The underlying realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after 11 September.

AFTER DISCUSSING THE OPPRESSION of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and the developing Palestinian intifada from 28 September 2002, until 11 September 2001, Camille Mansour, professor of international relations at the Universities of Paris and Versailles, noted in his Journal of Palestinian Studies article (Winter, 2002) that the impact of 11 September upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict consisted mainly of a shift by the Bush administration. (1) Mansour explained, as have other scholars and journalists, that the Bush administration moved from being passive to becoming more active after September in attempting to influence Palestinians and the Israeli government to end their violence against one another. Mansour pointed out that friendly nation-state governments attempted to convince Bush to push Sharon into ending Israel's use of excessive force against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and agreeing to a cease-fire. Even though faced with pressure from the Israeli government and its backers to support Israel in its fight against Palestinian suicide bombers and other alleged Palestinian militants and terrorists, Bush, concerned with maintaining a coalition of supporting, friendly Arab nation-state governments in his war against terrorism, obviously decided that his administration would try to hasten a cease-fire between Palestinians and the Israeli government. In his article, Mansour expressed the hope that the United States government would do this and would initiate peaceful negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinians in a manner that followed the norms and principles of international law. Mansour ended his article by striking a pessimistic note. He predicted that in the immediate future the domination of one people (Palestinians) by another would most likely continue to what he labeled a colonial impasse.

The events of 2002, following publication of Mansour's article, have demonstrated that his prediction, although correct in essence, was understated. By the end of June, 2002, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was more violent, dangerous and critical than at any prior time during the fifty-four year existence of the state of Israel. The impact upon this conflict of the tragic happenings in the United States on 11 September seemed nine months later to be negligible at most. The underlying realities of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict rested, as they had for over one-half century, upon the steadily escalating dynamics of occupation and oppression of one people by another.

By the middle of 2002 the stark realities were clear. Almost every week, sometimes every day, Israeli Jews, the great majority being innocent civilians, were killed and wounded by Palestinian suicide bombers, hostile about the Israeli oppression of their people. Likewise, Palestinians, the majority being innocent civilians, were killed and wounded by Israeli soldiers during repeated Israeli military incursions into the Occupied Territories, mainly in the West Bank. The Israeli military incursions were not limited to killing and wounding. During March and April, 2002, for example, Israel essentially destroyed the ability of Palestinians in the West Bank to run their own affairs. Across the West Bank schools were wrecked, as were banks, postal services, hospitals, transportation, law enforcement and basic commerce. The Israeli government made a deliberate effort to eviscerate Palestinian civilian institutes. From Jenin to Nablus, Ramallah to Bethlehem, water and sewer pipes were damaged. Banks were shelled by tanks. At the Ministry of Finance, computer servers were blown up and hard discs of desktop machines stolen. Taxation records were destroyed, as were marriage registries and birth records. The Ministry of Education was laid to waste, its computers taken; records of grades were dumped on floors and in toilets; graduation papers were carted away. Many of the 1459 schools in the West Bank were damaged, some beyond repair. Records of land deeds, dating back to the Ottoman Empire, were looted. Courtrooms were smashed, the ministry of public works set ablaze and the new buildings of the preventive security force, paid for by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, were rocketed and shelled by tanks. Nigel Roberts, the World Bank Director for the West Bank and Gaza; said donor countries were reeling from their first impressions of the damage done to institutions of the Palestinian Authority. How to reassemble the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority remained an unanswered question.

In Nablus the historic casbah was almost ruined. In Ramallah, already by 4 April after only one week of being under the sway of Israeli's tanks and guns, most of the water had run out and the electrical system that drove the pumps was broken. One-third of the city had no electricity. Office buildings, restaurants and buildings that previously housed Palestinians, in addition to national institutions, in this city of 160,000 residents, were wrecked. Food was scarce. In the Jenin refugee camp the housing of a goodly percentage of the 13,000 residents was decimated. Surveying the wreckage in the Jenin refugee camp, Terje Roel-Larsen, a United Nations special envoy, called the scene horrifying beyond belief. He maintained that Israel has lost all moral ground in this conflict.

Peter Hansen, the commissioner of the United Nations Relief and Works Administration (UNRWA), said that proof of the devastation was everywhere. He pointed out that the devastation included the destruction by the Israeli army of medicine in the camp's hospitals. Doctors in hospitals throughout the West Bank were unable to take adequate care of the wounded. As reported by the Associated Press on 22 April, leading human rights organizations, in addition to UNRWA and including the International Red Cross and Amnesty International, charged that Israel had violated humanitarian laws during its military operation in the Jenin refugee camp. The exact number of those killed in the Jenin refugee camp alone may never be known. Palestinian National Authority officials said 500; Israel's army spokespeople said 100 to 200; some Israeli government spokespeople said 45 to 50. The Israeli army carted away many dead bodies that will not be counted. The military incursion into the West Bank in March and April had a devastating impact upon the economy of Palestinians. As reported in both the Israeli Hebrew press and the New York Times on 12 April, Mark Malloch Brown, the head of the United Nation's Development Program, said: "The closures in Gaza and the West Bank mean that today more than half of the Palestinian population is living under the local poverty benchmark, which is two dollars per day."

Israel's military incursion into the West Bank greatly increased Palestinian hostility. This in turn almost undoubtedly increased the number of Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel especially after the Israeli military forces were withdrawn from the West Bank in May. After consistent and often daily suicide bombings in Israeli cities and West Bank Jewish establishments, the Israeli government in early June ordered its military forces to return to the West Bank and to fire missiles into Gaza. Palestinian homes were destroyed, land was re-occupied, roads were closed to Palestinians and many civilians were killed and wounded. The Israeli army's movement into Ramallah on 10 June was the 108th specific incursion into Palestinian territories since the end of April. By 25 June at least 700,000 Palestinians were confined to their homes in the West Bank, And Arafat's headquarters' complex in Ramallah was encircled. Israeli military units were patrolling most West Bank cities.

Beginning in the aftermath of 28 September 2000, suicide bombing became the major weapon of armed struggle for Palestinians. (By June, 2002, however, guerrilla attacks on Israeli military targets and Jewish settlers had grown in popularity.) Arafat and some other Palestinian political leaders condemned and called for a halt to the suicide bombings. Such statements had little effect. Since the 1960s, and especially during the recent era of suicide bombings, armed struggle has produced disastrous results for Palestinians. By the end of June, 2002, the casualty total for Palestinians far exceeded that for Israeli Jews. Suicide bombings have instilled fear and hurt the economy in Israel, but Palestinian suffering has nevertheless far surpassed Israeli Jewish suffering.

The Israeli rationale for its military incursions, described above, and the resultant killing, wounding and infrastructure destruction remained consistent: 1) The Israeli government sent the Israeli army into West Bank towns and villages only to destroy the terrorist infrastructure. 2) In this war against terrorism some civilians, most of them shielding terrorists, were unfortunately killed. This Israeli rationale failed to convince many astute, outside observers, including reporters, United Nations officials, human fights activists and Red Cross personnel. The evidence showed that innocent Palestinian civilians were killed and wounded, that homes were destroyed unduly and that the Palestinian infrastructure was severely damaged. In short, Palestinian suicide bombers had committed terrorist acts, and the Israeli government and army had utilized state terrorism.

In a detailed article, published in Tikkun in March, 2002, Tanya Reinhart contended that describing Israel's military incursions as retaliatory acts for terror attacks upon Israeli Jewish citizens was incorrect. She wrote: "Already in October, 2000, at the outset of the Palestinian uprising, military circles were ready with detailed operative plans to topple Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. This was before the Palestinian terror attacks started." Reinhart quoted from a document prepared by the security services at the request of then Prime Minister Barak: "Arafat, the person, is a severe threat to the security of the state [of Israel] and the damage which will result from his disappearance is less than the damage caused by his existence." Reinhart pointed out further that details of this document were published in the Israeli daily Hebrew newspaper, Maariv, on 6 July 2001, and that the operative plan, known as "Fields of Thorns," had been prepared in 1996 and was updated during the intifada. The plan included everything that Israel executed during the 2002 military incursions and more. (2)

Israeli state terrorism is not new. It dates back to 1948 when Israel became a modern nation-state. Two thousand and two is not the first year that Ariel Sharon, among others, directed a terrorist campaign. As a young colonel in the Israeli army and as commander of unit 101 in 1953, Ariel Sharon led commandoes on a raid against the border town of Qibya, blowing up 45 homes and killing 69 Arab villagers. Sharon later said that he thought the houses were empty. In 1982, when the Israelis went into Beirut during the invasion of Lebanon, Sharon, as Defense Minister, was responsible for his troops' allowing Lebanese militia to go into the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla and massacre Palestinian civilians. These are but two of many examples of Israeli state terrorism.

It is nevertheless a mistake to believe that a Labor Party prime minister today would have acted any differently. Rabin had a military history and Barak has a military history of directing terrorist attacks. Barak, as Prime Minister, allowed Sharon to go to the Temple Mount-al-Aqsa site on 28 September 2000, with one thousand armed policemen. Peres, as Foreign Minister in the present Sharon government, supported the Israeli military incursions into the West Bank in 2002. In mid-April he went to Washington to defend his government's actions in the West Bank. On 5 April, Nobel Peace Prize committee members told a Norwegian newspaper that they regretted not being able to recall the peace prize, given a few years earlier to Peres.

In the first years of Israel's existence this terrorism was part of the plan to transfer, i.e., to move, Palestinians off their land so that the Jewish state, and thus Jews, could take the land. Israeli governmental officials, members of the Knesset and many Israeli Jews advocated transfer at the end of the 1940s, in the 1950s and beyond. Joseph Weitz, who was Chairman of the Israel Land Authority and Chairman of the Land Development Division of the Jewish National Fund (1960-1967), wrote, for example, in a 9 September 1987, article, published in the Israeli newspaper, Davar:

   Among ourselves it must be clear that there is no
   place in the country for both peoples together ... With the
   Arabs we shall not achieve our aim of being an independent
   people in this country. The only solution is Eretz-Israel at least
   the west part of Eretz-Israel without Arabs ... and there is no
   other way but transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring
   countries, transfer all of them, not one village or tribe should
   remain, and the transfer must aim at Iraq, Syria and even
   Transjordan. For this purpose money will be found, much
   money; and only with this transfer could the country absorb
   millions of our brothers. There is no other alternative ... One
   should investigate now the neighboring countries in order to
   determine their capacity to absorb the Arabs of Eretz-Israel.

After the June 1967 war, most Israeli Jews and politicians, having decided that the transfer idea would not work, began to utilize state terrorism to control Palestinians. It should not be surprising, as a grouping of Israeli Jewish critics and commentators among others have pointed out, that some Palestinians have reacted to their and their people's oppression in the most violent manner. That violence, again not surprisingly, has provided a new claim of legitimacy for expelling Palestinians from their land within broad sectors of the Israeli public. In May, 2002, Labor Party Minister Ephraim Sneh proposed a new plan, which called for territorial exchange of Arab localities in Israel with West Bank Jewish settlements. Israeli governments have not settled their Palestinian problem by using excessive force. They have made the problem more severe.

The United States government supported the Israeli military incursions into the West Bank and Gaza. President Bush called Sharon a man of peace. In May both houses of Congress by overwhelming votes (94 to 2 in the Senate and 352 to 21 in the House) passed resolutions calling for full backing of the Sharon government's military actions. In a television interview, aired on MSNBC on 1 and 2 May, Dick Armey, the majority leader in the House, stated candidly: "Palestine is for the Jewish people. Sharon should keep all of the West Bank, Judea and Samaria. The Palestinian Arabs should be removed to other Arab countries." Many members of Congress publicly told the Sharon government not to deal with Arafat and to expel him from the West Bank and Gaza. They either did not know or did not care about a detailed Israeli Foreign Ministry memorandum, reported in the Israeli press on 3 May, that said the Sharon government's action had greatly strengthened Arafat as the political leader of the Palestinians and had been a "complete political disaster."

An increasing and significant number of Israeli Jews, some of whom are widely and highly respected, have, on the other hand, consistently and openly criticized in the Israeli Hebrew and English media, as well as in the media of some other countries, their government's actions as being criminal and terrorist. Four hundred Israeli army reservists have publicly protested against Israeli army actions in the West Bank. Ishai Munuchin, a major in the army reserve and the chairperson of Yesh Gvul, the soldiers' movement for selective refusal, wrote in his 9 May 2002, op-ed column that appeared in the New York Times:

   Depriving people of the right to equality and freedom,
   and keeping them under occupation, is by definition an
   undemocratic act. The occupation that has now lasted a
   generation and rules the lives of over 3 1/2 million Palestinians
   is what drives me, hundreds of other objectors in the armed
   forces and tens of thousands of Israeli citizens to oppose the
   government's policies and actions in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Israeli Council for Peace and Security, made up of 1,000 top-level retired army and intelligence officers, called for unconditional Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. Their published resolution labeled the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza a "strategic and moral liability for the state of Israel." Sixty thousand Israeli Jews demonstrated in Tel-Aviv the night of 11 May, advocating that Israel totally withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza. The 60,000 called for the dismantling of all Jewish settlements in these occupied areas. On 6 May, 247 Israeli university professors and lecturers in a published statement supported those who refused to serve in the army during its military incursion into the West Bank. The professors criticized the Israeli government for occupying and oppressing Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

The underlying problems of conflict, out of which violence has erupted, have intensified. Bush's call for a provisional and interim Palestinian state and Sharon's acknowledged acceptance of a Palestinian state existing at some time in the future have changed nothing. The undefined Bush state concept will most likely not contradict in essence the Sharon or Peres, Likud or Labor concept, which has remained substantively dissimilar to the Palestinian concept of an independent sovereign state. The Israeli use of the previously forbidden term, "Palestinian state," has been clearly defined as autonomous rule by Palestinians in certain parts of the Occupied Territory so long as the Israeli government does not object to what that autonomous rule is. As soon as the Israeli government objected, it would again go into the Palestinian state to enforce and control. This means that Israel would retain sovereignty. Menachem Begin, as Prime Minister, offered such a plan in 1978 and 1979 before and after the Camp David Agreement. The Israeli government's concept of a Palestinian state is not what Palestinians desire, nor what they want, nor what they need. On 30 May 2002, Sharon's own Likud Party members voted by a large majority for a resolution never to allow the creation of a Palestinian state. Even Sharon then opposed the resolution. The majority vote was orchestrated by Sharon's political rival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyabu. On 16 June, Sharon publicly declared that conditions were not right for the establishment of a Palestinian state; Sharon stated that negotiations could be considered only after Palestinian "terror" had ended and a new Palestinian political leadership was in place. On 24 June Bush agreed totally with Sharon on these points and called upon Palestinians to elect a new leadership. Bush's "suggestion" probably antagonized Palestinians even more and insured Arafat's reelection.

In a 9 August 2001 interview with the New York Times, former Prime Minister Barak advocated separating Palestinians by creating a security zone that would, he alleged, not only protect Israel behind the green line but would also protect at least 80 percent of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gala During 2002 Sharon, Barak and others advocated the building of an electronic fence in order to promote separation. In a speech delivered at Southern Connecticut State University, Barak contended that Israel should construct such a fence at a 700 million dollar cost in order to keep Palestinians behind the green line, which delineates Israel's pre-June 1967 borders. The Israeli army would be allowed to cross over into the West Bank and Gaza whenever the Israeli government decided that security concerns so warranted. In June 2002, the Israeli government ordered the actual beginning of fence construction in the West Bank. The building plan placed the fence construction well inside the Palestinian West Bank area.

The Israeli cabinet was split in opinion about building the fence. Many right-wing members opposed the construction, because they maintained that it would cut Israel into parts and established a possible boundary for a Palestinian state. Yitzhak Levy, a National Religious Party Knesset member, said that it was inconceivable that the government would consider such a plan. Benny Elon, the leader of another right-wing faction, argued that a fence should only exist to keep Palestinians in Jenin, Nablus and other cities, towns, and refugee camps in the West Bank. Most Jewish settlers opposed the fence, because they believed it could become a de-facto border along the pre-June 1967 line in a settlement with Palestinians, thus isolating or forcing the settlers to leave. Palestinians objected vociferously, stating that the path of construction was designed to protect Jewish settlements. Palestinians also objected, because the fence would block the estimated 25,000 Palestinians, who came into Israel each day to find work, thus further crippling the Palestinian economy. Arafat labeled the fence building an act of racism and a fascist apartheid measure.

Israel has continued to insist upon retaining and protecting, with its army, Jewish settlements and byroads in the West Bank and Gaza. These settlements end byroads divide the Palestinian population into former South African types of bantustans. Since June 1967, in flagrant violation of the fourth Geneva convention, Israel has moved 370,000 Jews into Occupied Territories to live in more than 140 illegal colonies. By 2002, Israeli colonies controlled nearly 42 percent of the West Bank. The number of settlers in the West Bank nearly doubled between 1993 and 2002. During the Sharon administration 34 new illegal colonies were established. The settlements have been and remain the major factor in undermining Palestinian confidence that Israel will withdraw to its 1967 borders. This lack of trust has been at the heart of the Palestinian resistance.

Israel has adamantly refused to allow any return of the 3.9 million Palestinian refugees or the 1,000,000 displaced Palestinians. Israel has consistently maintained that Jerusalem (east and west) will remain a united city under Israeli rule. Palestinians have rejected the Israeli positions in regard to these issues.

Since 1948, the great majority of Israeli Jews have not wavered in their belief and advocacy that Israel remain a Jewish state by Zionist definition, i.e., a state that grants fights and privileges to Jews not granted to non-Jews, even to those 1.2 million Palestinian citizens of the state. This means maintaining a significant Jewish majority of all citizens that controls the state regardless of the number of non-Jewish residents. In a 28 March 2002 CNN television interview, former Prime Minister Barak expressed the thinking of a majority of Israeli Jews. Commenting upon Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's peace proposal, Barak maintained that it was not sufficient for Arab governments to recognize officially Israel's existence and to establish normal relations. Arab governments would have to agree with and accept the proposition that Israel was and should remain a Zionist state.

The Zionist character of the state of Israel has remained the major cornerstone of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict since 1948. As such it must be understood if any meaningful, fair and just solution to the conflict is to be considered. The Zionism of Israel's character has remained primarily a secular Jewish nationalism; by definition, it has to do with the Jewish people. Zionism, as a secular nationalism, poses the existence of a specific Jewish people, the existence--past, present, and future--of anti-Semitism, and the continued need for the existence of a demographically, if not totally exclusive, Jewish state. In Zionism these concepts overlap one with another. The Jews are a people largely because of anti-Semitism. Jews have been discriminated against and persecuted as Jews by non-Jews, and as such have had, whether or not they liked and/or so wanted, a people-hood forced upon them. Within the context of this imposed, negatively oriented people-hood, Jews at times in history developed positive, cultural elements of nationalism.

A nation-state in which Jews constitute the majority, have the power, and control their own destinies, thus becomes a necessity in the Zionist purview for two reasons: anti-Semitism will continue to exist; that is, Jews will be discriminated against and persecuted in all nation-states wherein Jews are a minority; 2) only in a demographically Jewish state will Jews be able to develop fully the positive cultural elements of their nationalism.

Here, then, is the secular nationalism, i.e, the political Zionism, hinted at by some in the mid-nineteenth century but advocated earnestly in the 1880s by Theodor Herzl. For over a century, other theoreticians have disputed and refined various aspects of but have not fundamentally altered the nature of Herzl's advocacy. A worldwide Zionist movement, spearheaded by the World Zionist Organization, arose to lead the fight for the creation of a Zionist state. During and after the Nazi holocaust in the 1930s and early 1940s, the Zionist movement garnered great support from both Jews and non-Jews in various places. Finally, in 1947 the Zionist movement achieved its greatest success when the United Nations recommended the creation of the State of Israel in the Zionist image.

No reasonable doubt can exist that the Zionist State of Israel is exclusivist, discriminatory, and anti-democratic. The Zionist emphasis upon the continued existence of a demographically Jewish State, which is embodied in Israel's framework, makes it so. The so-called Israeli Declaration of Independence does not declare the existence of a sovereign, independent state of those who live there. Rather it declares a Jewish state for all the Jews of the world, about eleven million of whom reside outside and only slightly over five million in the State of Israel. In logical sequence, the State of Israel, lacking a constitution, has by legislation, together with practice, created two classes of citizenship: one for Jews and one for non-Jews. The law of return, which applies only to Jews, allows all bona-fide Jews from anywhere in the world to become citizens if they come to Israel and apply. Non-Jews who wish to immigrate to and become citizens may also apply. The government of Israel accepts or rejects applications, without explanations, and thus regulates the number of non-Jews who become citizens. In this way the government can ensure a Jewish majority of citizens. (Children of citizens, Jews and non-Jews, are automatically allowed to become citizens.) In Zionism, the demographically Jewish character of the state cannot be threatened. Yet this is only one feature of Israel's character. To keep the state Jewish, Israel has restrictive covenants regulating land ownership. Even the rental of properties, utilities, roads, agricultural subsidies, educational facilities, and housing are all tilted towards Jewish nationals; this results in deprivations, inferior status and lack of opportunity for non-Jewish nationals.

Most of the land in Israel belongs to or is administered by the Jewish National Fund. The Fund's provisions forbid non-Jews to dwell on its land or to begin businesses thereon. Ninety-two point five percent of the ample farm-land in the state of Israel cannot be sold, rented or leased to non-Jews, because it has been designated as Jewish National Fund land. All the instruments of Israeli rule support these restrictions.

Because of such policy many Israeli towns and cities that arose after 1948 have severely restricted the areas in which Palestinian citizens may live. Opposition to Palestinians' buying or renting an apartment or a house from a Jew has often been protected by the Israeli Ministry of Housing. The salvation of the land idea is taught in the Israeli school system. According to the Israeli Ministry of Education a saved piece of land is one that has been transformed to Jewish ownership. Land not yet saved is still in the possession of non-Jews. During the total period of the State of Israel's existence government officials have actually been involved in saving land--sometimes by employing force. The Israeli Ministry of Housing, for example, has a special unit called the Department for Jerusalem. While the Ministry of Housing has built apartments for Jews within the city, the Department for the Housing of Minorities has attempted to thin out Arabs by transferring them out of the city.

Far more extensive confiscation by Jews of former Palestinian land has occurred in the West Bank. Since June 1967, many West Bank Palestinians have continued to fear a Zionist super-plan designed to annex West Bank territory, referred to as "Judea and Samaria" by the extremely religious Jewish settlers and their backers.

After the eruption of the intifada in 2000, the wave of Palestinian terror attacks and the increased brutality of Israel's occupation of and incursions into the Palestinian territories, anti-Arab sentiments prompted more marginalization of the Palestinian and bedu in Israel. One illustrative example was the Israeli government's decision on 14 February 2002, to send light planes to spray with poisonous chemicals 12,000 dumams of crops in the southern Negev region. Bedu Arabs, citizens of the state of Israel, had for years cultivated these destroyed fields on ancestral lands that they claimed belonged to them. As reported in the newspaper, Maariv, on 15 February 2002, Avigdor Lieberman, the minister responsible for land management, explained: "We must stop their illegal invasion of state land by all possible means. The Bedouins have no regard for our laws. We are losing the last resources of state lands. One of my main missions is to return to the power of the Land Authority in dealing with the non-Jewish threat to our lands."

These extremely religious settlers and their backers have been the most potent advocates of the religious element within the mostly secular Zionist nationalism. Often referring to Palestinians as "foreign weeds" that must be uprooted and destroyed, these settlers have contributed heavily to Palestinian fears. Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, the head of a Jewish religious school in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, summarized well the position of these settlers in regard to the West Bank when he wrote the following in June, 2002:

   The unique attachment of the Children of Israel to the
   Land of Israel cannot be compared to the ties of any nation to
   its land. Our attachment originates in the Divine Plan of the
   Creation of Heaven and Earth. Our hand is destined to bring
   life to the Jewish people and the Jewish people are destined to
   bring life to the Land. Just as the Jewish nation, when in Exile,
   is described as "dry bones in a graveyard" (Ezekiel 37:11;12),
   in the same manner the Land of Israel, without the Jewish
   people is decreed to G-d to be "a desolate land" (Leviticus
   26:32). These divine decrees are the reality of the rebirth of
   the State of Israel, being nurtured by the faith, courage and
   devotion of generations of pioneers. This pioneering spirit has
   revealed astonishing powers of vitality repelling darkness and
   desolation by illuminating the Divine Light now emanating
   from the hills of Judea and Samaria. This light is meant to
   pierce the darkness of the countries surrounding the Land of
   Israel with a Divine blessing of progress and human values.

   Let us say clearly and strongly: We are not occupying
   foreign territories in Judea and Samaria. This is our ancient
   home. And thank G-d that we have brought it back to life.
   Unfortunately, some of our ancient towns in YESHA are still
   illegally occupied by foreigners, interfering with the Divine
   process of the redemption of Israel.

   Our responsibility to Jewish faith and Redemption
   commands us to speak up in a strong and clear voice. The
   Divine Process of uniting our people and our Land must not be
   clouded and weakened by seeming logical concepts of
   "security" and "diplomacy." They only distort the truth and
   weaken the justice of our cause, which is engraved in our
   exclusive national fights to our land. We are a people of faith.
   This is the essence of our eternal identity and the secret of our
   continued existence under all conditions.

   When hiding our identity, we were humiliated and
   trodden upon. The redemption process, bringing us back home
   to our land, has also brought us back to our true self, which can
   no longer be hidden. We have been brought back to the world
   stage, putting us back into a position of responsibility from
   which we will never shirk again. Only this clear, courageous
   and consistent expression of our position will eventually
   impress both friend and foe to respect the eternal reality of the
   Jewish people and the Land of Israel. (3)

At this time it is difficult to envision full, peaceful resolution of the conflict that would be fair, just and acceptable to both Palestinians and Israeli Jews. The off-repeated two-state solution is more fanciful than real. So long as Israel remains a Zionist state, the 1.2 million Palestinians who are citizens of the state will not have rights equal to those of Jewish citizens. The government of a Zionist state, moreover, will almost certainly not allow an independent, sovereign Palestinian state to exist in the West Bank and Gaza. In his important book, The Founding Myths of Israel, Zeev Sternbell, the Leon Blum professor of political science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote that Israel must give up its commitments to Zionism, to being a "Jewish state" and become a state of all its citizens. Jews and their religious and cultural heritage, Sternhell maintained, should not be given higher priority status than non-Jews and their heritage. Sternhell concluded that peace would prevail only when Israel became a liberal, secular state. (4)

For those who agree, peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will probably not be forthcoming in the near future.

ENDNOTES

(1.) Camille Mansour, "The Impact of 11 September on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," Journal of Palestinian Studies. Vol. XXXI, No. 2 (Winter, 2002), pp. 5-18.

(2.) Tanya Reinhart, "Evil Unleashed," Tikkun Vol. 17, No. 2 (March/April 2002).

(3.) Eliezer Waldman, "Truth and Clarity in Judea and Samaria," The Jewish Press, 21 June 2002, pp. 9 and 28.

Norton Mezvinsky is a Professor of History at the Central Connecticut State University.