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Why Is Palestinian Recognition of Israel as a Jewish State Important?

[Ha'aretz] Shlomo Avineri - Prof. Shimon Shamir says: "It is not our concern if Egypt defines itself as Islamic, Arab, African or pharaonic. We recognize Egypt as a political entity." Based on this premise, Shamir makes the case that we are not to demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. Yet the analogy is not valid. Israel has never called into question the existence of the Egyptian political entity. On the other hand, the Palestinians, through their rejection of the UN Partition Plan, refused to recognize the Jewish state and embarked on a war to destroy it. This is, after all, the root of the conflict. Indeed, the Palestinian narrative is based on the rejection of the existence of a Jewish nation state in any part of the territory they call Palestine. If you declared war against the Jewish state, does not the signing of a peace treaty with that state obligate you to accept it? This does not mean the Palestinians are asked to accept the Zionist narrative, but it is incumbent upon them to alter their narrative, which rules out the existence of a Jewish state. This is exactly what Israel did at Camp David and Oslo. Under the terms of binding international agreements, Israel committed itself to recognizing "the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arab nation." Menachem Begin was the first to do this. This is not tantamount to relinquishing the Zionist narrative, it is a willingness to accept the legitimacy of a competing narrative and to seek a compromise. We only ask of the Palestinians that which we ourselves have done in the past. The ferociously negative response of the Palestinians was an expression of a deep, internal ideological truth that to this day refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish people's right to self-determination. Peace is made between enemies. The Palestinians fought the Jewish state, and if they truly and sincerely wish to forge peace, they must be willing to come to terms with the Jewish state, and to do so explicitly, without stuttering. The writer, professor of political science at Hebrew University, is a former director-general of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
2009-08-20 06:00:00
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