Peacemaking Raises Identity Fears
The fate of the just resumed Palestinian-Israeli peace-building efforts is being kept under a tight wrap by all parties. So far, so good.
Both U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama's peace envoy, Sen. George Mitchell have gone against the doom-mongers, and voice cautious optimism. But already, old-new fears are resurfacing in the context of the efforts to build a durable peace -- fears about identity.
Ever since reluctantly declaring his support for the two-state solution, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has conditioned any deal on the Palestinians being ready not only to recognise Israel (as, in fact, they already have in the Oslo peace accords of 1993), but being ready to accept Israel as a 'Jewish State'.
Some see this demand as Netanyahu's way of avoiding any accommodation with the Palestinian demand that the Palestinian refugees should have the 'right of return' to what is now the state of Israel.
Some, however, point out that Netanyahu ought to be taken seriously. This, because in the view of most Israeli Jews, were hundreds of thousands of Palestinians be allowed to return to their original homes, then Israel wouldn't continue to have an overwhelming majority of Jewish citizens (80 percent of Israelis), and that would put the very identity of their state at stake.
For Netanyahu, the Jewish identity of Israel is as central as the refugee question is for the Palestinians. In essence, the Israeli leader is making the 'Jewish State' an extra core issue at the peace table alongside the fundamental questions of borders and settlements, Jerusalem, security and refugees.
In turn, however, this preoccupation with 'Jewish Israel' is again arousing deep concern among Arab Israelis who constitute 20 percent of Israel's 7.6m people.
In previous peace attempts Arab Israelis were seen as a bridge for reconciliation with the Palestinians. Now, some see them as a future burden. The new Netanyahu approach to peace thus has critical bearing not only on the fate of the Palestinian refugees, but on the place of the Arab minority within the 'Jewish state'.
This is being stated starkly by Netanyahu's hard-line foreign minister Avigdor Liberman.
Liberman, whose ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party -- a key component of the Netanyahu government -- campaigned under the slogan 'no loyalty, no citizenship', has made national allegiance a central component of his political agenda, demanding all Israelis (namely Arab Israelis), swear an oath of loyalty to the state.
Now Liberman is again insisting that the peace talks tackle upfront the question of the 'loyalty' of Arab Israeli citizens. 'With the Palestinians refusing to recognise Israel as a Jewish state, negotiations must re-assess the whole issue of the citizenship rights of the Arab population,' he said. Disloyal Arab Israelis should take Palestinian citizenship, he suggested.
The Netanyahu demand for recognising Israel as uniquely Jewish has also triggered a heated and highly emotional argument among Israeli intellectuals -- Jewish and Arab -- about what ought to embody 'Israeliness'.
World-renowned political scientist Prof. Shlomo Avineri of Hebrew University in Jerusalem paints an almost apocalyptic future for Israel. In a parable-like article he insists that Israel must continue to cling to its fundamental Jewish character and traditional Jewish symbols, and to resist demands from some Arab Israeli intellectuals for amending the 'Jewishness' of Israel, and creating instead but one national 'Israeli' identity that would be neither Jewish nor Arab.
If Jewish Israelis agree to go down what he sees as a slippery slope, Avineri predicts that Israel would inevitably slide into becoming a second 'Palestine'.
In substance, the Avineri warning is that Arab Israelis are abusing their democratic rights as full citizens by trying to deny the majority's right for self-determination as Jews. Should his fellow Jewish Israelis acquiesce in that, argues Avineri, they would in essence be agreeing to give up on the reason their state was established in the first place - -self-determination for the Jewish people in their 'national homeland'.
The Avineri thesis is vehemently opposed by two University of Haifa lecturers, Dr. Asad Ghanem and Dr. Ilan Saban. They say Avineri's arguments 'faithfully represent a pattern of thought among Israelis that is causing Israel to bring itself to the brink of an abyss.'
Sarcastically, they write: 'For Avineri, the major threat faced by Israel is not at all the growth of anti-democratic forces within it, nor what Israel has been doing during its 43-year occupation and colonisation. Nor is it the harsh discrimination and exclusionary policies of the state against its Arab citizens. No, the major threat he sees is Israeli Jews committing themselves to full equal rights for their fellow Arab citizens.
'How logical is it for the majority to be frightened of itself?' Ghanem and Saban continue. 'How can the Majority, which has in its hands the social, economic, cultural and military power, the political and legal authority, seriously justify its fear of losing control of its own destiny?'
The conundrum of how to confront the conflicting demands of ethnic affiliation, national identity, equality, mutual acceptance and democracy has been with Israel ever since its creation more than 60 years ago. What is becoming patently clear is that even if successful, peace between the state of Israel and the Palestinian state, may paradoxically not actually solve that testing conundrum. It may simply complicate the old-new identity problems even further.
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service