Somewhat to my surprise I found myself in agreement with quite a bit in Biden Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today. It takes him quit a bit of meandering but he finally gets around to the real point of his op-ed:
France, the U.K., Canada and Australia should adopt, and the U.S. should embrace, a time-bound, conditions-based path toward recognizing a Palestinian state. Start and end points are a must, because no one will accept an endless process. Palestinians need a clear and near horizon for political self-determination.
Recognition should also be conditions-based. While Palestinians have a right to self-determination, with that right comes responsibility. No one should expect Israel to accept a Palestinian state that is led by Hamas or other terrorists, that is militarized or has independent armed militias, that aligns with Iran or others that reject Israel’s right to exist, that educates and preaches hatred of Jews or Israel, or that, unreformed, becomes a failed state.
Then, after more meandering:
Israelis can’t operate under the illusion that Palestinians will accept being a non-people without national rights. Palestinians, meanwhile, can’t hold on to their vision of a Palestine that runs “from the river to the sea.” Seven million Israeli Jews, two million Israeli Arabs and some five million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are rooted in the same region. No one is going anywhere, whatever the delusions of extremists on both sides.
There are some niggling little questions that remain. The available polling data suggests that the preponderance of Palestinians think that Hamas should continue to govern Gaza; Hamas is more popular than the PLO among many Palestinians. Furthermore, the percentage of Israelis who support ethnically cleansing (whatever euphemism is used for it) Palestinians from Gaza and even the West Bank is rising not declining. What if the principles reject Mr. Blinken’s conditions? What then?
In preemptive response, there are three different groups of Jews in Israel: the Ashikenazi whose ancestors came there from Germany, Poland, Russia, etc.; the Sephardic whose ancestors came from southern Europe and North Africa; and the Mizrahi whose ancestors have been in what is now Israel and Palestine for as long as anyone can determine.
DNA testing of those populations has suggested that they more closely resemble each other than the Ashkenazic resembles Germans and Poles or the Sephardic resemble Spanish or Italian people. In other words they are not Europeans. Furthermore, genetically they’re more like the Arab populations of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine than they are like Europeans. In other words Jews residing in Israel is not “European colonization” in any meaningful sense.
This quandary is similar to the talks with Russia regarding Ukraine. If either side refuses to give, the meat grinder continues.
The additional tragedy is that in both conflicts each of the adversaries sees the conflict as existential. Feel free to dismiss one or the others’ viewpoints but that’s how they see it.
So if you are genetically similar to the locals, move away for 400-500 years, you are entitled to come back and take the land where your ancestors lived? I really dont understand that logic. Anyway, I think there is too much focus on what happened hundreds of years ago and who started what. It’s pretty clear, I think, that both parties have engaged in a lot of killing of the other and a lot of generally awful treatment of the other when they are able to do so.
At this point the Israelis have all of the power and I expect this to be pure power play politics. They have the support of the US so they are going to ignore everyone else.
Steve
The Mizrahi, a third of the Jews in Israel, never moved away. Do you understand that? And the genetic continuity refutes the assertion that Israel is an instance of European colonization.