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Text File | 1995-10-29 | 7KB | 107 lines

Why The Leaders of Israel Are Aggressively Pursuing Peace^15

Many  long-standing  observers  of  the  Middle  East  scene  have been
puzzled by the haste and  urgency with which Mr. Rabin,  Israel's Prime
Minister,  and  Mr.   Peres,  Israel's  Foreign  Minister,  have  moved
towards peace.  Certain voices of caution have been concerned with  the
abandon with which Israel's  leaders have overlooked breaches  of faith
by  their  negotiating  partners  and  charged  ahead  in the quest for
peace.  Among the most  glaring of these breaches are  repeated signals
that the PLO has not given up its goal of the destruction of Israel:

(1)  The  Palestine  National  Council  of  the PLO has not amended its
Charter which  calls for  Israel's destruction.   The dropping  of this
item  in  its  Charter  was  one  of  the  original  conditions  in the
"Declaration of  Principles" for  Israel's agreement  to deal  with the
PLO.

(2) Mr. Arafat's  speech in May,  1994 in a  mosque in Johannesburg  in
which he explicitly called for a  jihad, the Arabic term for holy  war,
to liberate  Jerusalem.   Although when  pressed for  an explanation by
Israel Mr. Arafat backtracked, and  tried to pass off his  reference to
jihad  as  simply  indicative  of  a  political  struggle,  his  speech
contained another reference  which reveals his  approach.  He  referred
to a truce  agreement which the  prophet Mohammed had  reached with the
Kuraish tribe in 628 A.D.   Two years later the truce was  "torn down."
His allusion to Mohammed's treachery indicates that his true  intention
is not  a permanent  peace but  one that  only continues  as long as it
serves his purpose.  His purpose - to establish the state of  Palestine
on all of eretz Israel - has never been renounced.

(3) Mr.  Farouk Kaddoumi,  the Foreign  Minister equivalent  of the PLO
and head of its political department, made a speech on the occasion  of
the closing of the PLO's radio operation in North Africa in  mid-August
in which  he is  reported to  have said,  "There is  a state  which was
established through historical  force and it  must be destroyed.   This
is the Palestinian way."

Representative of  these cautionary  voices within  Israeli society  is
Aharon Megged, an Israeli author:

Hundreds of  our society's  leading writers,  intellectuals, academics,
authors,  and  journalists,  joined  by  painters,  photographers,  and
actors, have been unceasingly  and diligently preaching that  our cause
is not just.  And  this, they say, is true  not only since the Six  Day
War, nor just since  the establishment of our  state in 1948, which  as
one  prominent  scholar  put  it,  "was  born  in  sin,"  but since the
beginning of Zionist settlement at the  end of the last century.   What
is happening before our very eyes is the rewriting of Zionist  history,
a  rewriting  in  the  spirit  of  its  adversaries  and  foes...   The
(rewriters') conclusion  is almost  uniform: that  in practice  Zionism
amounts  to  an  evil,  colonialist  conspiracy  to  exploit the people
dwelling in Palestine, enslave them, and steal their land.

This  approach  of  the  intelligentsia  is providing the philosophical
underpinning of  the drive  towards peace,  a need  within the  Israeli
psyche  to  correct  the  growing  sense  of  Jewish injustice in their
dispossession of Arabs from the  land.  This attitudinal rethinking  is
only possible  for a  generation that  is increasingly  remote from the
pogroms,  ghettos,  and  atrocities  to  which  their  ancestors   were
subjected in Europe.  Mr. Megged went further in his assessment of  the
new views promulgated by Israel's left-wing establishment:

Another assault  on Zionist  legitimacy is  the denial  of the historic
link of  our people  with the  land of  our forefathers.   The right of
Israel to exist  at all is  thus based purely  on the right  of need...
Many (academics) regard religious, cultural, and emotional affinity  to
the land - the most important  rationale for our existence here -  with
sheer contempt...  Some years ago, a book called "States for the  Jews"
by Eliahu Binyamini enumerated  34 territorial plans for  settling Jews
in  various  parts  of   the  world.   The   best  known  are   Uganda,
Birobidzhan,  Argentina,   the  Kimberleys   zone  in   Australia,  New
Caledonia,  and  Madagascar.   They   were  meant,  according  to   the
territorialists,  autonomists,  communists,  and  others,  to  Land the
problem of Jewish "need." They all came to naught.

The Zionist idea is  the only one which  came alive, in a  wondrous way
no historian could have foretold.   In the Land of Israel, there  arose
a Jewish nation  in a Jewish  state.  It  revived the Hebrew  language,
created a Hebrew culture, and ingathered millions of Jews...

But  since  the  Six  Day  War,  and  at  an  increasing  pace, we have
witnessed a phenomenon  which probably has  no parallel in  history: an
emotional and moral identification by the majority intelligentsia  with
people openly committed to our annihilation...

(Aharon Megged, The Jerusalem  Post International Edition, The  Israeli
Suicide Drive, July 2, 1994, p. 15)

Mr. Megged struggles to explain this "pathological phenomenon" that  is
at the root of the drive to rethink Zionism.  In our view, its  primary
explanation  lies  in  the  desire  to extinguish any connection beyond
modern Israel and God.   It is the distinctively Israeli  manifestation
of a drive that is evident among the intelligentsia in western  society
generally.  In the name  of "social justice," the push  for recognition
of homosexual unions, for example, is  motivated by a desire to make  a
public  declaration  which  denies  any  legitimacy  to Judeo-Christian
morality.  In Israel at the present time, this same inclination is  not
so much evident in  a thrust to re-engineer  social policy as it  is in
changes to the political agenda  vis-a-vis the Arab states.   If Israel
can  cede  land  back  to  the  Arab  states,  give  their  governments
effective control over  the holy places  in Jerusalem, and  make peace,
does  it  not  set  back  the  religious  opposition that believes in a
God-given  right  to  the  land?   How  does  Israel,  now  that it has
embarked on a course that is in defiance of God and His  pronouncements
concerning Israel's attachment to the land, fit with Bible prophecy?