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On Reconciliation with the Palestinians - An Interview with Historian Benny Morris

[Foreign Policy] Evan R. Goldstein - In his new book, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict, Benny Morris, a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University, argues that the Palestinian national movement has never in fact reconciled itself to Israel's existence as a Jewish state. "Morris is a one-man microcosm of what many Israeli Jews of the Labor-Zionist strain have undergone in the past decade," says David B. Green, opinion editor at Ha'aretz's English edition. "They recognize that we're not on the verge of peace, that this conflict may not be resolvable, and that they were naive to think that was the case." Morris's optimism was shattered in 2000 when Yasir Arafat rejected Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton's two-state proposals. "Not only did they say no, but they launched a terroristic and guerrilla war against both the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and Israel itself, suggesting that they are not just after the territories but want to drive the Jews out of Palestine," Morris says. Referring to Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, he said, "The moment Israel pulled out from a chunk of Arab territory, as the Arabs have always been demanding, it turned into a base for rocket attacks." "Talk to any Palestinian; they don't know about the Jewish past, and Jewish suffering doesn't interest them," he says. "They believe that Jews have no legitimate right [to] be here. That belief underlines their vision that Palestine must be all Arab and must be regained by them down the road." "The peace camp has been tragically undermined by Arab recalcitrance. When an Israeli politician campaigns on a plan to broker a two-state solution, the Israeli public is no longer interested because they know the other side doesn't want it. So they vote for Netanyahu or someone else who speaks in terms of conflict management rather than solutions." On Iran, Morris says: "Iran is building atomic weapons at least in part - maybe in large part - because it intends to use them. The people there are religious fanatics....Israel is under existential threat, and that is how Israel's military and political leaders must see the situation."
2009-05-01 06:00:00
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