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Israel's Right to Be Israel
August 24, 2003
Washington Post; Page B07
By Daniel AyalonLast month, while welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the White House, President Bush stated that "America is firmly committed to the security of Israel as a Jewish state." But sadly, many of Israel's neighbors and even our partners in peace are not yet willing to accept the legitimacy of Israel as the historical homeland of the Jewish people and the political expression of Jewish national self-determination.
In accepting the road map, which leads to a two-state solution, the government of Israel formally raised this issue. We asked that the process include recognition of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and the waiver of the Palestinian demand for Palestinian refugees to settle in Israel.
The logic of this is clear. If the road map does eventually succeed - if the Palestinian leadership decisively and consistently acts against terror - it should create relations that will result in a peaceful, democratic Palestinian state accepted by Israel. This state will be the political expression of Palestinian national self-determination. Israelis have the right to expect this same acceptance from their neighbors, from those who are to be considered our partners in peace. For without this acceptance, the Palestinians striving to force Israel into receiving millions of Palestinian refugees are seeking to undermine Israel's character as a democratic Jewish state. This is not a two-state solution. This is the Palestinians saying that our state is ours, and yours is ours too.
Of course, there are those who say that the refugee issue is a final status issue to be discussed only at the very end of peace talks. Yet, so, too, was the issue of Palestinian statehood. The international community has made a decision to move up the statehood issue to the interim stage, Phase II of the road map. Similarly, Israel is entitled to have this matter of existential importance moved forward.
The truth is that the Palestinian demand to return the refugees to Israel is without legal or moral basis. It must be remembered that the Palestinian refugee problem resulted from an Arab-Palestinian war of aggression launched against the newborn Jewish state. The Arab leadership refused to accept the U.N. partition and refused to accept Israel. Therefore, Israel's War of Independence in 1948 created the ensuing flow of refugees. Surely the Arab leadership has primary moral responsibility for these individuals.
In the turbulent years following World War II, millions of people across the globe became refugees. In Europe the new postwar borders turned millions of Poles and Germans into refugees. In South Asia the partition of the Indian subcontinent displaced millions. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, including my own family, fled their homes in the Arab world leaving behind their property and belongings.
Today Europe does not have a German or Polish refugee problem, and the Indian subcontinent is not plagued with a refugee issue. Israel has successfully integrated more than 2 million refugees. Why has the same process of healing not occurred with Palestinian refugees? Why today in the Middle East do the descendants of the people who fled their homes in 1948 still suffer in refugee camps?
The unfortunate truth is that over the past 50 years, the Arab governments and the Palestinian leadership have acted to thwart efforts to resettle the refugees, leaving them to suffer in miserable conditions. Even the Palestinian Authority has been unwilling to eliminate the refugee camps in the areas under its control in the West Bank and Gaza and resettle their residents. Obviously, this has been part of a deliberate policy to keep the refugee issue alive as a political weapon against Israel.
In a deliberate perpetuation of this tragedy, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 has been repeatedly misused, misread and misrepresented as the legal basis to oppose practical steps designed to help the refugees.
Contrary to the myth that surrounds it, that resolution does not proclaim a "right of return." It must be remembered that the Arab bloc at the United Nations actually voted against the resolution. The Palestinian leadership rejected it precisely because it called for peace and reconciliation with Israel. After 50 years, retroactively selecting sentences from a dated U.N. General Assembly resolution, one that has been made irrelevant by Arab opposition, just to serve a specific position, cannot be allowed after everything else has been rejected.
Recently, when a Palestinian pollster discovered that most Palestinian refugees have no actual desire to live in Israel, his offices were ransacked by a violent mob. That mob apparently refused to accept a simple reality: Israel will continue to thrive as a Jewish state. Palestinians can also choose the path that will lead to peace and the creation of a democratic state for their people. It is time for the rest of the international community to echo President Bush's remarks calling on the Arab states and the Palestinians to accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Surely, such acceptance would be the most effective confidence-building measure.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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The writer is Israel's ambassador to the United States.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34480-2003Aug22.html
