Political Days of Awe

According to Jewish tradition, the Almighty weighs our deeds and judges us in the ten days between Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This period is called “Days of Awe,” a metaphor that also accurately evokes the current state of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.

We find ourselves poised between the opening of talks and a widely expected crisis around the end of September, when Israel’s building freeze in the territories ends. As Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners detest the freeze, he fears he cannot get an extension even through his cabinet. PA Prime Minister Abbas, meanwhile, has announced that he will leave the talks if building resumes. President Obama is publicly urging Israel to extend the freeze. 

Israeli commentators have offered Netanyahu suggestions for untying the knot: swap right-wing coalition partners for the center-left parties; limit renewed construction to the settlement blocs that are expected to remain within Israel; declare an end to the freeze but continue it de facto by placing administrative obstacles in the path of settlers. But success in side-stepping a crisis requires that both parties want these negotiations to continue. A resolution to the building-freeze challenge will test Netanyahu’s political skills and Abbas’s commitment to the negotiating process.

At the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu surprisingly suggested continuing the building freeze in return for an immediate declaration by the Palestinians that they recognize Israel as the Jewish state. International media have given this little attention and the Palestinians have not yet indicated any interest. Netanyahu’s proposal is a critical test of Palestinian intentions. Will they finally make the concession that all serious observers understand will have to be made? 

Despite almost two decades of peace negotiations, the only significant event of 1948 for Palestinians has remained the Nakba (catastrophe, in Arabic) – the military defeat that led to the flight of Palestinian refugees. Few, if any, empathize with the Israeli view that the creation of a Jewish state constituted a revolutionary act of historic significance by the long-oppressed Jewish People to take their fate into their own hands.

Should the Palestinians respond positively, Netanyahu’s proposal could turn the building-freeze issue from a crisis into a huge step forward. While a Palestinian acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state remains unlikely, we must recall, in these days of awe, that sometimes leaders rise above their narrow political limitations. 

If it is to last, a final resolution to the conflict must include mutual recognition—not only Israeli and Jewish recognition of Palestinian Arab statehood, but also Palestinian recognition of the justice, historical legitimacy, and moral validity of the Jewish people’s self-determination in its homeland. 

This is the fourth parleying process in a decade. Failure could prove disastrous, putting wind in the sails of Iran-sponsored Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah; encouraging the anti-Israel chimera of a “one-state solution”; and undercutting progress already made toward the building of a Palestinian state on the West Bank. At this juncture, the negotiations are the very opposite of a “zero-sum-game”—nobody needs to win for everyone to lose.

First published at http://bit.ly/1nw8fh9