by Sarah Honig
The principle of direct talks steadfastly guided even the misguided progenitors of the
"There is no precedent of a conflict between nations being brought to finality without direct negotiations. In the conflict between the Arabs and
The above is a direct quote from an address by prime minister Golda Meir to the Knesset on May 26, 1970, 40 years minus-five-days ago. The insistence on direct talks was cardinal for Israeli leaders before and since the above statement. A succession of foreign emissaries and politicos came and went, but
The principle of direct talks steadfastly guided even the misguided progenitors of the
Decades of making one existentially risky concession after another existentially risky concession, of erasing one declaratively ineradicable red line after another, of drawing new "red lines" but deleting these in turn, have certainly paid off. We have gained so indubitably much. We're so ahead of the starting line. At the beginning we wouldn't hear of indirect negotiations. After we had yielded so much ground, we are at long overdue last engaged in – indirect negotiations. It was all really worth it. We've come a long way, Bibi!
TO BE fair, it's not all his fault. Netanyahu inherited an unenviable legacy. The Osloites stealthily ushered another Arab Palestinian state into the original territory once designated as Palestine, some 80 percent of which is already Arab (even if it parades under the wholly artificial name of Jordan). This negated Golda's stance that "
Ehud Barak, in his catastrophic stint as premier, established the ever-insidious model of total withdrawal back to the 1949 armistice lines. More recently Ehud Olmert, Barak's challenger for the dubious distinction of worst-ever prime minister, additionally reinforced Barak's precedent. This, coupled with
Giving in is the easy thing to do. But true patriots, like Golda, summoned intestinal fortitude to avoid alluring facile solutions. If the experience of the past 40 years has taught us any lesson, it's that buying time via "painful concessions" doesn't work. Concessions become self-evidently the new square-one for ensuing haggling rounds.
History suffers no vacuums. Every retreat spawns yet another retreat, triggering a negative dynamic.
Next (and this, significantly under Netanyahu)
Bargaining, which we assumed was about agreed boundaries within territories we were forced to take in 1967, turned out to be about the 1949 line of exhaustion demarcated to end the War of Independence imposed on us. Beyond that lies an older Arab claim for the 1947 UN partition lines which Arabs rejected violently, thereby sparking that War of Independence. And before that raged the antebellum debate about whether any Jewish state ought to exist, which is what sparked that violent Arab opposition in 1947.
The same animus still foments Arab refusal to recognize
WHILE
Whenever we concede even a theoretical point, we imbue Arab obstructionism with an aura of righteous respectability in the (kangaroo) court of world opinion. We irreversibly undermine our own case.
That's why it's taken for granted internationally that
We have indeed come a long way – backward. By rushing recklessly headlong to resolve a conflict not of our making, we ended up returning to its very origins – the aspiration to eradicate the Jewish state.
As Golda stressed: "There is no obstacle to peace except for the Arab persistence in denying
It would further serve us to memorize what was emphasized at the Palestinian national assembly in July 1968: "Our basic aim is to liberate the land from the Mediterranean to the
This, finally, takes us back to Golda's May 26, 1970 speech: "The refusal to talk to us directly is damning evidence of the unwillingness of the Arab leaders to be reconciled with the very being of
It was true then. The latest "proximity talks" underscore just how true it remains, especially when the supposed honest broker is taking sides.
Have we anything to show for four decades of regression from principles to which Golda adhered tenaciously? Not much if we judge by the fact that we're now reduced to willingly enmeshing ourselves in the very trap we throughout wisely avoided.
Sarah Honig
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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