In an editorial, the Washington Post writes:
AFTER ISRAELI Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was voted out of office in 1992, he gave an interview in which he revealed he had never been serious about peace negotiations with the Palestinians. His real intention, he said, had been to drag out the talks for a decade while settling hundreds of thousands more Jews in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Well actually, that wasn’t the context that Shamir meant his comments. It was, of course, par for the course at that time that Shamir’s comments were construed like that.
According to a translation in an article published in the Jerusalem Post this is what Shamir said:
“I would have conducted autonomy negotiations for 10 years, and in the meanwhile we would have reached a half million people in Judea and Samaria,” Shamir said in an interview in Ma’ariv. Currently, an estimated 120,000 settlers live in the territories.
(Source:SHAMIR PLANNED TO DRAG OUT TALKS UNTIL ISRAELI CONTROL OF AREAS WAS IRREVERSIBLE, David Makovsky. Jerusalem Post. Jerusalem: Jun 28, 1992. pg. 01. Yes that title perpetuated the myth of what Shamir had said.)
Does that mean that his intent was to drag out negotiations or that that’s how long he expected that they’d take? There was at least one other person at that interview, the interviewer himself. And this is his take:
The Maariv journalist, Yosef Harif, said the remarks were made, but he added that he did not think Mr. Shamir was trying to drag out the peace talks to avoid autonomy.
What Shamir was saying was that he expected talks on autonomy to last at least ten years, not that he sought to drag them out. Given that more conciliatory successors have failed to satisfy Palestinian demands over the past fifteen years, Shamir’s observation looks accurate, if not a little optimistic.
Now, of course, in 1992 the talk was about autonomy,not statehood. And remember at the time that even the late PM Yitzchak Rabin, sounded a bit like what would be called a right wing extremist nowadays.
Mr. Rabin has repeatedly refused to be drawn into discussions about which specific settlements he defines as “political” and which he would continue to support as necessary for Israel’s security. In general, he has defined security zones as the Jerusalem area, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights.
The point that the Post was making was to compare Shamir’s comments with those of Ehud Olmert last week.
Last week, Ehud Olmert, who served in Mr. Shamir’s cabinet and believed in his dream of a “greater Israel,” gave a similar truth-telling interview at the end of his own stint as prime minister — only the message was very different.
“We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the territories,” Mr. Olmert told the newspaper Yedioth Aharonot. Of his long record as a supporter of keeping and settling those lands and Arab East Jerusalem, Mr. Olmert said, “For a large portion of these years, I was unwilling to look at reality in all its depth.”
The Post is willing to acknowledge that Israel has changed a lot in the intervening years.
Mr. Olmert’s words are one measure of how far Israel has changed politically in 16 years. Before 1992, acceptance of a Palestinian state or even direct negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization were unacceptable to the parliamentary majority; now a former leader of the right-wing Likud party can say that Israel must withdraw from all but a small part of the territories captured in the 1967 war.
But the editorial is dishonest when it claims:
Mr. Olmert’s position is pragmatic: He says that the territorial concessions are necessary to prevent Israel from becoming a “binational state,” with an Arab majority. Judging from polls, a majority of Israelis agree with him.
It’s as if Israel had never withdrawn from Gaza or from any cities in Judea and Samaria. The question since 1996 or so hasn’t been whether Israel will maintain control over millions of Arabs, but what the final shape of the Palestinian state will be. By taking this approach, the Post is giving a “peace veto” to the Palestinians. (Olmert is too, for that matter.) By the Post’s reckoning, as long as negotiations do not satisfy the Palestinians, Israel is still occupying them.
And it’s hard to find what poll shows that a majority of Israelis agree with Olmert. Here’s a recent poll that shows that only 26% of Israelis consider the “demographic” threat significant. Here’s another one showing that only 7% of Israeli Jews consider that there’s a demographic threat. And this shows a majority of Israelis – apparently having learned from Gaza – opposing further disengagement from Judea and Samaria.
However polls of Palestinians continue to show a rejection of the idea of a Jewish state.
Finally the Post takes the approach of any number of Olmert’s detractors:
What’s changed in Israel is the willingness of the political mainstream to accept, in theory, a Palestinian state along territorial lines that most of the world (including most Arab states) would accept. What hasn’t changed is the steady pace of settlement construction that is slowly but surely making that solution more difficult to carry out — and the unwillingness or inability of Israeli leaders to stop it. Mr. Olmert tried to make history with his parting words; sadly, they were deeply at odds with his actions.
So Israel has changed politically but the “settlements” remain the single biggest obstacle to peace. Aside from the fact that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza has strengthened Hamas and encouraged terror, what makes the Post’s editors think that Israeli “occupation” is the primary obstacle to peace? (The same could be said about Lebanon and Hezbollah.)
Isn’t the biggest problem that the lack of change on the Palestinian side?
The Post’s editors dredge up and misconstrue a statement made by Yitzchak Shamir in 1992 to make their point, but they’ve been awfully incurious about comments and actions from the Palestinian leadership showing a lack of commitment to peace.
For example right before he died, highly regarded “moderate” Faisal Husseini didn’t sound so moderate:
Similarly, if we agree to declare our state over what is now only 22 percent of Palestine, meaning the West Bank and Gaza — our ultimate goal is [still] the liberation of all historical Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] sea, even if this means that the conflict will last for another thousand years or for many generations.
In short, we are exactly like they are. We distinguish the strategic, long-term goals from the political phased goals, which we are compelled to temporarily accept due to international pressure. If you are asking me as a Pan-Arab nationalist what are the Palestinian borders according to the higher strategy, I will immediately reply: “from the river to the sea.”
Palestine in its entirety is an Arab land, the land of the Arab nation, a land no one can sell or buy, and it is impossible to remain silent while someone is stealing it, even if this requires time and even [if it means paying] a high price.”
And before that (but after Oslo) there was Arafat’s famous speech in a Johannesburg mosque:
This agreement, I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our prophet Mohammed and Koraish, and you remember the Caliph Omar had refused this agreement and [considered] it a despicable truce.
And what about Arafat’s incitement ahead of the ‘tunnel riots” in 1996?
And there is ample documentation that the “Aqsa intifada” was not a spontaneous outburst of violence, but planned by Arafat in advance.
Event the current “moderate” hope of the peace processors, Mahmoud Abbas has gotten in on the act.
In her press conference yesterday with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Israeli-Palestinian talks would continue, despite claims of a boycott by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas’s boycott came after he accused Israel of committing “more than a holocaust” in Gaza.
The Abbas boycott and his reprehensible accusations follow a pattern established well before the current escalation in Gaza. Last month, for example, Abbas’s Palestinian Authority declared a three-day mourning period for PFLP leader George Habash, who was associated with the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics and with the assassination of Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Ze’evi.
In case anyone might think that the PA is only remembering past “glories,” Fatah, the faction that Abbas heads, issued a poster displaying a map of “Palestine” that included all of Israel, a machine gun and a picture of Yasser Arafat. Incitement against Israel, including the glorification of “martyrdom,” continues through Abbas-controlled PA television, and PA educational institutions, such as schools and camps.
Last month Abbas showed even more chutzpah as he sought a meeting with convicted child murderer Samir Kuntar.
It’s remarkable that the Post has two data points – a misinterpretation of a statement by Yitzchak Shamir from 16 years ago and the continued existence of settlements – to show that Israel is dealing in bad faith with the Palestinians, but ignores mountains of evidence that Israeli concessions over the past 15 years have done nothing to moderate the Palestinian population’s antagonism towards Israel. So while the Israeli position regarding the Palestinians has changed dramatically, there’s been no reciprocal movement on the part of the Palestinians.
And of course that escapes the notice of the sharp eyed editors of the Washington Post.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.