Carla Garrison

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Washington, DC - In his now-notable May 19 Middle East speech, President Obama said, “The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states” (Speech video at PBS).

That simple sentence, seemingly benign to the casual listener, spoke volumes to Jews and Arabs alike, and marked a very public picking of sides by an American president, for the first time since World War II.

Security for the Jews and Palestinians will not result from a return to the same artificial lines on a map drawn by the United Nations in 1947, or any other time.

Why?

When people refuse to recognize each other's basic human rights over long periods of time, they cannot live in close quarters peacefully.

Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal said, “For many years, it has been the conventional wisdom of Arab-Israeli peace processors that the conflict was, at heart, territorial, and that it could be resolved if only Israel and its neighbors could agree on a proper border. For many years, too, it has been conventional wisdom that if only the conflict could be resolved, other distempers of the Muslim world—from dictatorship to terrorism—would find their own resolution.”

Forty-Four years later the battle continues

On Sunday, the 44th anniversary of the 1967 six-day war, protesters emerging from Syria marched on the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, according to the Wall Street Journal. Updates claim 11 dead and 120 injured when Israeli soldiers fired at the feet of protestors after first shouting verbal warnings over loudspeakers, fired into the air, and released tear gas, without deterring the advancing crowd.

This was the second time in three weeks that pro-Palestinian protesters in Syria and Lebanon sought to challenge Israeli forces in border regions. According to the WSJ, the uprisings are inspired by popular domestic demonstrations around the Arab world.

In 1967, over a six-day period, tiny Israel roundly defeated Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. They destroyed the Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi air forces, along with Egyptian tanks, capturing the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Conflict remained close to a boil since the 1956 Suez Crisis, when Israel joined with Britain and France to push back the Egyptians, led by Gamal Nasser, as they sought to take control of the vital Suez Canal.

While the Egyptians were defeated, they received control of the canal with promises to allow all nations free passage. United Nations peace keeping forces remained, serving in part as a buffer between Egypt and Israel.

Then, in 1967, Nasser expelled the United Nations, set-up a concentration of Egyptian military forces in the Suez zone, and closed off the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping via a naval blockade. The Israeli’s sensed an impending attack and struck first.

Israel won areas of great strategic value in the West Bank as a result, but living in those areas were approximately 600,000 Arabs. Some of these people seeded the Palestine Liberation Organization and the many other pro-Palestinian organizations to come, becoming the source of human rights violations, “the right of return” debate, and so much unresolved conflict and violence.

Listening to their words reveals attitude

Jimmy Carter, former U.S. president and author of the controversial book, Palestine Peace not Apartheid, responded quickly to Obama’s statement with an opinion piece in the New York Times stating: “It was not a new U.S. policy concerning the borders of Israel, nor should it have been surprising to Israeli leaders…U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 of Nov. 22, 1967, concluded the war of that year and has been widely acknowledged by all parties to be the basis for a peace agreement.”

Carter points out that the key phrases are, “emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war,” and “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” These included the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, plus lands belonging to Lebanon, Egypt and Syria.”

Contrast Carter’s words with those of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his speech to AIPAC later that week, in describing what it meant to Jews when Israel once again became a state following World War II:  

“For the first time in two thousand years, a sovereign Jewish people could defend itself against attack. Before that, we were subjected to unremitting savagery: the bloodletting of the Middle Ages, the expulsion of the Jews from England, Spain and Portugal, the wholesale slaughter of the Jews of the Ukraine, the pogroms in Russia, culminating in the greatest evil of all - the Holocaust. The founding of Israel did not stop the attacks on the Jews. It merely gave the Jews the power to defend themselves against those attacks.”

For Carter, perhaps for Obama, and for many others looking for a formula to tidy-up the inconvenient issues surrounding the on-going violence, poor living conditions for Palestinians and continued threats against the entire nation of Israel, the focus is on a resolution written by the United Nations. A simple statement - “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” – does not wash away 4000 years of on-going struggle among peoples of the Middle East.

Peace begins with acknowledgement and leads to territory

Suppressing human rights is wrong. A people without a nation to house their identity, an economy, education, infrastructure and so forth will become haggard and unproductive. This was the plight of Jews for two thousand years, and is now the plight of those who exist in the contested grottos of the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights. Both sides have often fueled this godforsaken condition.

Netanyahu answered the criticism in the same AIPAC speech: “My government has consistently shown its commitment to peace in both word and deed… President Abbas, come and negotiate peace…Just as the Palestinians expect Israel to recognize a Palestinian state, we expect the Palestinians to recognize the Jewish state. My government has removed hundreds of roadblocks, barriers and checkpoints facilitating Palestinian movement. As a result, we have helped spur a fantastic boom in the Palestinian economy (Coffee Shops, restaurants, businesses, even multiplex theaters). And we announced an unprecedented moratorium on new Israeli construction in Judea and Samaria.”

Speaking in Ramallah on May 25 in response to Obama and Netanyahu’s speeches, Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he will not "put solutions before restarting peace talks."

He went on to tell Palestinian leaders that he will seek United Nations recognition for an independent Palestinian state in September, even though Obama expressed objections to this tact. "Approaching the United Nations does mean to internationally isolate Israel as President Obama claimed in his recent speech," Abbas said.

Meanwhile, in Gaza on May 22, Sami Abu Zuhri, Islamic Hamas movement spokesperson said in a press statement sent to reporters that Hamas will not recognize Israel and called on Abbas to reconsider the Middle East peace process. 

No peace will last as long as rhetoric and prejudice prevail. Words matter. Attitudes matter. America has been the only feasible arbiter of the negotiations, and soothing that must precede first an end to violence, then real steps toward human rights, and finally negotiated territories. Obama has now shown his hand and, as a result, lost credibility to preside over the negotiating table. 

Writer, Carla Garrison follows current events with one eye on history and one eye on the future.  Her goal is to encourage people to think critically about their lives and the world. She’s on Twitter at CarlaMGarrison and Facebook.

-cl- 6/6/11

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