Israel and The US won't let it happen as long as they are in power. I see continued aggression and Land
grabbing by the Israeli's. Who gonna stop them?
2
@cbarber
The Palestinians will stop them when they start using all that cement for schools, hospitals, and municipal offices instead of for tunnels designed to guide terrorists into Israel.
3
Is it still worth to write of the Palestina/Israel tragedy as it would be still a two party perennial war?
For Israel, there is no match or serious challenge when it confronts the weak and hopeless Palestinians.
The sad reality is that Europe is unable to provide the support for a sound political solution and the USA has decided to take side with Israel.
What are the Palestinians supposed to do to get back their own land? Just wait?
Does anyone remember the desperate uprising of the heroic Jewish people closed in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943?
2
In 1947 the Palestinians were given a country along with the creation of the state of Israel by the United Nations.
The Palestinians vowed to destroy Israel and they lost. They repeatedly have gone to war and slaughtered their children.
They continue to vow to destroy Israel.
France and Germany were once mortal enemies and fought two world wars started by Germany which was a totalitarian state.
This situation did not change until the Allies at the end of WW2 defeated Germany and created the conditions for a democratic Germany.
Then change occurred.
I feel sorry for the Palestinian people that they are ruled by tyrants with huge Swiss bank accounts.
Palestine and Gaza could be the Singapore of the middle east.
This is the historical residue of the end of WW1 and the creation of kingdoms in the middle east.
Finally, remember that the Romans crushed the Israelites after the Jewish rebellion in 66-70 AD and engaged in ethnic cleansing scattering the Jews from their historical homeland.
So much for the "historical" claims of the Palestinians to statehood.
The Israelis have a right to survival.
The Palestinians must repudiate their self imposed tyranny.
That is the point where the peace process begins.
Retired U.S. Army Officer and Vietnam Veteran
7
@Michael
Judaea Capta coins (also spelled Judea Capta) were a series of commemorative coins originally issued by the Roman Emperor Vespasian to celebrate the capture of Judaea and the destruction of the Jewish Second Temple by his son Titus in 70 AD during the First Jewish Revolt.
1
@Michael
As many Jews will tell you, not all Judeans were "cleansed" from Judea after their revolts. Some of them even stuck around to later convert to Christianity of even Islam. Those people would be called Palestinians today.
@Joe
The United Monarchy (Hebrew: הממלכה המאוחדת) is the name given to the Israelite[note 1] kingdom of Israel and Judah,[2][3][4] during the reigns of Saul, David and Solomon, as depicted in the Hebrew Bible. This is traditionally dated between 1050 BCE and 930 BCE. On the succession of Solomon's son, Rehoboam, around 930 BCE, the biblical account reports that the country split into two kingdoms: the Kingdom of Israel (including the cities of Shechem and Samaria) in the north and the Kingdom of Judah (containing Jerusalem) in the south.
1
Again, Mr Friedman? "Israel would be choosing between bi-nationalism and apartheid, both disasters for a Jewish democracy." Again you start with this long debunked falsehood in order to proceed on to your lost fantasy of a Palestinian entity. That's over, sir, both sides agree on that. Your claims are based on laughable, spectacularly wrong demographic information.
Israel will claim sovereignty to the Jordan, it will be the nation state of the Jewish people, and it will grant democratic rights to all it's citizens.
Even if israel absorbed the Arab population without reorganizing its government, the non-Jewish percent would be 37-40%. But they will reform, in order to create a more perfect union, by creating sub-national voting districts, apportioned to always include Jews and Arabs, while allowing great freedom to local jurisdictions. In other words, they will create something that looks like us.
Allowing Rabbis to continue deciding what the State accepts as a legitimate Jewish marriage will no longer be what being the Jewish State means. By passing the Nation State Law, Israelis have now accomplished the necessary precondition for separating the Jewishness of the State from the ethnicity of it's population , and have placed it, instead, on it's soon to be annexed historic Biblical boundaries. Inside those boundaries, all citizens will be equal before the law, which will be secular and democratic.
As usual -with the one exception being his support of Iraq2 -
Friedman's right on top of things. And if what he says isn't
heeded we'll all be headed in the other direction. But will the various sides listen? With their present leadership this is, at least for the moment, unlikely but not impossible. Far as Israel's concerned, its high time its left and center woke up and gave its people a realistic alternative to Netanyahu...if the courts don't do it first. Moreover, until Bibi realizes that in practical terms Trump's not as yet given it anything real...well perhaps that's too much to ask.
As for the Palestinians they have a few sane leaders too and its
high time those like Erekat stop smoldering and get back to
working out a resolution both sides can live with. The rulers of
Jordan and Saudi Arabia are no fools either.
That Trump decided to cut off aid to the Palestinians, move the embassy to Jerusalem, and then appoint a 24-carat nitwit like Jared Kushner, who has no experience, to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and also aligning with a hardliner like Netanyahu is like pouring gas on an already raging fire. These exceptionally dumb strategies just give Hamas exactly what it wants---more reasons to ramp up violence in Gaza. And who loses out? The Palestinians as a pawn in this game, and Israelis who favor peace. In fact, come to think of it, everyone loses out. Some art of the deal. What a mess.
109
The absence of peace in the Middle East is the result of 2 things: the intransigence of the Palestinians, including their continuing denial of Israel's right to exist--and America's timid response to Palestinian violence. The Palestinians should be called out for every attack, and every offense they commit against a sovereign country--who is legitimately trying to protect itself against aggression.
There is only one way to end this stand-off: the Palestinians must be brought to their knees. All foreign aid must be ended, to the point that the Palestinian's terrorist government collapses and a popular uprising demands new leadership--and a real solution that doesn't include attacking its neighbor.
Perhaps someone can explain--how the Palestinians can launch unrelenting attacks on Israel, and then lay credible claim to wanting a settlement. The answer is: they don't want to solve the problem. They want to destroy the Israelis. That's no way to establish a peace process.
In order to save Palestine, it must first be destroyed. Only when the Palestinians become focused on basic survival, might their attention be diverted from picking fights with Israel.
2
To view the Palestinians as a “partner” in peace talks is incredibly naive. If they were in Israel’s shoes with the same military and economic advantages, they would have committed genocide by now, and thy have proven repeatedly that they do not honor their agreements or commitments.
Why then should we consider them an equal partner with Israel? Why keep pouring billions of dollars in aid to people who hate us and reject norms of tolerance and peace to pursue repeated indiscriminate attacks on civilians and soldiers alike? And why not move our embassy to the actual capital of our closest Middle East partner, Israel?
The ball is in the Palestinians court. Reject terrorism. Spend your billions in aid on schools and hospitals not tunnels and improvised bombs to attack Israel. Give women rights. If you can’t even treat your own people with decency why should the Israelis ever think you can reach across racial and ethnic lines to be a peaceful neighbor?
It’s time to stop treating Palestine as anything other than a glorified terrorist state. If they want peace they need to take steps in that direction.
3
You give good advice, Mr. Friedman, but this president will not take it. He has already made up his mind, based on his own self-interests. I hope that I am wrong, but I doubt it.
When we elect a bad president, it is bad not only for us in the United States but for the rest of the world as well. Progress for Israelis and Palestinians is on the back burner for now, at least as far as American involvement is concerned.
Those in the Middle East need to take responsibility for their actions and be held accountable. The same goes for voters in the United States. We have let ourselves and the rest of the world down, and it shows every day.
We don't have time for this nonsense from the White House. We never did.
1
Jordan, which occupies 80% of the former British Mandate territory, aka ‘Palestine’, is the defacto Arab Palestinian State...created for the exclusive benefit of the Arab population. They should NOT be entitled to yet more territory west of the Jordan River just because they ‘want’ it. Nor do they deserve it.
What they ‘want’ is all of Israel, and they’ve been perpetrating war and terrorism against Israel for the past 70 years with that objective. Meanwhile, since when do the vanguished in wars they started..and LOST...get to dictate the terms of the peace to the victors? I’ll tell you when...Never.
The international community needs to STOP enabling Arab intransigence and warmongering where Israel is concerned. If they reject Israel’s peace terms, as they have done repeatedly, they must be given citizenship...in Jordan...the defacto Arab Palestinian state. It’s what should have happened in the first place....70 years ago.
5
For Jared and Donald, it’s either be serious — and be ready to take a tough stance with all parties, including Israel — or stay home.
Is it this reader's paranoia, or is Mr Friedman's reluctance to identify Saudi Arabia as being a crucial player in this tragedy of epic proportions for the Palestinians part of some corporate, political or strategic arrangement on the part of the NYT that subscribers will only be clued in on decades from now, if ever? Otherwise how can it be that S.A.'s ultimate responsibility for so much ongoing misery is so rarely investigated and reported upon?
This article shows the bankruptcy of Mr. Friedman's thinking. For him there are only two choices, a two state solution or binationalism or apartheid but that is simply not true. Most West Bank Palestinians are Jordanian citizens and most Jordanians are Palestinians. That is a simple fact that has been whitewashed because King Abdullah doesnt want people to realize it. The British already partitioned Palestine into an Arab State and a Jewish one when they created Transjordan out of their mandate. That is the solution now. The Palestinians are residents of the West Bank who happen to be Jordanian.
2
I am not Jewish, nor Palestinian so I have no dog in this fight. But in our modern multicultural world, Israel is an anomaly. It is a religious state. So I suppose using this logic, one could form a homeland for Buddhist monks or unwed mothers or African Americans or any group you like. Moving Palestinians our of their home was like moving the Cherokee nation to Oklahoma. And all this played out 70 some years ago. Yes this is apartheid, and it is wrong. The fix is incredibly difficult because Israel has been so successful as a Jewish State. But it has to do the right thing now to solve it. We just gave the Cherokees a reservation and plenty of alcohol and bada bing bada boom, we don't pay any more attention. I would be suspicious if Jews were making "fixes" unilaterally, though.
1
@William Trainor
"It is a religious state."
Yes, Israel is a religious state because Jews have lived everywhere and are bound together only by Judaism. Even their food reflects the various countries in which they've lived for generations.
Your examples are incongruous to your premise.
If you mean that lately Israel has let itself be guided by the ever-growing ultra-Orthodox population, then that is true. But its founders, secular though they might have been in thought, word, and deed, were Jewish, bound together by Judaism.
1
@B.
Israel is not a religious state. It is the State of the Jews, the People, the Nation, like France is the state of the French People and Ireland is the state of the Irish People.
Most Jews are Jewish. "Jewish", that's Judaism, the religion. There are exceptions. The late Cardinal Lustiger of Paris was a Catholic Jew. The late African-American entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr. was Jewish though not a Jew. Not to mention that many Jews are atheists, they have no religion at all.
This incessant confusion is the result of similar terms, "Jew" and Jewish".
@MIKEinNYC
Sorry Mike but Israel has made it clear that Jews cannot be Jews if they embrace any other religion except Judaism. Read Israeli laws yourself. Once you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior the Right of Return no longer applies to you. Religion is intrinsic to the Israeli government.
Expecting Trump to understand the complexity of the past history, leave alone craft a meaningful plan that looks to the future, is a fool's errand. Its much easier to have him tweet meaningless words from his golden toilet seat.
I am 80 years old. My family was deeply involved with the founding of the state of Israel. The Tel Aviv central railway station is named after one of my relatives. I am very pessimistic as to its long term survival.
As I wrote in another comment, one reason is that in 30 years the Arabs and the ultra orthodox will have a majority. It is difficult to see how Israel will survive that,
Also while I support the state of Israel and have done so since its founding, more recently I have not been able to support the government of the state of Israel. I regard each settlement as a cancer on the body of Israel. Israel's survival depends on the support of the Jews outside of Israel. The settlements are slowly causing this support to wane.
After WWII a group of wealthy Jews offered to buy a number of enormous sheep ranches in Western Australia to be a home for the Jewish people. I believe the area would have been larger than Israel today. This plan was shot down for what were essentially religious reasons. Today the elevation of religion over basic human rights is another reason I fear for Israel.
8
@Len Charlap
"This plan was shot down for what were essentially religious reasons."
While I respect your family's involvement in and knowledge of Israel, I disagree with your opinion that putting an Israel into Australia was shot down because of religion.
It was shot down because of history.
Jews have always been in what many call the Holy Land. Archaeology says so, both ancient and more recent history says so. At the turn of the last century, there were wholly Jewish towns continuing to exist.
Just because Jews intone "Next year in Jerusalem" at Passover doesn't mean that it's only religion that gives them a strong foothold in Israel and Judah, later known as Roman Palestine.
As for elevation of religion over basic human rights: Do tell that to Muslims in Muslim countries.
3
@B.
"As for elevation of religion over basic human rights: Do tell that to Muslims in Muslim countries."
Yet another thing our modern day Gog and Magog share in common, and refuse to use to forge anything like peace.
Its just another tragedy of brothers bent on fratricide. Nothing more.
@B. - I was always taught that Abraham came from Ur and that later Moses and Aaron drove the indigenous minority out.
The Trump team is incapable of brokering an agreement; it is incompetent. As Mr. Friedman points out, Trump is beholden to evangelicals and right wing Jews like Adelson in the U.S. And let's be honest, Trump has an affinity for brutal authoritarianism. Bibi is his man.
1
I am sick and tired of reading opinion pieces like this one which suggest that the path to peace requires Israel and only Israel to sacrifice more lands.
The so-called Palestinians already have one independent country which is much larger than the state of Israel. That country is called Jordan. The so called Palestinians have another piece of land called Gaza. How much land do they need?
The New York Times and other sources of information must stop treating the Palestinians as if they are distinct national identity. They are not. They speak the same language, have the same history, have the same culture, and for the most part have the same religion as Arabs in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and other parts of the Middle East.
The truth is is that the Arabs are using presence of bretheren in places such as Jerusalem as an excuse for a land grab. Civilized Western Nations should not fall for this ploy.
4
Tom,
David Ben-Gurion’s speech at Beit Berl in 1967, one month after the 6 day war seems eerily prophetic today. He opined to return all the territories won in the recent war except Jerusalem. That holding on to the territories would be a long term mistake for the Jewish State.
A sage and oracle whose words from the past that have come to haunt the present.
It is from a 1987 NYT Review of Books, google Ben-Gurion+speech+ Beit Berl,
1
Correction: NYR, New York Review of Books
The important thing to remember is that Netanyahu won the last close election by promising that there would not be an agreement as long as he was Prime Minister. The only Israeli PM that was serious about negotiating was assassinated by a right wing Israeli.
2
Palestinians have a state. It's called Jordan. If Palestinians don't like living in Greater Israel, including the West Bank, move, or shut up.
Get used to it, Israel shall consist of all the land east of the Jordan River. Anything smaller is not viable.
Gaza can and should be an independent state.
2
Israel needs to tell West Bank Palestinians that they can forget about an independent state on the West Bank. They had their chance. They didn't take it. That ship has sailed.
The West Bank needs to be incorporated into Israel-proper. West Bankers should get full Israeli citizenship. Palestinians who lost land, money or businesses should get Just Compensation as under the legal Doctrine of Eminant Domain. No "right of return". They get cash instead. You want your land back, take your cash and buy it back if it's available.
West Bank Palestinians can get some autonomy as French Canadians do in Quebec. And that's it. Case closed. With the huge influx of Jews since 1948 the region alloted to Jews is too small to support a viable state for Jews much less two states.
The UN should declare Gaza an independent state whether Gaza wants it or not. Israel vacated Gaza years ago. Egypt doesn't want Gaza back. Independence is the only viable outcome.
There's your Palestinian State. Gaza!
1
Neat! I know a rabbi (he's busy right now) that is totally right wing. He's a Trumpster through and through and he's wrong when he spews out the stuff about how the Arabs and the Israelis hate one another. That may be so, but it's WAY past time for a change.
Arabs won't negotiate from a position of weakness. They need to have a victory under their belt before they'll come to the table. It was their "victory" in the Yom Kippur War that enabled the Egyptians to meet with the Israelis as equals. From the Arab point of view, victors do not negotiate with the defeated; they simply impose their demands. This is a situation Arab pride will not accept.
So in order for the Palestinians to meet with the Israelis, they need to feel they've won somehow. I suggest a suitable concession would be acceptance of the Right of Return--for people who were actually in Israel in 1948, not their descendants or extended family. If Israel cannot deal with a few thousand geriatric "terrorists," they do not deserve to have a Mossad.
The triumphant return of Uncle Achmed to his ancestral home in Beersheba should give the Palestinians the justification they need to declare a victory, and the possibility of getting a visa and going to visit him in a few years might motivate them to negotiate in good faith with the Israelis.
The two parties to the process have not decided if they actually want peace or not. There's still a sizable element on both sides that believe they can achieve some form of permanent victory over the other. And it's difficult to help someone when they don't want the help. Throw Trump and his junior varsity national security team into the process and you're guaranteed a disappointing result.
Instead of recognizing the agency and humanity of Gazan protestors (and the medics who tend to them and the journalists who cover their struggle), hundreds of whom have been mercilessly slaughtered by IDF snipers in recent months, or considering American complicity in this continuing atrocity, the author chooses to dehumanize and delegitimize these brave individuals. He misrepresents their struggle for basic human rights as Hamas committing “human sacrifice”. This is a truly sick way to frame the slaughter, for the victims themselves and a third party are being blamed for the deaths while the clear culprit is not even mentioned as being involved. Israel is absolved of acts it has openly committed, while the victims are blamed for being victims.
By portraying any Palestinian resistance to dispossession and state violence as illogical/terrorist in nature Friedman is parroting Netanyahu’s PR techniques, which he claims to abhor. It is clear that Friedman wants to be “balanced” and blame both sides equally, but the situation in Israel/Palestine is not a balanced one, but one of colonialism and domination. Friedman is a firm proponent of the two-state-solution, but also insists that a Palestinian state must be demilitarized. As Israeli and world history show, a state exists only in so much as it can defend itself; a demilitarized Palestine along side a nuclear-weapons-armed Israel would not be a truly independent state, but rather a different name for the status quo.
84
@Basant Tyagi
"... a demilitarized Palestine along side a nuclear-weapons-armed Israel would not be a truly independent state, but rather a different name for the status quo."
@DB
"Better to fight for 1000 years for true independence or for a just binational state in all the land."
If peace cannot be achieved, sooner or later the entire region will be turned into an irradiated sheet of glass. Then no one gets it. Call it the no-state solution. Is that the best we will do? Is that our destiny?
@Basant Tyagi
I note the strategy of relentless one-sided demonization of Israel and opposition to compromise (as in your comment) has not worked, its only made things worse for Palestinians as Israeli settlements expand. Expressing hate or even terrorism will not make the Israelis go away or allow themselves to be annihilated. There has to be a vision of an compromise that is acceptable to all, and at least Friedman is trying for that, your attitude seems to only offers more conflict and thus more oppression.
@Basant Tyagi
You must live in an alternate universe from mine. Hamas has been a disaster for those it rules since the beginning.
1
Tom, your suggested steps for peace reek of logic and suppose the existence of rational minds in the Mid-East. Add Trump to the mix and all you get is a worse mix. I far you will retire seeing the same turmoil that now exists.
Between religion and pigheadedness there exists little agreement or desire for understanding and compromise.
29
@Cone "Tom, your suggested steps for peace reek of logic..."
Made me smile
Friedman presents a false choice awaiting Israel in the event of a PA collapse: bi-nationalism and apartheid. Before the PLO began murdering local tribal sheiks in the early 1970s to secure its power, Israel dealt with those local authority figures. Friedman knows full well that the Palestinian Arabs are not a nation in the West’s understanding of that term, and forget about any pretensions to holding democratic ideals or even trying to create a civil society that would underpin a stable state.
The Arabs of Palestine actually identify on a clan and tribe basis, not on a national one. This was the insight of one of Anwar Sadat’s advisors when he observed that only Egypt could be considered an Arab nation, all the other Arab states were just tribes with flags. That particular Arab governance pattern is one of the reasons why Israel has a significant Arab population after its War of Independence: those local groups had no beef with Jews, stayed out of the fight and therefore stayed where they were.
So, in the event of a PA collapse, the most likely scenario would be an Israeli military presence to keep Hamas and other terror groups out while dealing with the local sheiks. In a perfect world, of course, those sheiks would get together and force the kleptocrats of the PA and Hamas to surrender their billions of embezzled funds and kickstart their economy for the benefit of the Arabs of Palestine.
There is no peace now because it threatens the PA and Hamas kleptocracies.
2
Unfortunately the Palestinians have no one in the Trump administration will speak for them. Everyone who matters sees the Palestinians as part of a security problem in the Middle East or as a nuisance standing in the way of a greater triumphant Israel. Their identity as human beings has been erased.
2
Mr. Friedman will have to hold his breath for the rest of his life before Donald Trump, Bibi Netanyahu, and Jared Kushner get serious about anything other than their own self- interest. We have a Congress that is virtually 100% in lock-step following the guidance of AIPAC. The so-called "leadership" of the Palestinians is corrupt to the core, so I feel obliged to respectfully ask Mr. Friedman who will lead this peace process?
1
remember thomas, hamas was israel's creation, and had the blessing of the jewish state when the islamic movement first began holding rallies inside 1947 israel...the idea was to draw support away from the secular PLO and divert it to what should have been a controllable alternative. i guess that plan didn't work out! i remember photographing at one of the first mass rallies where sheikh yassin spoke in haifa in 1987...
now israel can reap what it has sown!
1
Jared Kushner, a real estate developer, who has no experience in diplomacy or knowledge of the Middle East, is put in charge of developing a plan for peace between the two factions is ludicrous. Also being an orthodox Jew, does this prejudice his outlook? Netanyahu has no interest in dealing with the Palestinians or a two state solution. The Arabs are inept in presenting their case. Hamas does no good for the Palestinian cause. Plus we have a president who is a TV personality. He is simply trying to appease his right wing Christians. It is a mess.
1
Trump and Kushner cannot be relied on to do anything worthwhile. Bibi got the stooge he wanted in America. Now, he is taking joy in destroying a two state solution. Due to his harsh stance, Israel will have to deal with Palestinian suffering on their border and inside the country for years.
1
Under Trump, American foreign policy is simple; I’m the biggest kid on this playground so you better do what I say. Trump has shown little interest in foreign policy except to abrogate agreements or alliances, and has made it clear the US has picked a side. He has backed into a policy of attempting to force the Palestinians into whatever he decides they should accept. The only hope is that one of his kids can figure out a way to get hotels on the West Bank and Gaza rebranded and get a name change on the King David, then everyone would have some skin in the game.
1
Why should the Palestinians sincerely accept a "two-state
solution" when commentators of the stature of Henry
Kissinger assure the world that Israel will be lucky to see
2025? Having propagandized their own populace so
thoroughly against compromise, how can the Palestinian
political elite effectively tell its subjects that it was all a waste of time, blood, and treasure?
With UN Resolution 1701 a dead letter(calling on Lebanon
to exclude all non-Lebanese federal forces from southern Lebanon), why is Israel supposed to accept another
meaningless "guarantee"? How is a peace conference
supposed to create a perfectly contiguous Palestinian
state without creating a non-contiguous Israel? Remember, Irael accepted a non-contiguous state in 1947(The Sea of Galilee with its environs) , and if non-
contiguity was good enough for the Jews in 1947, it is
good enough for the Palestinians now.
arcaneone
mevesarrat, Israel
)
2
There has never been a sovereign nation nor an independent political entity with the name "Palestine" in all of world history.
UNSCR 242, the major resolution created as a direct result of the 1967 war, describes the current status of the territory, as legally administered by Israel as of 1967, "until a just and lasting peace is established." In resolution 242, Israel is required to withdraw "from territories" obtained as a result of the war - expressly not from "all the territories" nor from "the territories". The words chosen and voted on, and accepted as legally in force, were accepted after lengthy discussions.
Israel has withdrawn from "territories" obtained from that war. It withdrew from Sinai, Gaza and certain areas won in that war in locations west of the Jordan River.
The wording of the resolution was carefully and deliberately chosen and agreed to so as to define clearly that the territories remain, until a just, lasting peace is achieved, in dispute, between the Israelis and the Arabs who live in those areas.
The Arabs who live in the area speak the same language, practice the same cultural rituals and adhere to the same religion like other Islamic majority nations throughout the region.
The root of the word "palestine" and, "philistine" is a biblical era Hebrew verb still used in modern Hebrew :"פלש", transliterated as "palash" - "(to)invade".
2
The tighter we are with our identity, the more problems we create for ourselves. People who identify themselves strongly as Jewish or Muslim, Arab or Israeli, put identity before humanity. These people are stuck with borders, defined territories, mine yours, conflicts. I once watched a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon crying her heart out, that she wishes one day she could visit Palestine, the land of her parents. Instead of enjoying the freedom as a refugee in Lebanon, she was complaining that she could not go back to her parents' homeland. This is how strong one's identity becomes. The more the Jewish stick to their identity, the more opposites they will generate. Newton's third law, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
You will NEVER get it, Thomas Friedman, alas, no matter how many degrees you acquire, how much wealth you accumulate. If you do not have peace in your heart, you cannot expect peace to just emerge out of nowhere. Peace is our innate nature, we are born with it, it is not something we have to go looking for, outside of ourself. And each and every human being has it. (This is the biggest misunderstanding of the Abrahamic religions who consider human birth itself to be a sin. Sheesh).
3
And how about mentioning that the Israelis have a minimal demand? Survival. Mahmoud Abbas has already said that not one Israeli soldier would remain on West Bank soil. And a contiguous Palestinian state, without Israeli security, would be in a much better position to continue violent attacks on Israel. Like Gaza, which used its lack of an Israeli presence to turn themselves into an Iranian supplied purveyor of fire bombs and missiles. Really want to see things change? Continue to squeeze the Palestinians economically, and wait for Abbas to die. Maybe, if we cease giving the one and only Palestinian perpetual refugee population on the planet about half of a billion dollars of American taxpayer money a year every year since the Oslo Accord, they'll have to think about building a society.
Ari Fuld, a 40 year old father of four, was stabbed to death a couple of days ago by a 17 year old Palestinian. Although Mr. Fuld was mortally wounded, he prevented an attack on an Israeli woman, and pursued his attacker and wounded him. Two points: despite anti-Semitic fondest wishes, Israelis are not suicidal. And the Palestinian Authority will be giving the attacker's family $1400 a month for three years, American tax payer money, in recognition of his glorious achievement. OK America? Got a better use for your money?
3
Re: "Say what you will about Anwar el-Sadat and Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter 40 years ago, but they came to a point at Camp David where there were only hard choices — and they made them, and they made the right ones." -- Unfortunately Begin was not indentured to the most extreme right-wing hyper religious element of the Israeli politic. With Bibi so hobbled by his coalition it's virtually inconceivable that he has any room at all to make such a choice today.
2
You know what changed my mind about this whole issue? I looked at two photographs; one that was taken before and after the Jews made Israel a state. When I filmed in Israel in 2011 and 2012 I saw a land of “Milk and Honey” compared to land surrounding Israel that appeared hundreds, if not thousands of years in the past.
Civilizations are made by the people, not for them. The vast majority of Palestinians would love to have a homeland just like Israel’s. That’s a fact! But instead of having a working plan to get that, they want it for free! They hire parties like Hamas to be their “hit men” instead of putting their energy into building a society with positive solutions for their children and grandchildren. We can’t help them if they won’t help themselves. We can only show them photos of paradise. They need to decide if they’re willing to pay the cost of reaching it.
3
No one knows the terms the Palestinians would agree to so how can there be a starting point? They have walked away from every offer. They present impossible terms...it’s like....they don’t want to move forward. The ball has always been in their court - they just don’t want to play
50
@Deirdre
Palestinians demand "the right of return" for some 5 million refugees. Until they back down from this demand there can never be peace. As they never will, there will never be peace.
1
@Deirdre, I agree with you. It's easier to play the victim. People feel sorry for the victim, for the so-called underdog. It is a ploy the Palestinians have perfected.
@Deirdre
When negotiating you deploy certain tactics depending on power, integrity and concern for all. The tactic of Israel has been, "what Israel wants not what is fair and reasonable". This policy is endorsed by the United States
who provides Israel with 4 plus billion dollars annually and is supposedly the unbiased mediator of the negotiations. As we know Israel will not accept another mediator. Are the Palestinians rejecting peace or are they rejecting the power of Israel and the United States?
The fateful moment is long gone: on 10.11.95, three weeks before Rabin was murdered, I published in my weekly column in “Yedioth Ahronoth” an article headlined “Too Small for History”. In it I stated that given the uniquely advantageous terms of both the global and regional situations, the presently signed “Oslo B” agreement was actually a missed opportunity of historical dimensions. I emphasized that “Rabin and Peres seem to have decided that a bold initiative requiring settlements evictions and the drawing of permanent borders” is beyond their political abilities while, in parallel, the Palestinians asininely believe and act as if time is on their side.
I concluded that Cleo doesn’t easily excuses such acts of historical folly and explicitly forecasted that it’s a matter of “few years” before an intensive armed conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians will erupt and that Israel will crash the Palestinians and will go on to establish the occupation as the “Permanent Solution” --the “Second Intifada” started in September 2000 and here we are on this predetermined road to United Jerusalem and the internationally de-facto recognized Greater Israel. That’s all folks; at least for the next 10-15 years.
"On 30 November, Israel and the Jewish world remember the fate of more than 850,000 Jews who were forced out of Arab countries and Iran in the 20th century."
The day every other choice on the planet has been eliminated for the "Palis" there is, I truly believe, one slim chance that peace might be accomplished.
When the "Palis" are completely boxed in with only peace as a choice they MIGHT choose peace. My bet, however, is that they will reject peace even then
3
This column echos some of the fantasies Mr. Friedman had when the second Bush was revving up the war machine for another invasion: that somehow some good will come from bad people doing terrible things.
The world will continue to watch while things get worse and worse for the Palestinians. Maybe someday they will be so bad that we will start boycotting Israeli companies just as we did in South Africa. Sadly, it's the only way things will ever improve for the Palestinians. Israel is too far gone to ever be a partner in negotiations again.
72
@Turgid
The Jewish–Roman wars had a dramatic impact on the Jews, turning them from a major population in the Eastern Mediterranean into a scattered and persecuted minority. The Jewish–Roman wars are often cited as a disaster to Jewish society.[8] The defeat of the Jewish revolts altered the Jewish population and enhanced the importance of Jewish diaspora, essentially moving the demographic center of Jews from Judea to Galilee and Babylon, with minor communities across the Mediterranean. Although having a sort of autonomy in the Galilee until the 4th century and later a limited success in establishing the short-lived Sasanian Jewish autonomy in Jerusalem in 614–617 CE, Jewish dominance in parts of the Southern Levant was regained only in the mid-20th century, with the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948 CE.
2
@Turgid
The Palestinians could have had their own independent state (based on the 1967 borders with minor-equal territory exchanges by both sides) long time ago if they had agreed to a two states solution without insisting on the unrealistic condition of their right of return to the state of Israel.
3
Trump and Bibi have already proven that they prefer golf courses and condos. Neither will be in office when the new vacuum in the Middle East squeezes out the next Bin Laden or Isis. I think your ideas are sound, but you are preaching to two guys who never hear what they don't want to hear.
1
My heart breaks over this and I can no longer read another article or editorial about the Israel/Palestinian so called peace process. It never ends and every other year there is another push and more editorials and articles and then dashed hope. I can't waste another moment reading about it because I know nothing is going to change.
In today's increasingly multinational, multiethnic mixed societies, calling for a country to be defined by race or religion is bound to lead to apartheid-like policies and practices, violations of human rights, and unequal treatment under the law.
And we generally recognise this.When a political party in India pushes for India to be an officially Hindu state we rightly call it extreme and dangerous. So it is with Buddhists who do the same in Myanmar and attack Muslims. So it is with Saudi Arabia and Iran and its theocracies. And ISIS wherever. And at home, those who call for the US to be a "Christian country" we call extremists and racists.
Why then do we think that a Jewish state would be an exception? Why is a non-theocratic Israel a terrible choice? What is needed is not to try to split these two deeply geographically intertwined peoples into two adversarial neighbours.
Rather, we need a Neslon Mandela-like figure, someone who will do the equivalent of putting on the country's jersey, bringing together ALL the peoples of the land.
Anything else is deeply retrograde.
3
How many more years to admit what Israeli officials, including "Bibi" Netanyahu, have said, unambiguously, many times: that Israel will never accept a two-state solution or any proposal which obliges it to give up control over Palestinian land?
Of course, it's much easier to pretend that the Palestinians are the obstacle, as these comments demonstrate.
3
The decades-long lack of progress in the Middle East is matched exactly by US congressional subservience and acquiescence to everything Israel wants. When is the last time Congress had an open debate about anything to do with Israel? It just doesn't happen. As long as we have so many church mice in Washington, Netanyahu and company will prevail.
Lastly, as much as I detest the rhetoric and policies of Israel's PM, he's actually to the left of an increasing amount of Israelis who have no interest in anything other than Eretz Israel.
1
It is crystal clear that there is an enormous imbalance between the power of both sides, and yet, Mr. Friedman argues that Palestinians can either choose nihilism or pacifism, seriously? For Palestinians, this is a matter of survival and dignity. As long as Israeli government is under the control of the rightist, racist, and ultra conservative coalition of political groups, as it is right now, we shouldn’t be expecting for any peaceful solution. Everyone is talking about how ‘Arabs’ still ask for the collapse or elimination of Israel, well I have news for you, thanks to Israeli governments in the last two decades, the number of young ‘secular’ Israelis have risen enormously who want the same thing for Arabs, creating a country without Arabs.
And one last word about the U.S. allies in the region, Egypt, Saudis, Jordan, UAE, etc., these countries care about Palestinians only because of their people, otherwise they proved it so many times that the only thing they care about is the survival of their unjust authoritarian political system, in which they enjoy all the luxury while their people suffer, and the Western hypocrisy is totally fine with that. Overall, we all need to feel the shame, people living in the West, for having the responsibility for what’s happening in Palestine. And yet, we will continue our lives like nothing is happening thanks to all the goodies that the comfort of capitalist society provides us on a daily basis.
3
Without wanting, or meaning to be a pessimist -- I'm sadly resigned to the fact that there will never be peace in the Middle East.
Not at this rate, anyway.
Between the ultra-conservative Benjamin Netanyahu and his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, any hope for a two-state solution is just as dead as the possibility of Jews and Palestinians living together in one state peacefully.
That's never going to happen.
And now that the U.S. has lost its cloak of neutrality by shipping its Embassy to Jerusalem, cutting off the much-needed foreign aid to the Palestinians under the pretense of getting back at Iran, essentially giving Israel its blessing with more military might, and ignoring its expansion with ever more Settlements; the dye is cast.
And the outcome should surprise no one.
51
It takes but one foe to make a war. Somewhere around 750,000 Arabs fled or were forced from Israel during the Israel civil war and the Arab nations attacks in 1948, and an approximately equal number of Jews fled or were forced from Arabia in the aftermath. There are now no Jewish refugees, and UNWRA is paying to support some five million Palestinian ‘refugees’.
The UN and surrounding Arab nations have perpetuated the ‘refugee’ situation, and the result is that the Palestinians do not want, and have never wanted, peace with Israel.
The status quo will continue unless the Palestinian people decide on new leadership.
1
It sounds like a nice plan. But you have to remember that on each side, there are groups who will settle for nothing less than their maximalist dreams.
Hamas wants all Jews out. There, that’s simple enough to understand.
And the settler movement wants the entire West Bank.
I’m sure the centrists in each population just want to live their lives, and can do without the holy wars.
But where are the pragmatic centrists?
2
Sad to say but the whole thing looks pretty hopeless to me. Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO seem disconnected from reality and prefer to just keep their heads in the sand until 'it's all over'. Their 'government' seems almost guaranteed to collapse.
Bibi on the other hand seems fine with the idea of what others see as a disaster for Jewish democracy: Bi-nationalism or apartheid. In some ways what other choice does Israel have?
The thought of Jared Kushner having the authority or capability to negotiate this situation is absurd and must send seasoned diplomats and officials into gales of laughter. After that they manipulate and 'handle' him.
The Palestinian people, especially the intellectuals and educated class, have failed to mature and demand a better government, throw out Hamas, and dedicate themselves to a realistic peace plan that benefits their own people. So every year a new crop of youngsters crops up to throw rocks and bottle rockets which is just plain ridiculous.
This will not end well.
30
I like Mr. Friedman's competent analysis. A few observations on my part.
1. The extremists on either side will never allow a peaceful settlement between the Palestinians and Israelis.
2. The strategy described by Mr. Friedman is way too complicated for Kushner/Trump and would be overtaxing their intellectual capacities.
3. The Palestinian Authority is corrupt and a settlement with Israel would deprive them of the generous international aid that goes nowhere near the Palestinian people.
4. Likewise, Hamas biggest dread is peace. What would they possibly do if here were to be a settlement?
49
At a minimum, this idea of rapprochement at the heads of state level needs grounding. For the Arabs within Israel require measurable steps by the Israeli government to close the educational and economic gap between Jews and Palestinians and to begin immediately. It would show to the world and to Palestinians in other territories that Israel is serious about its responsibilities to its own residents. Then take the next step.
1
Dr Friedman: Attacking Trump and his team for failing to solve the problem is typically unfair. No one, even the revered Obama has solved this puzzle. I am surprised you did not suggest MBS as the solution, as he is to all things Middle East.
1
This would make a perfect scenario for Trump. Trump always believes that the first gambit in any negotiation is about positioning for power. The actual machinations come next.
With the Friedman plan, the entire Arab world sets its power position at the edge of the center. From there, Trump says "what a beautiful dream! With a lot of hard work, well into the future, maybe we'll get there if the Arabs make good on these promises. To get started on the dream, Jared would like to convene a meeting in the new embassy in Jerusalem, Israel..."
3
The Arab states -- let alone the Palestinians -- are not going to undercut their own position about refugees and the use of the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiations in order to enter another round of moribund talks, now mediated by a hostile American government.
Israel is not going to choose between separation or bi-nationalism/apartheid. It is going to continue "managing" the occupation indefinitely, complaining about the absence of a "partner for peace" on the Palestinian side or else using new rounds of talks as political cover for continuing the occupation.
The Arab-Israeli conflict will remain a cold war (with low-level flare ups in Gaza) for as long as the alternatives of war and peace look worse. Nothing proposed here would change that.
24
Nice idea. Ain't gonna happen.
1. As you have already suggested, Bibi has no interest in a two state solution. His policy is annexation by any other name.
2. Given your choice between pacifism and nihilism, the Palestinians will choose nihilism every time. Pacifism - i.e. accepting a demilitarized, mini-state with only partial sovereignty inside borders that will inevitably be smaller than those they rejected after Oslo - would be a humiliating capitulation. People from honor-based societies, such as the Arab (and to an underrecognized extent the Israeli) Levant, would often rather die than face humiliation.
3. Trump and Kushner aren't *at* zero, like Bibi, they *are* zero. Asking them to show even the basic cultural and historical awareness required to understand an essay like this is like asking a cat to play Beethoven. Trump waving a sword and fondling a crystal ball was the sum total of his diplomacy with Saudi Arabia. Trump doesn't want peace anyway. Peacemaking goes against his idea of "strong" leadership. Destruction is the name of Trump's game.
4
The “Peace Process” has been a charade all along.
One need to only look at the settlements map over the past 30 years to come to this conclusion.
2
As always insightful comments by Mr. Friedman and the message i crystal clear. The combination Hamas, Netanyahu, Jared and Trump will sadly make peace impossible.
1
Friedman underestimates the extent to which American foreign policy is under the control of Israeli right-wingers. In the Aug. 27 issue of the New Yorker magazine, Sheela Kolhatkar describes the ease with which American Jewish billionaires, Paul Singer and Sheldon Adelson, lured the US out of the agreement with Iran (the JCPOA), simply by paying billions to groups supporting this goal. And Donald Trump doesn't even require campaign donations to punish the Palestinians for not negotiating with the three orthodox Jews that Trump idiotically charged with making a peace deal with the Palestinians. Perhaps peace between Jews and Palestinians can be formulate in defiance of Trump's government, but the much safer bet is that right-wing Israelis will only offer peace on terms no Palestinian leader could accept.
1
The narrow interests of the parties involved have no more to do with the average person's life than the chance of being struck by lightning, aside from those employed by the MIC. We don't here about them much, though I do recall Friedman's many breathless pieces on the wonders of modern methods of warfare. Give it a rest. Made in America on the bombs and missiles that rain down is the driving force behind foreign policy not the untangling of feuds between the Abrahamic religions which should have been consigned to the ash heap along with the deities of the pagans.
2
Incredible photograph. Kudos to Mustafa Hassona.
1
It’s so cute that Friedman still talks about peace when it’s clear that anyone near the levers of power has no interest in that mundanity and no interest in the welfare of most of the people they govern. Wishing y’all a meaningful fast today.
Tom, I can't say I endorse your plan because of demographics. Today an ultra orthodox woman will average 7 children, an Isreali Arab woman a little over 3, and a Jewish woman who is not ultra, 2.5. This means in about 30 years, the ultra orthodox and the Arabs will form a majority. Unless a plan contains a recipe for dealing with this explosive situation, I cannot see how Israel can survive in its present form.
But in any case Tom, your plan is DOA because it assume a modicum of reason on the part of 3 groups, the Arabs, the government of Israel and the Trump administration. NONE of these exhibits any.
3
A demilitarized Palestinian state based on the "minimum Palestinian demands" that Friedman advocates would be nothing more than a Bantustan under the military and economic domination of Israel. Whether it's contiguous or not makes no difference, if Israeli troops have free reign in the Jordan Valley and control over the state's borders.
Settling for this wouldn't be a hard but right choice, it would be to condemn future generations to poverty and injustice - permanent second-class status in their own land. Peace would not be the result, only a new chapter of this slow smoldering conflict.
Better to fight for 1000 years for true independence or for a just binational state in all the land.
29
@DB
The Jewish–Roman wars had a dramatic impact on the Jews, turning them from a major population in the Eastern Mediterranean into a scattered and persecuted minority. The Jewish–Roman wars are often cited as a disaster to Jewish society.[8] The defeat of the Jewish revolts altered the Jewish population and enhanced the importance of Jewish diaspora, essentially moving the demographic center of Jews from Judea to Galilee and Babylon, with minor communities across the Mediterranean. Although having a sort of autonomy in the Galilee until the 4th century and later a limited success in establishing the short-lived Sasanian Jewish autonomy in Jerusalem in 614–617 CE, Jewish dominance in parts of the Southern Levant was regained only in the mid-20th century, with the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948 CE.
2
@DB I wonder if every devastating 1000 year conflict begins with some third party rich in principles and without skin-in-the-game saying "better to fight for 1000 years for true independence..."
2
@DB
Bibi would be cheered by your submission. If you wish to fight for 1,000 years he will not try to dissuade you. You only play into his hands.
Mr. Friedman is attempting to be reasonable, and strategic.
But no one in the Middle East wants to be either of those, because there is too much resentment to be stirred--and too much power and money to seize--by not being either.
If the majority of the peoples of that region really wanted to be at peace with their neighbors, there would have already been sufficient pressure brought to bear that better attempts would have been made. To be sure, there are some who want peace and would make these efforts, but they are a tiny minority, and they cannot get the backing for their initiatives. The overwhelming majority still think in terms of revenge, privilege, I-me-mine and We-us-ours.
That hasn't changed in the area in a thousand years, and unless there is a major religious and sociocultural reformation in Islam--and in Orthodox Judaism as well--it may not change in another thousand years.
2
The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is dead. It's been dead for a while. Ironically, the Arab-Israeli peace process is in full flower, with an informal alliance against Iran already in place and the peace among Israel, Jordan, and Egypt looking solid.
How can this be? The Palestinians no longer matter. Their Sunni Arab neighbors dismissed them as treacherous and unreliable: taken in by Tunisia, and Jordan and given employment in Kuwait, they turned on these nations. They destroyed Lebanon, almost overthrew the government of Jordan, and helped Saddam Hussein wreak havoc in Kuwait. They have brought Hamas to the border of Egypt. Our allies have concluded that the Palestinians can't be trusted.
Our Arab allies also know that there is no peace plan which the Palestinian leadership will accept. They've made too many big promises to their people and fear they will not survive agreeing to any peace deal. They are still promising to deliver a right of return, which will never happen. Some other state, probably Iran, will stir up their populace if the peace deal Friedman envisions is delivered. As with their support for Saddam in the Gulf War, the Palestinians have shown they will ally with whomever makes the most grandiose promises. These outsiders, not delivering on those promises have made no impact upon this thinking.
Before the 1967 War, the Arab League said Jordan was the responsible party for the Palestinians. A solution will have to come from a return to that.
4
"The past isn't dead. It's not even past." William Faulkner
It would be nice to see all parties clearly enunciate their visions of the (perfect) future. For example, are they the red (brown) cow types, seeking to bring about the apocalypse described in myth.
Once the vision of each party is clearly given (not a copy of a stop gap measure drawn on a napkin) all will be able to see if a compromise is possible. If not, other steps could be taken, kinda like WWII if the world would like the situation to change. Otherwise the world should stay out of it.
Might doesn't make right. Bullying on both sides will not lead to peace, and third parties working behind the scenes for their own goals is not helpful.
5
@Awake Who has the might and who is the bully in the Middle East? Only one side.
1
Can I make a another suggestion Mr Friedman?
Separate state and religion in the area like our founding father did and call the area the land of the semites which they all are.
Oh wait a minute it took Moses, Abraham and Moh. and the people in the area 4,000+ yrs. to pervert the situation by including religion in the state.
It will probably take another 4,000 yrs. to end it.
7
@Paul
"Separate state and religion in the area like our founding father did and call the area the land of the semites which they all are."
Paul, you cannot separate Jews from Judaism. Jews are not like Italians who hail from Italy; Jews are everywhere and what links these disparate people is Judaism.
Israel was created as a country for Jews no matter where they're from. Those who call for the secularization of Israel are really calling for its destruction.
That said, the ultra-Orthodox in Israel, who tend to be supported by the state because they are too holy to get a job, and will not serve in the military, do the country no good at all. It's secular Israelis who are its scientists, innovators, farmers, and protectors.
(As for condemning religion, well, you might as well try to persuade Muslim women to eschew the wearing of burkas on a 95-degree day on the streets of Brooklyn.)
2
@B.- Thank you for you reply. a few points.
1-I am not condemning religion. I am condemning the abuse of religion by integrating it into the state. As stated we can thank the founding fathers for doing it and Lincoln for saving it that we don't have the horror story that is going on in the Middle East.
2-My idea was meant more for America ie don't abuse religion by mixing it with the state. The Middle East is too far gone after 4,000 yrs. of abuse. It will take another 4,000 yrs. for Jews and Muslims to realize that are of the same ethnic background and state the abuse and call the area the land of the semites.
@Paul- To continue my analogy, if we did the same thing in America like we did in the Middle East, the south would be protestant, the middle north would be catholic, the west would be deist/atheists, and NYC would be Jewish and we would be killing ourselves for the last 150+ yrs. instead of realizing we are all American and living in the peace we have now.
2
re·al·po·li·tik
rāˈälpōliˌtēk/
noun
noun: realpolitik
a system of politics or principles based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations
1
such long wordy comments
it's all rather simple: the Palestinians won't compromise on their "right of return" and Israel won't commit demographic suicide
9
Sorry, not simple. simplistic. Netanyahu’s treatment of Palestinians has already had depressing impact on Israel's moral authority. It will also come to haunt Israel in the future. The fact that Israel is no worse than it's neighbors is damning with faint praise.
4
@mm - Isreal is already committing "demographic suicide." In about 30 years, the ultra orthodox and the Arabs will be a majority. If that is not a recipe for disaster, I don't know what is.
3
@mm
Let Jews compromise of their "right of return."
4
Netanyahu,Trump:No time to negotiate...
2
You have more insight than most. Please focus more on addressing ways to address the massive and obvious domestic political crisis. We can't deal with the Middle East until we restore sanity at home.
5
Mr. Friedaman
This is the best bet to solve this mess. The only change is that nothing will happened without active intervention of the Arab states. Only Egypt , Jordan and Saudi can move Abas to make a choice and present a reasonable demands, and they need to be motivated by the trump administration to do so.
Ariel
Palestinians should ignore this. Friedman basically gave the Israelis a license to shoot unarmed demonstrators in Gaza. The US has been Israel’s lawyer even under less bigoted Presidents and the idea that anything constructive for them could happen under Trump is a sick joke. They should decide whether they want a 2 state solution or one man one vote, but they shouldn’t have any illusions about people with Friedman’s views, let alone Trump.
16
What the United States did to its native population, Israel hopes to do to its native population. What reasonable person would side with either the United States or Israel? Of course there were bad actors on the side of the Native Americans as well as the Palestinians, but this is only to be expected from those who were ruthlessly driven from their land and given nothing in return. If humanity can't do better than this it has no hope for survival.
23
@Eric HansenTr y readaing some history-ruthlessly driven from their homes-by their Arab allies urging them to leave...refugees around the world have never been allowed to return nor have their descendants...perhaps Sephardi Jews should return and claim Arab land-
@Eric Hansen
Judaea Capta coins (also spelled Judea Capta) were a series of commemorative coins originally issued by the Roman Emperor Vespasian to celebrate the capture of Judaea and the destruction of the Jewish Second Temple by his son Titus in 70 AD during the First Jewish Revolt.
1
@elaine Among other books, I read "My Promised Land" by Ari Shavit. It seemed well researched and comprehensive. I would recommend it.
When was the Middle East a peaceful region of the world during at least the last 2,500 years? Nobody can revers the course of history.
@Tuvw Xyz What an easy way to wash one's hands!
The equitable and realistic solution has always been self-determination for all of the residents, including all the former residents and their descendents who have been evicted from their homes. This solution is realistic because Israel, despite many in its population who would like to try, Israel simply can't kill 4 million people.
For domestic and cynical political reasons, the US, shamefully, has never supported self-determination for the indigenous people of Palestine and has blocked every attempt to hold Israel to account for its brutal and arrogant violations of international law.
Trump, always drawn to a simplistic solution like a moth to flame, thinks he can win something or other by humiliating the people he detests and grossly empowering the people he is rooting for.
The big question is how to get to the equitable and the realistic solution, which is self-determination. A focused, disciplined consumer boycott of Israel is what this situation calls for. That, and American journalists recovering their integrity and actually, honestly covering the Eurocentric settler colony that Britain and the US have imposed on Palestine.
27
The equitable and realistic solution has always been self-determination for all of the residents, including all the former residents and their descendents who have been evicted from their homes. This solution is realistic because Israel, despite many in its population who would like to try, Israel simply can't kill 4 million people.
For domestic and cynical political reasons, the US, shamefully, has never supported self-determination for the indigenous people of Palestine and has blocked every attempt to hold Israel to account for its arrogant violations of international law.
Trump, always drawn to a simplistic solution like a moth to flame, thinks he can win something or other by humiliating the people he detests and grossly empowering the people he is rooting for.
The big question is how to get to the equitable and the realistic solution, which is self-determination. A focused, disciplined consumer boycott of Israel is what this situation calls for. That, and American journalists recovering their integrity and actually, honestly covering the Eurocentric settler colony that Britain and the US have imposed on Palestine.
9
The equitable and realistic solution in Palestine has always been self-determination for all of the residents, including all the former residents and their descendents who have been evicted from their homes. This solution is realistic because Israel, despite many in its population who would like to try, Israel simply can't kill 4 million people.
For domestic and cynical political reasons, the US, shamefully, has never supported self-determination for the indigenous people of Palestine and has blocked every attempt to hold Israel to account for its arrogant violations if international law.
Trump, always drawn to a simplistic solution like a moth to flame, thinks he can win something or other by humiliating the people he detests and grossly empowering the people he is rooting for.
The big question is how to get to the equitable and the realistic solution, which is self-determination. A focused, disciplined consumer boycott of Israel is what this situation calls for. That, and American journalists recovering their integrity and actually, honestly covering the Eurocentric settler colony that Britain and the US have imposed on Palestine.
4
Thomas Friedman should take his own advice.
Many years ago, Mr. Friedman said of the notorious Yasser Arafat that he (Friedman) pays no attention to anything Arafat says in English. Because Arafat would say one thing in English, to a Western audience, and a very different thing in Arabic, to his followers. Mr. Friedman believes the Arabic, as well he should.
Mr. Friedman, if you listen to the Arabic, nothing has changed since the famous "Three No's" of the Khartoum Resolution, September, 1967:
- No peace with Israel,
- No recognition of Israel,
- no negotiations with Israel.
Now, it is true that we have seen negotiations, even a peace treaty. But, again, if you listen to the Arabic, the Arabs appeal to the doctrine of the "Treaty of Hudaybiyyah", which establishes the principle of tactical treaties, or treaties of convenience, which may be broken whenever it is to the advantage of the Muslims.
Perhaps it sounds like I am criticizing the Arabs. In fact, I admire their remarkable constancy which we would do well to emulate. The Arabs want to destroy Israel. They will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to achieve their aim. Any other view of Arab intentions is a pitiful self-deception.
Peace was never possible, for the simple reason that the Arabs do not want it. They want to destroy Israel.
17
@Haim
So Hiam this could be solved if only Israel and Palestine could be civil. To hold Palestine as the only entity at fault, Israel only perpetuates the situation. Israel had the world behind them since its inception. Israel has had to defend itself from the people it ejected because of its inception. We as a people can understand that when you are forced from your home you are going to be upset, no? If only Israels can get beyond there victimhood we may be able to precede. Whenever someone criticizes the Israeli government they are labeled anti semite why? There are people who believe it is the worlds fault that the holocaust happened, really! In all disputes there is always a need for someone to take a higher road usually that would have to come from the one who has the upper hand [ Israel ]. You can not bomb a city because someone killed an Israeli. That would be the same as tacking out a neighborhood because a cop got killed. You need proportion. The idea that this kind of reaction will suppress the Palestinians, as has been proven will not work, will only embolden them. Both sides are to blame it will take the side with the most foresight to end it.
Go ahead call me an anti semite. I just speak the truth from what i have seen in the past 50 years.
Israel get over yourself!! you used to be a Democracy.
1
Tom, sounds like a plan---but if you have read Woodward's book, Fear, Trump is absolutely incapable--both emotionally and intellectually---of orchestrating strategies that involve more than showing up for a photo opt and signing a paper of some sort---even this strategy really only involves one step--he knows who he is shaking hands with, but has no idea what he is signing.
7
Dr. Tom, yes, the 40th anniversary of the Camp David Accords were the "high water mark" (n.b. floods in NC today) in Middle East peacemaking, but the Arab-Israeli Peace Treaty was not signed until 24 March, 1979, 6 months later, in front of the White House portico on the North Lawn. We, who had the privilege of witnessing the treaty-signing during President Jimmy Carter's administration, were hopeful 40 years ago that the treaty signing would mean peace in our time in the Middle East. Hopes were dashed for 40 years. Under neo-zionists, and Netanyahu's far too long hegemony over Israel today, our hopes have been smashed. Your proposal -- the creation of a Palestinian state side by side, contiguous with Israel, and a demilitarization of Jerusalem, ancient home to three religions -- is sane, sound and intelligent. Anwar Sadat, Egypt's president in 1970 and Menachem Begin, Israel's prime minister at that time, were the unwitting forefathers of a two-state solution. Both Middle Eastern leaders are now spinning in their graves as Trump and his people strangle Israel. Peace in our time? Maybe there will be a solution to the Israeli problem before Megiddo (Armageddon), but no one's taking bets for some sort of Arab sovereignty of East Jerusalem these days. Face it, Netanyahu and the P.A. are locked in an existential totentanz from which there is no exit.
2
The United States cannot be considered an honest broker. Since 1948 U.S. political reality has resulted in the U.S. siding with Israel on most issues. It is time for all Americans to recognize this. Since the Trump administration is eliminating financial aid for Palestine, it should stop supporting Israel as well. Faced with this reality, both sides are more likely to come to some agreement.
21
@Robert Pryor- Really? George Bush's oil tycoon teams favored Israel? Jimmy Carter that Arafat lover favored Israel? read some history
1
@elaine
Jimmy Carter did more for Israel than you ever did.
@elaine I do read history-especially that regarding the Israel lobby. $3 billion per year, for 50 years equals $150 billion.
Mr. Friedman, your heart is in the right place. Your column, on a whole, is ridiculous. As usual, it requires that the Palestinians continue to make concessions and compromises when all that they have made since Camp David are concessions and compromises - and gotten absolutely nothing for it in return, except for more illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. Moreover, if by now it is not clear to you that Netanyahu's endgame is doing everything he can to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state and to hold on to every inch of Jerusalem, then you simply have not been paying attention. Netanyahu even admitted as much in 2000, when he took personal credit for destroying Oslo. The idea that the Trump administration is going to suggest anything like a contiguous state or compromise on Jerusalem also seems incredibly unlikely. Based on how Trump "negotiates" with his allies, he takes the position that weak parties must accept whatever is given to them, without complaint. His treatment of the Palestinians so far - as beggars who can be slapped down for not being sufficiently "grateful" to him for his magnanimity -says everything about the man. As for Hamas, it is has simply proven to be a wonderful excuse for Israel to use to hide its intransigence. But Israel has had a negotiating partner to work with for decades - the PA -and all it has done is take without giving anything. Israel is the problem here, all the way down the line. It needs to be sanctioned.
59
@Shaun Narine -- Israel made no concessions?? What nonsense!
Israel gave up Gaza, withdrew from much of the West Bank, and offered the Arabs over 90% of the West Bank for an Arab "second state." It also withdrew from Lebanon after defeating the PLO. That's nothing? And what did the Israelis get in return? Rocket and mortar fire, and firebombs from Gaza znd a growing Hezbolla treat on the Lebanese border.
But Shaun's brazen denials of historical reality provide a good illustration of why efforts to negotiate a realistic two-state solution with the Arabs is pointless as long as they continue on their present course. Especially so if you listen to what they say in Arabic, as opposed to their English language propaganda.
1
A different thought for consideration. Might it not be conceivable that Arabs (Israeli Arabs and Palestinians) accept Hamas [italicized] as cover (to use Thomas Friedman's word) for their toleration of the continuation of living under Israeli sovereignty? Might it not be it conceivable that so many Arabs have not changed the governing entity in Gaza because its refusal to negotiate with Israel represents their wishes that the status quo not be changed because it is actually acceptable to them in important ways?
1
Putting Kushner in charge of middle east Peace was a disastrous mistake. Kushner has questionable security clearance issues in addition to no experience whatsoever in the Diplomacey, negotiations or even the slightest skills of government. The Palestinians were doomed the day Kushner was appointed. Very sad.
20
@Philip W The palestinians were at a disadvantage long before. Someone like Kushner does not make a difference on anything.
This is one of the most rational analyses I have read on the subject in a long time. I particularly like the idea of finding the minimum common denominator on the side of the Palestinians and Arab nations, and settling that as a starting point prior to engaging Israel, and focusing on a contiguous piece of land as a key element.
I don’t know if the Middle East is in a post-rational reality now, and totally beyond reach of such thinking. Neither side should be allowed to hide behind the bankrupt shield of “but they are trying to kill us, so anything we do in return is justified” - but right now it seems like that’s all there is.
The only delegitimizes leaders on both sides, but - like the asymmetric power in the relationship - it ultimately will serve to primarily undermine the moral standing of Israel most of all.
Sadly the Trump administration - as far as it is making coherent policy - has neither the will nor capacity to start dealing with a complex situation like this, hence the simplistic gestures that please parts of the domestic base. Only the US has been able to knock heads together and - partly - bridge the divides with the investment of a lot diplomatic capital. Realistically we can only tamper down the worst flames until there is a change of guard.
3
I thought Jared was going to solve everything and create peace in the Middle East?
That is when he's not busy kicking people out of
their apartments in New York and engaging in other phony real estate " deals."
4
For 30 years, since his book "From Beirut to Jerusalem" i am following Mr. Friedman's articles on the Middle East in the NY Times. His familiarity with the area, his connections with leaders and the common person, his analysis are better, in my opinion, then any other outside reporter. But Mr. Friedman is a very opinionated reporter as well and after analyzing a developing situation in the Middle East (especially a situations on the Arab-Israeli conflict) he comes with his conclusions. While his analysis gives the reader a clear and precise picture of the developing situation his opinionated conclusion are almost always wrong. It is not be a problem when a journalist's conclusions are wrong, it happens but Mr. Friedman's conclusions are taken seriously by decision makers in the USA, Israel and many Arab leaders, he is a very respected journalist. The only lesson we can learn from the 40th anniversary of the Camp David accords, Oslo Accord and actually from 1948 is that the Palestinian leaders (who exactly are their leaders) do not really accept a Jewish state in the area and now, when their leadership is so divided a decision making is not possible. President Trump actually offers them a fair solution and they better consider it or, like the Kurdish people they will finish as people spread among 5 or 6 nations without the necessary power to achieve a statehood.
2
@Shlomo Greenberg
don't worry about the palestinians, shlomo. like the kurds, they have been around a loooong time - and will wait! let's see how the future haredi state will handle things in the future...
Mr. Friedman fails to call out and engage the nation which originally failed the Palestinians and reneged on yet another agreement or, if you wish, Declaration.
The British.
Britain created this intractable situation by refusing to honor the conditions Balfour set forth in his now infamous declaration. Let the Brits assist in solving the problem they helped create by occupying, financing and shedding their own militaries blood in the West Bank.
The United States has seemingly sided with the Israelis; this is a mistake. We cannot, and should not take one countries claim of sovereignty over another without an Arab consensus.
This was originally a British problem, and their cowardly untenable solution should be their problem to solve.
And not the United States.
3
Through its unqualified support of increasingly repressive Likud governments, the United States can no longer lead any meaningful negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The 'fateful moment' Friedman mentions here passed long ago.
23
@suidas
There are no meaningful negotiations, something that has nothing to do with Trump. The PLO rejected the best peace deal they will ever see 18 years ago, demonstrating that they either don't want to resolve this or don't have the capacity to do so. No meaningful negotiations have occurred since, and it's hard to believe there'd be any point to them. It's also hard to believe that anyone can still be ignorant of these facts.
2
Israel has only itself to blame for this dilemma. It has watched itself - like a slow motion train crash - move towards this position. It - not the Palestinians - had all the resources, support, infrastructure and political networks to avoid this but has instead given way to its infantile ideology of exceptionalism. Now we'll get a better look at the price to be paid for its blindness to its own greed and selfishness.
26
@Jacques
The Jewish–Roman wars include the following:
First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE) — also called the First Jewish Revolt or the Great Jewish Revolt, spanning from the 66 CE insurrection, through the 67 CE fall of the Galilee, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple and institution of the Fiscus Judaicus in 70 CE, and finally the fall of Masada in 73 CE.
Kitos War (115–117 CE) — known as the "Rebellion of the Exile" and sometimes called the Second Jewish–Roman War.
Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) — also called the Second Jewish–Roman War (when Kitos War is not counted), or the Third (when the Kitos War is counted)
1
"Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, should go to America’s four key Arab allies — Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — and propose that they collectively say 'yes' ” etc.
Etc., Tom, because that's where I stopped. This is a fantasy. That was proved beyond doubt 18 years ago, and if there were still any confusion, by what happened in Gaza in and after 2005. The PLO can't make peace because it doesn't have the political maturity to manage it. I think you ought to base your analysis on that demonstrated fact, not on any pious wishes.
2
It's broken because the Israeli government wanted it broken, so they could steal more land, and the Republicans came to power and greed, yes, let's keep it broken because we have much to gain from this situation. Friedman sponsored the model kitchen fantasy of the Iraq War - we'll just move in, set up our american way of life and the rest will follow naturally. Mass murder of innocents was no problem for him then. Face it, the man knows nothing about peace and probably doesn't want it anymore than the Israeli Government.
18
78% of Palestinians feel their leadership is hobbled by corruption. I would guess the statistics would be about the same for American and Israeli citizens.
Agreed this situation has gone from bad to worse and is indeed a tragedy. But just look at the difference in character between Carter, Begin and Sadat and Trump, Netanyahu and Abbas. Therein lies the problem and nothing will ever change until these leaders change.
Cutting the Palestinian funding off should correspond with turning off the American tap to Israel, too. That would actually get Netanyahu's attention. But who could expect Jared to ever do that?
It just feels so incredibly true that America has become a puppet state of Israel. Honestly, we pay them billions of dollars a year and provide them our top military hardware and share our intelligence with them and what do we get in return? America spends its precious blood and treasure defeating ISIS. Israel does nothing. America spends its blood and treasure in Syria. Israel does standoff strikes with the F-35's we just gave them. America spent years devising and implementing a plan which was working perfectly to ensure Iran did not gain nuclear weapons. Israel intervened in American politics to destroy this plan.
I am afraid there will come a day very, very soon when America finally realizes that Israel may be more trouble than it is worth. Netanyahu in all of his egomaniacal glory doesn't realize, in the end, the damage he is causing.
39
Thanks a lot mr. Friedman, but Bibi Netanyahu probably does not want a solid and honest solution for his difficulties in the Westbank and Gaza, he has time on his side in his opinion. He speculates on a dispirited Palestinian population to emigrate to where ever.
14
You described what the Israelis should offer, but not what the Palestinians would be expected to offer in return. Is it a renunciation of all further territorial claims, i.e., the two states are “Israel-not-Palestine” and “Palestine-not-Israel?” Or are the two states “Palestine” and “Israeli occupied Palestine, with whom we have a temporary truce”? I’ve never seen any suggestion that the Palestinians would be open to the former under any circumstances, but I’d be delighted to be wrong.
4
Expecting Trump to do what is best for the U.S. is as realistic as expecting Bibi to do what is best for Israel. Both are slaves to their egos and thirst for money, both of which far exceed any desire for what is best for their countries. Europe after WWII and Yugoslavia post massacres in the early 1990's are examples of the people ready for an alternative to slaughter and forcing a change on their leaders. Perhaps that moment is coming for the Palestinians and Israelis, with the Arab nations ready to endorse an end to the conflict for their own survival. Israeli public opinion has turned on a dime either when real peace is possible or in response to terror. The yearning for a normal life has long been a factor in Palestinian public opinion. Maybe awful leadership all around is the catalyst needed for an alternative.
2
Building condos and golf courses are going to be in style for a long time to come. The Israelis, both secular parties and religious parties, are not about to give up Jerusalem after it was offered by Olmert in the past and the idea was rejected by the Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority has no writ in Gaza, therefore what happens in Gaza stays in Gaza. Netanyahu has no plan because he doesn't need a plan and Mahmoud Abbas must think he is going to live forever. There is no solution and there never will be, at least, in my grandchildren's grandchildren's lifetime.
4
From my, granted limited, vantage point, the situation has been and remains intractable specifically because all parties to it are thoroughly locked in to zero-sum thinking. As such, it can only lead to continued death and destruction until one party is no more. Statesmanship is hard to come by when there are no statesmen to be found. Tell me again, how do you spell Armageddon?
7
Unfortunately, the idea that peace is possible in the Middle East depends on the naive view that the parties involved actually want peace. If they did, it would have happened by this time.
As President Trump well knows, there is nothing like a common enemy to unite a country and to shield a government from having to deal with internal problems. All the countries in the Middle East know this as well. All the nations in the Middle East, including Israel, need the Palestinians to provide them with a source of unity and insulation from their internal problems.
Peace will not happen because none of the nations involved can afford it. It was never possible, and certainly isn't now.
5
This is a Middle Eastern problem, created and solvable, if at all, only by Middle Easterners. The less US involvement the better. We are not a Middle Eastern or Far Eastern nation. Our meddling usually only serves to make bad problems worse. That has been my observation during a long life.
5
@Penseur This may be primarily a Middle Eastern problem, but it has its roots in decisions made almost 100 years ago. Check wikipedia for "Sykes-Picot treaty" and "Balfour Declaration" for starters.
8
@Jeffrey Davis: Those are perfect examples of why and how meddling in Middle Eastern affairs by either European countries or the US --their successor in imperialistic folly -- typically leads to bloodshed and chaos.
@Jeffrey Davis
Yes, but all of those people are dead. The living are there now, and what will happen?
Compared to the everyday lives of Israelis and Americans, the West Bank Palestinians are leading a meager existance. Compared to the Arabs in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq, they are doing better than any of them.
"The authority will also have to agree that its state will be demilitarized.)"
1) Would you trust the PA to sustain that agreement for long?
It did not work out in Gaza. Why would it be any different with the PA?
2)The PA has no history of governing an independent state, no infrastructure to support themselves and its residents have little faith in their integrity.
3)There has never been an independent political entity with that name in all of world history.
Facts do matter.
9
@Robert Arnow
1) The PA security forces work hand in glove with the Israeli military to secure the West Bank. That agreement has been sustained. There is no reason to believe that the PA would not continue to work with the Israeli military after a 2 state solution occurs.
2) Before 1948 the Zionists had no history of an independent state either. The atheists from Poland and Russia who founded Israel had no previous experience running a state and had to build all its infrastructure after independence.
3) That statement would apply to literally every former colonized country in the world. There was no "India" before India. There was no "Nigeria" before there was Nigeria. And frankly there was no "Israel" until there was Israel. The ancient kingdoms of the Hebrews have about as much relation to the modern country of Israel as Babylon does to Iraq.
17
@Joe
"And frankly there was no 'Israel' until there was Israel. " Wrong, again.
The Arch of Titus (Italian: Arco di Tito; Latin: Arcus Titi) is a 1st-century AD honorific arch,[1] located on the Via Sacra, Rome, just to the south-east of the Roman Forum. It was constructed in c. AD 82 by the Emperor Domitian shortly after the death of his older brother Titus to commemorate Titus's victories, including the Siege of Jerusalem (AD 70).
The south panel depicts the spoils taken from the Temple in Jerusalem. The golden candelabrum or Menorah is the main focus and is carved in deep relief.
(source:Wikipedia)
@Joe
1)"Before 1948 the Zionists had no history of an independent state either."
2)"The ancient kingdoms of the Hebrews.."
What?
Which is it, none or both?
You've contradicted yourself. Don't you see it?
Where do you think a word that even you wrote, "Zionists", comes from? (hint: Zion)
Look it up(try it)
What Mr. Friedman misses is the most important point. Forty years have passed since Oslo. The Israelis and the Palestinians have been making their plans and life has happened. The Israeli population has grown and has found places to live -- settlements on the West Bank. The Palestinian population chose pride and intifada over peace and building a nation on the West Bank.
Forty years ago, Oslo offered a solution. Today, Oslo is irrelevant. The settlements are now home to a generation of Israelis. The settlements cannot be moved. Israelis will not accept Palestinian sovereignty over the settlements. Occupation and settlement is a policy and process that serves Israel's desire to incorporate the West Bank into Israel.
The United States has supported Israel's policy of occupation and settlement. It is true that the US has occasionally criticized West Bank settlements, but the US has not forced Israel to make the tough choice -- US support or settlements -- for forty years. With a generation of Israelis now living in West Bank settlements, US cannot force Israelis to abandon the settlements.
The future is tragedy, for the Palestinians, Israel and the US. Palestinians will be forced to choose between migration and living under apartheid. China, Russia and Europe will join together to challenge US support for Israel and the US will abandon Israel.
8
@OldBoatMan. Twenty four years since Oslo, forty years since Camp David.
1
The settlements are illegal and can move!
@OldBoatMan
the israelis 'found places to live'?
what a way to describe the land grab by which palestinian property has been gobbled up by israeli settlements...
1
We have been at one long fateful moment in the Middle East for a couple of generations, since 1967 when something then "temporary" went unresolved.
"Rather than a breakthrough, Israelis and Palestinians seem to be inching closer and closer to a total breakdown."
There has been a total breakdown that whole time. NO progress has been made with the Palestinians. The supposed progress was things like Oslo, that failed to produce anything. It was smoke and mirrors.
"Hamas is pursuing a strategy of human sacrifice in Gaza — throwing wave after wave of protesters against the Israeli border fence to die"
To die? Passive tense? Nobody is killing them? The British would have loved such coverage of Ghandi's protests. They didn't dare just shoot them down.
"Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel has been a brilliant strategist in confronting Iran"
He has gotten nowhere with Iran. He opposes everything that has happened.
If there is brilliance in that, it is the brilliance of misdirection. We all talk about Iran, while he does in the Palestinians without much outside notice.
Friedman even notices this, when he writes, "Because the truth is, Bibi has been at zero on the question of a Palestinian state and at zero on the question of Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem. Bibi has managed to keep his obstinacy obscured."
"Making progress toward peace requires telling everyone the truth"
Except Israel. And they have everything worth having and all the power. So bash Palestinians.
48
Thomas Friedman has outlined a good plan to bring some sense to the senseless standoff between Israel and the Palestinians.
Calling it a “peace plan” is premature. The term “accommodation plan” is probably more accurate, but that would be good enough for now.
The problem is that, while an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews and Palestinians and Arabs, would agree to the Friedman plan, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu would not implement it.
Trump and Netanyahu share one trait above all others: each man is interested only in what he perceives to be in his own best interest.
It is in the best interest of Netanyahu, in his mind, to give the appearance of moving forward toward a solution, but to remain motionless.
Donald Trump would like a milestone achievement in headlines around the world, but it would need to last for only six years. The Trump solution could then fall apart under his successor, if that person is anyone other than Ivanka or Don, Jr.
Donald Trump will be perfectly happy riding in his golf cart, as long as he remains a celebrity, is applauded wherever he goes and grows much richer with every passing day.
5
The goal in Israel is to create a permanent nationalist government with a Jewish majority and little democratic input from anyone else. This goal seems to be within working reach.
For the US, the powerful pro-Israel lobbies control the incremental foreign policy across the board wherever they think an Israeli interest is served. The national interest of the US is not seen as something that could be less than completely congruent with their perception of Israel's interest.
The American public will remain in support of the preeminence of Israel in Middle East policy while supporting disengagement and isolationism on much else everywhere else.
A highly focused preoccupation with Israel means less focus on other places and concerns.
34
"Without some dramatic advance, there is a real chance that whatever Palestinian governance exists will crumble, and Israel will have to take full responsibility for the health, education and welfare of the 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank."
When I read the above in the beginning of this text, I knew where we were headed "poor put-upon Israel." Some how we have forgotten that the continued theft of West Bank land and aggression have gotten us to this point. And to thank that Israel is not already dictating the lives of Palestinians is to not understand the real situation. They control all borders, telecommunications, shipping, and individual movement. Not sure what is left.
37
@ken Huls Your analysis is flawed on two fronts - first Israel is in Judea & Samaria because the Jordanians lost the Six Day War after they attacked Israel - second - The Palestinians have never wanted to settle the conflict unless the result would be an indefensible Israel. It takes two to tango & in this case you have a Western thinking democracy acknowledging Palestinian rights in all of what was Palestine (think almost 2 million Arab citizens within the "green line"} & an Eastern thinking totalitarian regime not acknowledging any Jewish rights in Hebron, East Jerusalem, etc. while preaching hatred against Jewish in their UNRWA sponsored schools - that is why there has been no Palestinian State!
2
Unfortunately, Kushner is handling it and he has not the perspective on the situation as does Friedman.
Netanyahu is a big problem for the U.S. but he’s too clever with Trump and the right wing of the Republicans in government. The strategy he is seeming to pursue is driving the Palestinians out into other Arab countries and to destroy the threat posed by Iran with the U.S. doing the big military operations and paying for it. If he succeeds, it is unlikely that Israel will need the U.S. to protect it for much longer.
Only a person too inexperienced in foreign affairs and ignorant of history would fail to see the dangers and how recalcitrant the contending parties are in this region but Trump and Kushner are such persons. They are being played and it’s going to blow up with a lot more force than they can imagine.
20
Mr,Friedman write that a "US plan" should include "a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank" and "some form of sovereignty" on Jerusalem Est. And that the "authority will have to agree that its sate will be demilitarized." Remember Transkei? That was a demilitarized Black state set up by South Africa under the apartheid regime. The international community saw it for what it was a Bantoustan and refused to recognise it as an independent state.
A better solution could be one secular state, not a Jewish state, not a Muslim state, but a state in which every citizens will be equal.
49
@Wilbray Thiffault
‘Single state’ is code for the destruction of Israel, to be replaced by a second Muslim-majority State (Jordan being the first) upon land indigenous to the Jews, aka former Palestine.
No. Israel is the one and only Jewish-majority state in the world and shall remain so...where Jews may excercise their right to self-determination, nationhood, and sanctuary upon their own ancestral ground.
The days of Arab conquest and dhimmitude in this tiny corner of the Levant are over, and they’re not coming back. It’s time that Israel’s hostile neighbors come to terms with that fact.
Of all the proposed solutions go to the conflict, a single secular democracy where everyone lives together in peace and brotherly love is the least plausible since both sides reject it. The Jews want a Jewish homeland. That is the essence of Zionism. The Arabs, who have not a established a tolerant secular democracy anywhere in the Arab world (Syria, Gaza, Iraq, Libya,...) detest the Jews and want them dead or driven out.
2
And what’s your stake in all of this? Who are you to propose solutions to a conflict you do not understand and for which there are no consequences to you!
Forget it -- too complex; not emotionally appealing. It's bound to fail.
The US should dictate a Middle East structure, and implement it by force if necessary. I'm sure it would save lives in the long run (look at Syria in contrast!). Of course the structure dictated would come out of intense work center in the UN.
But that solution would have to be widely appealing to the people (the PEOPLE) on all sides. Hopefully it would be appealing to the states of the world order also.
Getting rid of ALL the leaders is a good start. We shouldn't bother even listening to most of those people. (with a very few exceptions). I'd exclude the locals from the process of developing the structure.
3
@Publicus look at irak in contrast to your contrast. and the usa did intervene in syria
Mr. Friedman suggests a solution driven largely by moral imperatives. But like any nation Israel acts amorally on the international stage and is more than ever empowerd to do so. This because Palestinians now have little or no geopolitical leverage thanks to: 1) American policy that strongly supports the most right wing elements in Israel, 2) realities in the Middle East that have the Saudis and others Arab states more concerned with Iran’s growing influence in the region than the plight of the Palestinians. So one most ask why would the Israelis accede to even a minimum set of demands from the Palestinians? Might they simply choose to keep them “contained” indefinitely and in doing so crush their national aspirations?
71
The Palestinians are not negotiating with Israel because the Israelis are still building and expanding their West Bank settlements and because Israel, by virtue of its unreasonable demands on Fatah, really has no interest in negotiating ("End all the violence, then shave off your beards, and then convert to Judaism"). In the meantime, our own feckless leader treats the Palestinians as disrespectfully as he does the rest of the world's Muslim community, placing his callow son-in-law in charge of making the peace and providing him with a retinue composed entirely of Jewish Americans. Didn't The Donald tell us that a peace treaty in Israel/Palestine would be "perhaps the easiest deal" on his agenda? Anyone who actually thinks a kumbaya outcome over there is likely during the course of this administration must be expecting Moses and Mohammed to turn up to tell their respective followers to cut out the hostilities and behave like human beings.
175
40 years? Try 1,000. The peoples of the Middle East have been fighting over one grievance or another for 1,000 years. They are in love with violence and retribution. Many, Many nations and groups have tried to forge a peace, all have failed. We have been at war continuously in the Middle East for over a decade and the only thing we have accomplished is to get a whole bunch of people killed. No new nations, no understanding, just more fighting and death.
The only people who can decide the fate of the Middle East are the people who live there, and we should let them do it. Bring our money, our machines, and our people home. Cut off everyone in the Middle East, yes that includes Israel. This is not a simplistic solution, in fact it is not a solution at all. It is walking away. Let the peoples of the Middle East enjoy the full, awful, consequences of their actions. I expect that others will move in to fill the so called void, when we leave, let them. I also expect there will be a multi-sided war, that could well go nuclear, and I expect that one or more countries in that region will cease to exist, along with a million or more people. It took Europe two world wars and 10+ million dead to learn there lesson, hopefully the Middle East will not have to go that far, but I wouldn't put any money on that bet.
22
@Bruce1253 Bruce, one of the biggest misunderstandings of this conflict is that it somehow dates back to the ancient past. It absolutely does not. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is largely a 20th century, nationalist conflict between two peoples. It does not even have to be understood in religious terms. It is about two people who want the same piece of land. In this case, the Zionist settlers came and occupied land that was already occupied by another people. That is, in a nutshell, what the conflict is about: the displaced people fighting back, refusing to accept their displacement (and certainly not the "justice" of it) and being beaten down. In simple moral terms, the Israeli case is extremely weak, but it is best understood as a classic case of European colonialism. Historically, Muslims and Jews (and don't forget that about 15-20% of Palestinians are Christian) have gotten along far better than European Jews and Christians. Today, the tension between Muslims and Jews is almost entirely attributable to Israeli violence against Palestinians.
15
@Shaun Narineyou conveniently omit the important detail that the original Zionist settlers legally bought the land they “occupied “ from its rightful owners (largely absentee Ottoman landholders). Arabs responded with violence against these immigrants which escalated into tit for tat violence and finally out and out war in 1948. to say the Zionists occupied the land, with all its dark insinuations would be like claiming you “occupied” your home the day you bought it.
@rob
Sorry to burst your bubble rob but the original Zionist settlers only "purchased" 6% of the land in Palestine. The 1948 partition plan would have awarded them 56% of the land in Palestine. So no. That extra 50% they did not purchase. They stole.
Time for some tough truth: the Middle East peace process is dead, it is six feet under, it is pushing up daisies, it is no more.
In retrospect, it was always a carrot at the end of stick that was going to be forever out of reach. Bill Clinton, much to his credit, made a serious lurch for the carrot at Taba and again at Camp David, but Arafat threw down his all purpose right of return trump card and walked. The fact is, Palestinians will never accept anything less than the destruction of the state of Israel as a Jewish state, and no Israeli government, Labor, Likud, whatever, is ever going to accept that. For a while, chasing the carrot was a salutary illusion, but after Clinton's efforts, it is simply delusional. In his own bumbling and bombastic way, Trump is actually starting to make moves for a post-delusion Middle East world. Moving our embassy to Jerusalem makes prefect sense since it is the capital of Israel. If there's no peace process then there's nothing to exchange that move for. It's just the right thing to do. Cutting aid to the Palestinians makes perfect sense since they declare themselves to be our enemies so why should we support them to the tune of millions of dollars a year? Finally, it's easy for those in their Manhatten offices to pontificate on what Israel should do about the West Bank and Gaza, but I have more confidence in the Israeli people and their elected representatives to know the situation and risks and to do what is in their own best interest.
38
@J
i'd like to see how cocky the israelis would be if US aid was cut off. i hope i live to see the day that americans don't have to subsidize every man, woman and child in israel to the tune of millions of dollars!
2
Israel has a functioning government with for the most part a contiguous territory. The Palestinians for internal and external reasons do not have a functional government and separated territories.
As time goes by Israel will go a bit stronger and the Palestinians a bit weaker and Israel will eventually be in direct control of a plurality the inhabitants of greater Israel.
How Israel deals with this situation will determine the fate of the Semites, Jews and Palestinians in the land they both occupy.
There is very little that external forces can or should do to influence the outcome.
I wish them both well.
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Et tu Friedman? You are a thoughtful guy if given to simplistic arguments, but now you are leaning toward stand up comedy.
Here in a nutshell, is what a peace talk between I and P is about:
P to I: I, we want you (all) gone. Dead, buried, all signs you ever existed bulldozed and removed. From all of Israel. Please do so. Now. Thank you. Much obliged.
I to P: Er . . . P, thank you for sharing, but no. I am afraid we cannot do that.
P to world: See? These guys have no interest in a peace deal. They bad. We ask them nice, and they don't oblige.
The world to I: what on earth do you mean you wont compromise for peace?
Rinse, lather, repeat.
This would be comic, were it not so tragic.
With the wealth of evidence available, one must be unhinged from reality to expect Israel to work toward peace. Who would?
One of the principle reasons I support Bibi is because he seems to understand better than others - how to deal with Palestine.
If Palestine (Arabs, Islamic world) wants peace, here is a starting step: embrace non-violence, throw away your arms. You may want to unite, negotiate peace with each other (which truly means "don't ask others to die"), and show us you are a religion and people of peace.
I ask because no one in history has ever seen any evidence of this - anywhere. Like, ever.
But, I will remain optimistic. If and when we see you do that, we'll call you; don't call us.
Meanwhile, I will trust in god and the iron dome.
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@Kalidan You say that the Palestinians want Israelis to be dead, gone and bulldozed. That is a very serious threat. Palestinians have been perfecting the art of throwing rocks for years. Some are even able to hide small knives in their clothing. The hundreds of nuclear warheads that Israel has stockpiled since the 1960s seem utterly powerless to stop them. I suppose Israel has no choice but to continue the military occupation of the West Bank for another 50 years.
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@Kalidan you nailed it!
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@Kalidan - It is amusing to read your dialog with "P" and "I" interchanged.
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"Bibi is well on his way to going down in history as the Israeli prime minister who won every debate and lost Israel as a Jewish democracy."
Is this supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?
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Get real Mr Friedman......the Likud party charter FORBIDS the idea of a Palestinian state. Kushner,Trumps appointed "peacemaker" is an avowed Zionist who supports,both in principle and financially,Jewish settlements on the last remaining ,postage stamp size,patch of Palestinian land........and has now managed to destroy critical funding of UN refugee assistance.....for Palestine.
The two state solution was dead and buried long ago.A Democratic Jewish state for ALL is the only remaining solution....improbable as it ,now seems.If Israelis with the Jewish diaspora,wish to have a Democratic Israel....they could easily accomplish that goal.......but first,both the Israelis and Palestinians must reject their current ,fanatic, exceptional nationalism and their respective leaders.......worrying that Israel may not maintain a Jewish majority in the future ......is the same as Americans worrying that white people will become a minority in the US.
We know from history that religion and nationalism.......have caused
most of the worlds wars,deaths ,and suffering...........the Middle East is not an exeption in this regard .
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@ak bronisas
Great - start with an iron clad treaty first avowing israel's right to exist
It won't go one inch farther
this poster has demonstrated an odd view of nationalism.
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Trump not known as a serious thinker or wed to any principle remains incapable of forging peace generally; rendering no hope for the Palestinians. Bibi has a death grip on land gained by conquest and has no intention of letting go to get a better grip. He sees decades into the future where the world loses interest in the problem. Trump agrees with any view Bibi dreams up.
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@texsun
Getting the sick feeling Jareds master plan for The region doesn't include the Palestinians unless, that is, they agree to become second class citizens with no voting rights-in a Zionist State! Little more than stateless vassals in a separate and unequal state not of their own. Kind of like the way they are now, but with even less useable land.
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Two curses in the Middle East
D. Trump and Hamas have a feast
Aided it is true
By Netanyahu
Whose bungles have not been the least.
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@Larry Eisenberg
there were decades prior of arabs squandering every offer of statehood. Dead jews was a more tantalizing prospect.
The west bank was captured from jordan which demurred its return due to the nature of it's occupants. Jordan was glad to be rid of so many terrorists.
Or has everyone forgotten the "palis" tried to kill Jordan's king?
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"Then stick to building condos and golf courses." Actually the Trump/Kushner plan is to turn the Palestinians into a nation of busboys, waiters, and gardeners in the worldwide imperium of Trump hotels and golf courses.
I've been reading schemes for peace in the Middle East and specifically peace among Israel and what used to be called the "confrontation states" since....I graduated from reading kid novels to the LA Times, back in the 60s. Perhaps the reason there has been no negotiated solution is that there isn't one.
On another note the situation in most of the rest of the Middle East isn't much better. And the situation here at home deteriorates by the day. Is there not a certain irony in pleading for democracy in the Middle East when every effort is being made to cause it to collapse in this country?
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@gnowel: You got the solution. remember the video that Trump did for The Great Leader Kim. Trump should do the same for President Abbas. Show him the buildings, condos, golf courses, real estate developments that he will build in Palestine and the Palestinians will benefit in the world of Trumpland.
It is really sad that after coveting the Middle East for many decades, Mr. Friedman still holds the same old views that had proven worthless. Refusing to recognize that the Palestinians never intended to live in peace with Israel is cause number one for the standstill. One has to look at how they educate the next generation to realize their real intention. The mistake Israel made was to sign an agreement with the PLO. That organization represented the “refugees” and continues to do it to this day. In addition the Palestinians are comprise of different tribes. Those in Ramallah hate the Gaza residents. The Hebronites hate the people of Nablus and those in Jerusalem hate the rest. The only common denominator for all them is hatred of the Jews. Once this is recognized then there may be a way for some kind of arrangement. Not admitting it is what caused the current stalemate. The Arab countries are well aware of it and are not going to support another failed state.
Israel overcame a lot of difficulties, with help from world Jews, the USA and others. Where are the Arab brethren? They know who they deal with- a corrupt regime that is no good.
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@Abe Walsh: Please cite your evidence for the conclusion that Ramallah residents hate Gazans, Hebron's citizens hate Nablus residents, etc. They may, indeed, hate the Israelis (if not "the Jews") but if someone confiscated YOUR property would you be willing to break bread with them?
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@Abe Walsh
On 30 November, Israel and the Jewish world remember the fate of more than 850,000 Jews who were forced out of Arab countries and Iran in the 20th century.
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@stu freeman
this was jordan
What about "this was Jordan" is difficult?
How about "Gaza was Egypt" does that make any sense?
95% of "pali land" is held by arabs
Utter foolishness. If you want to understand the conflict, you have to keep your eye on the ball, the basic facts that neither Friedman nor any other mainstream commentator in the US ever talk about and seem not to know: Zionism's goal is and always has been a Jewish state that comprises all of historical Palestine, emptied of Arabs. That's what Zionists wrote long ago when it was only for each other, and if you look closely at how they have behaved since statehood, they have been consistent in making their way toward that goal, sometimes by inches, sometimes in huge leaps, from massacres to economics to apartheid measures. They know that if they act boldly the rest of the world will do nothing to undo their actions. They declared their state -- not really a democratic state, but one in which one's rights are defined by one's religion -- when Jews made up no more than 30% of the population, in violation of the UN Charter's first article re self-determination. In short, they did to the Palestinians what Europeans did to the Native Americans, but Palestinians are surrounded by many millions of people who share their ethnicity and billions worldwide who share their religion. That's why, unlike Native Americans, they are still able to struggle against their oppressors. The only way to real peace there is via a solution that gives up Jewish legal hegemony in a single, genuinely democratic state.
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@DukeSenior
Do you oppose the establishment of a “homeland for the Palestinian Arab people” as well? If you’re advocating for a secular democracy with equal rights for all regardless of ethnicity or religion I’m all for it, but that’s not what the PA (let alone Hamas) are fighting for.
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Maybe if they were negotiating in good faith they could have both: a secular democratic state with autonomous havens for the country’s religious and tribal/ethnic minorities.
America isn’t a great moral example (think of periods when natives and minorities were victims of genocide), but America has a (nominally) secular national government, states (that variously embrace or resist secular rules about equality), native reservations that recognize governance by self-defined tribal associations, organized as sovereign, domestic dependent nations, or native corporations (in Alaska).
America also has territories where people can use other languages for official matters (e.g. Puerto Rico), and areas where, perhaps unfortunately, U.S. civil rights have limited application (U.S. territories like Guam, Micronesia, Samoa, etc.).
Other examples, like Scotland, Ireland, etc. present other models for autonomy within national and regional government frameworks, set by treaties. There are also options for making certain areas unique, such as Rome, DC, embassies, visiting force areas, etc.
Leaders with imagination could adopt basic rights for the nation, delineate districts as havens for Jews and Palestinians, and neutral, sacred areas where people have equal rights. They’ll have to work out borders, and avoid structural flaws like Myanmar’s where a genocidal military has power. But they’re capable, right? Can they negotiate in good faith? Likely it’d be easier with different leaders.
@DukeSenior the article Friedman wrote is about the Camp David accords in which a Israel returned all of the Sinai, an area 4 times the State of Israel for the sake of peace. How does this act of good faith and sacrifice in the hope of peace between Israel and its greatest adversary Egypt? How does Rabins signing the Oslo accords allowing Arafat and his corrupt henchmen to set up the Corrupt and murderous Palestinian Authority sit with your theory? How does Ehud Barak’s withdrawal from Lebanon or Arik Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza fit with your theory? How does Ehud Olmert’s offer of 96% of the West Bank to Abu Mazan sit with your theory? Your theory does not hold water and the fact that the majority of the Mideast is Moslem (and in despotic chaos) means little to at least one indigenous minority who were driven out of their native land 2000 years ago and through determination, blood, brains and tears and returned and flourished.
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It would be great if Trump could follow in Carter's footsteps. Then he would get the worldwide recognition he yearns for. However, Trump is no Carter and diplomacy is not a word in his dictionary. Sending his son in law to broker a peace deal reminds me of an old wisdom, you don't send a boy to do a man's job. We forget the French and British were involved in creating the present situation and need to be involved in solving the problem. It may have been an accident for Trump's success in bringing the two Korean leaders together but it is worth a try in Israel. There is very little to lose and much to gain.
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@Franklin Schenk
Carter had a fatal flaw in dealing with Arafat. Carter could not believe that Arafat would play him rather than have peace
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“And the Trump administration and Israel can’t want a total vacuum to emerge there..." I can't speak for Israel, but the Trump administration, if it is even capable of understanding this, probably doesn't care.
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It’s a safe bet if Trump/Kushner and Netanyahu simply declared a two-state reality that embraced Tom’s “two minimum conditions” and poured billions into supporting it, that the Palestinians still would find a way of screwing it up royally. It’s what they do better than anyone else on Earth, including Cuba.
What Abbas really should do is RE-militarize the Palestinian Authority, invest Gaza and wipe out Hamas. This would change the game sufficiently that they might get their contiguous state even if the prospects for some autonomy in East Jerusalem remained sketchy at best. At present, though, why should Bibi give up anything when the Palestinians can apply absolutely no leverage to making him do so? Even the most extreme among the global unchained, potted liberati seem to have lost all patience with these monumental historical failures, as have the Palestinian’s traditional allies in the Muslim world, and simply moved on to what could be more achievable totems of mere Kumbaya – such as global climate change (gives some idea of HOW hopeless the Palestinian cause is).
Bi-lateralism or apartheid? How about the status quo, until the Palestinians simply … disappear? This is what appears to be their eventual fate – leaving and melting into other Arab populations. It might take another century, but Bibi could become the guy who secured Judea and Samaria for Israel.
“Two minimum conditions”? Why? Kumbaya? Giveth me a break. That’s never been the way the world worked.
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@Richard Luettgen
We seem to be well on the way to achieving some sort of global climate change, unless recent weather is just improbable. Recent events in Syria started with a drought, as did African emigration to Europe. Syria is the default human solution to climate change, the one we get when we dont have a Kumbaya.
Actually, this country began in an attempt to change the way the world worked, and it was successful at least to the extent that almost everyone gives it lip service. In reality, it seems to pretty much work the way it always has . . . but, as an American, you gotta believe.
Palestinians can disappear in America or Canada, but the Middle East doesnt work like that any more (it did when the Romans expelled the Jews). There could eventually be a final solution to the Palestinian problem, but Israel has not worked itself up to that point -- yet.
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@Richard Luettgen Really? Stu the succinct? Your comments take up half a screen.
@Richard Luettgen
"Palis' divided into two camps at war? Best idea ever!!!
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I agree with virtually everything that was said in the article. The main glaring omission is Hamas' participation, if any, in proposed talks. If a settlement were to somehow be reached, wouldn't it be reasonable that Hamas would have to agree in writing to lay down both its arms and its aspirations for a right of return? This is something that Hamas will never agree to but is probably a pre-condition to Israel's signing off on any agreement. How you address Hamas and Gaza is even more difficult than the main event of Israel and the P.A.
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@Schneiderman: Good question. The answer is "you ignore Hamas and let that organization choke on its own bile while the folks in the West Bank and Arab Jerusalem celebrate their freedom and become prosperous." Hamas would have absolutely no support in the Middle East, except possibly from Iran and Hezbollah, if they remain violent outliers after a peace accord brings forth a separate Palestinian state. At which point, the Israelis would be justified in responding to that violence in whatever way they see fit.
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Jared Kushner is that drunk, driving Middle East stability off a cliff. He should never have been given any power over such a delicate dynamic. He's worse than wet behind the ears. Jared is biased. The Kushner family ties to far right Israeli politics and to Netanyahu show in Jared's obscene treatment of the Arabs.
It was Jared Kushner who recklessly pushed to cease American funding for Unrwa, a step too far even for hardliners like Pompeo. Kushner arrogantly mocked the besieged people of Gaza for daring to speak up for their rights - as he unveiled the new embassy in Jerusalem, a move which he knew would be tantamount to building a third finger flipping up at Palestinians.
Kushner never had a plan for peace because he never wanted peace. Jared supports Likud ideology. He claims he is trying something new by beating Palestinians into submission. In addition to being cruel and inhumane, that is a patently doomed strategy. When does anyone comply with a figure they despise, or act on their best behavior when they have nothing to lose?
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@NM
Apparently, the only real allies of the Palestinians on Earth … live in the New York Times.
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No, Richard. There are plenty of us around who support a two-state solution. You haven’t noticed as you have been too busy following Trump around like a puppy. Every move that has been made in the last year has provoked Palestinians. Every move. Closing the office in DC, moving the Embassy, little balance on the issue to hold Israel in check. No, this debacle falls squarely on this train wreck of an administration. Netanyahu is out of control...so much so that he’s lost most American Jews and all people with sanity and fair mindedness.
@Richard Luettgen
Go outside the US and you will find the world is full of people who wish the Palestinians well and believe they are mistreated very badly. The US is in the minority.
A good strong, solid proposal, but I doubt it would get much traction with Trump. He so needs to be liked/loved by certain leaders (Bibi is one) that he would never be able to play the kind of hardball needed in that quarter. Then, too, his Christian right-wing base would like the Palestinians to just go away as they pursue their Christian Zionist ideal of all of 'greater Israel' (including currently Palestinian lands) belonging to Israel. A bit of blowback from Bibi and the right-wing base & Trump would revert to a lovefest to which the Palestinians are not invited.
As noted, a good peacemaker must be able to stand in the gap and, at times, twist everyone's arms. Trump can only twist the arms of those he dislikes to whatever degree.
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