Opinion

February 15, 2011

Israel must get the monkey of occupation off its back

By Lara Friedman

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Although the events that swept through Egypt in recent weeks had little to do with Israel, they still hold profound lessons for Israel.  The most important lesson is that Israel must break its addiction to occupation and settlements.

The link between the occupation and Israel’s relationship with Egypt (and by extension, the entire Arab world), dates back to 1978, when Israel and Egypt struck their historic bargain with the Camp David Accords.  That agreement delivered enormous security benefits for Israel. It meant that Israel was no longer forced to fight wars to defend its very existence.  It paved the way for peace with Jordan and for the Arab Peace Initiative, which holds the promise of full peace and normalization between Israel and the entire region.  It opened the door for Israel to truly become part of the Middle East.

But many people forget: the bargain in the Camp David Accords was not simply the Sinai in exchange for peace.  It also required Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  Even in 1978, the occupation was a bone in the throat of Anwar Sadat, just as it would be for Hosni Mubarak, and just as it will inevitably become for any future Egyptian leader.

But Israel never followed through with that second part of the Camp David Accords.  Israel relinquished the Sinai and pocketed peace with Egypt, apparently confident that Sadat (and later Mubarak) would overlook the fact that Menachem Begin’s promise was never fulfilled.

Over the decades that followed, Israel’s Camp David commitment to end the occupation was forgotten.  Over time, a status quo set in.  The occupation grew more entrenched with each passing year.  Its champions – in Israel and the U.S. – doggedly defended it as necessary for Israel’s security and insisted it could be sustained in perpetuity.

They were wrong.  They are still wrong. 

The pro-status quo crowd’s reactions to the fall of Mubarak betray their recognition of this fact.  They understand that peace with Egypt these past 30 years hung on Mubarak’s readiness to overlook Israel’s failure to fully implement the Camp David Accords and end the occupation.  They understand that any future Egyptian government that is more accountable to its population will have a much harder time doing so.  They know, whether they admit it or not, that the occupation is a constant source of humiliation, frustration, and outrage to Arabs across the region, just as ill-treatment of Jews anywhere provokes outrage among fellow Jews, wherever they may be.

Their reactions also betray how deep their addiction to occupation and settlements has become, and how frightened they are at losing one of the main enablers of that addiction.  The absence of accountable governments in the Middle East these past decades has allowed Israel to operate under the delusion that its policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians need not have any bearing on its relations with its neighbors.  These governments, in effect, acted as enablers as Israel’s self-destructive addiction to occupation and settlements deepened.

No more.  The Arab world today is opening a new chapter in which governments will have to be more responsive to the views of their people.  While Israel’s concerns about the future of its peace agreement with Egypt are understandable, this change in the Arab world could turn out to be good for Israel, for a number of reasons.  Not the least of these is the fact that addictions are hard to break under any circumstances, but they are especially hard to break when the addict is surrounded by enablers.

The door for Israel to be accepted as part of the Middle East, first opened in 1978, is still open today – and with it is an opportunity for Israel to forge new relations with the region and its people on the basis of a shared interest in a stable, secure, prosperous region.  But in order to walk through that door, Israel must first get the monkey of occupation and settlements off its back.

This is a lesson that must be absorbed in Israel, where the addiction must be broken, for Israel’s own sake.  And it is a lesson that must be learned in Washington, which remains today Israel’s greatest enabler, and which has at stake not only its concern for Israel but its interests in the entire region.

Lara Friedman is the Director of Policy & Government Relations for Americans for Peace Now.

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Oh Lara, one more faux Jew writing in the faux “Jewish"Journal.  Between 1948 and the the Six Day War in 1968 when Israel captured the West Bank, it was held by Jordan.  And guess what: Jordan never offered the Palestinians a state, the Palestinians never requested one, and pre 1968 THE PALESTINIANS AND SURROUNDING MUSLIMS CONTINUED TO TRY TO KILL JEWS AND DESTROY ISRAEL.  Got that faux Jew Lara - it’s not the occupation, it’s that Muslims in the Middle East are not willing to live with a Jewish Israel.  That’s the whole story.  Period.

Comment by george on 2/15/11 at 5:25 pm

And as the faux “Jewish” Journal slips ever further into the slime pits currently occupied by KPFK and the Nation, how much longer before the Jewish community rises up in revolt and boycotts the paper until it either goes out of business or finds a pro Jewish publisher?

Comment by george on 2/15/11 at 5:27 pm

it is hard to understand that some people is asking Israel towithdraw from “Palestinian” territories when there is still not a peace treaty with the Palestinians
What has the withrawal from South Lebanon and from the Gaza Strip brought to Israel ?

Comment by ralph on 2/16/11 at 2:43 am

Honey, you need to go back to school and take a bona fide history course.  The land is not occupied, you dimwit.  Like the others said, it was annexed as a result of a war.  Are you a mole or something?

Comment by Tzippo. on 2/16/11 at 7:50 am

If it was annexed and it’s not occupied territory then Israel is an apartheid state. Which way do you want it? If Israel wants to absorb the Palestinians and give them Israeli citizenship and equal rights instead of withdrawing from the territory then let them do it. It can all be a democratic Israel. Then the Palestinians can vote, outnumber and change the government democratically.

Comment by Jared on 2/16/11 at 12:59 pm

Reading what is shared here, at the Jewish Jpurnal, for the most part, tells me that few have an understanding that Jews, Muslims and Arabs following Christianity lived in peace before outside influences began their assault on the middle east to serve their gr$$dy agenda’s.

It’s gr$$d and those who serve prejudice that cause all the problems facing the world. No matter who fuels it hate feeds on itself and serves those who want people to be divided. It serves the masters who would enslave the entire world if they could pull if off. Israel serves one purpose when it comes to those who protect her

Comment by Barbara William on 2/16/11 at 1:29 pm

no matter her governments cruelness towards the Palestinians and, for that matter, anyone, like Rachel Corey, that get in their way, etc., GR$$D!

It is a godsend that some Jews, even in Israel, are not behind the horrors being done in the name of Israelis right to be! No one has the right to kill another’s child in the name of God! No one.. Hate and prejudice feed at the alter of despair. Whoever fuels these pernicious emotions feeds the enemies of PEACE!

Comment by Barbara William on 2/16/11 at 1:31 pm

Barbara, can you dumb it down for me please? Not everyone is capable of understanding your level of sophistication.

Comment by Avi on 2/16/11 at 4:40 pm

Lara, the “occupation” is a “bone in the throat” of Israelis as well. But where is your evidence that “the door for Israel to be accepted as part of the Middle East”? Have the Arabs forgone on their demand for right of return? Are they showing Israel on their maps? Why are you acting as though Oslo has never existed? What’s in your mind the “right” number of Israelis to be sacrificed for the “peace process” experiment? What gives you, an American Jew, the moral rights to be so generous with Israeli lives and land?

Comment by Avi on 2/16/11 at 4:56 pm

Avi..Truth of what all of this continues to cause in the lives of many, including the children, does not seem to concern you. Sarcasm is your style. Arrogance & Sarcasm, along with gr$$dy hearts, is killing any chance of peace anywhere in the world. Try growing up, if you can? That would be a great place to start..

Comment by Barbara William on 2/17/11 at 6:01 pm

Barbara Williams
What the hell are you talking about? The lands in question are Jewish dating from 70 generations back. The term occupation is an oxymoron, an implicit impossibility. The Arabs are killing Jewish children in the name of God and greed; the reverse is not true. If you have a heart and you are not a hypocrite, you must join the Zionist cause and reserve your criticism for the foreign Arab colonial occupation of the eternal Jewish inheritance, the Holy Land.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 2/21/11 at 12:24 am

Ben Plonie, if you read Barbara’s scribble you would notice that the problem is not in her heart.

Comment by Avi on 2/21/11 at 9:16 am

She is the one to introduce the word ‘heart’ and exhibit phony concern for the children, the children, the children. The non-Jewish children of course, not the Jewish ones with no legs and burnt skin and nails or bullets in their heads or just killed. I don’t really expect her to respond in a rational way.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 2/21/11 at 10:36 am

One of your Zionist children in Israel, when some folks were attempting to assist a family about to see their home, going back generations, Bulldozed, said with every explicit he could muster up. “WE KILLED YOUR JESUS & WE"LL DO IT AGAIN” How Dare you patronize me with your self-righteous attitude. You sound, both of you, like Jews who bandstand but know nothing of the culture you were born into. I AM NOT ANTI-SEMITIC!

Drunk Zionist Israeli Punk Says Jews killed Jesus & Will Kill Palestinians http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UCpWqWkInk
How gr$$dy are the Palistinians when they are living in proverty.

Comment by Barbara William on 2/24/11 at 12:14 pm

Do your homework, that is if your not Zionist who have killed your own people when it suited you.. Jews, Zionist, have killed their own because some Jews who honor the lord cannot abide by the hypocrisy! Both of you are mean spirited. I don’t care how far the land goes back in Jewish history those Jews that came in after the 2nd world war were not part of that region, period. Talk about an oxymoron! Native Americans could very well use that argument as could many other cultures in the world who were dispersed due to conquerors or having been in other lands for many years and, when they returned, the area of their ancestors had changed..

Comment by Barbara Williams on 2/24/11 at 12:20 pm

Many folks who are Israeli are not in step with the likes of Netanyahu. If you and your ilk are so sure that you have all these rights, when this régimes actions are brutal in nature how “Dare” you believe that American’s need to support you, with American tax dollars, anymore then you hope we do not support the rights of Palestinians..  The arrogance is mind-blowing. Israelis government is not serving “We” American’s they are doing what gr$$d does best. Serving that very thing that always got some Jews, tribes of Abraham, in trouble with God throughout the old and the new testaments!

Comment by Barbara Williams on 2/24/11 at 12:23 pm

This element always invokes God when it’s convenient. Always yell Anti-Semitism and use hard core bully tactics when Zionist want to back someone off..

(Alexis de Tocqueville once observed that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth. Certainly it has been easier for the world to accept the Zionist lie that Jews were evicted from Muslim lands because of anti-Semitism, and that Israelis, never the Arabs, were the pursuers of peace. The truth is far more discerning: bigger players on the world stage were pulling the strings.  http://www.turntoislam.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40148 )

Comment by Barbara Williams on 2/24/11 at 12:24 pm

At a time when the first followers of the Zionist movement began streaming into the Holy Land in large numbers, defiling the holiness of the land, and by virtue of their idiotic ideas began to work to expel the Arabs who had been living there for centuries in order to establish a Zionist state.

The Zionists first approached the British authorities by pretending to present themselves as the representatives of the Jewish nation, who desired to establish a “national home” without any regard whatsoever of the fact that the vast majority of the Jewish People opposed Zionism in those days. However, through their various contacts, the Zionists managed to bring about the Balfour Declaration

Comment by Barbara Williams on 2/24/11 at 12:26 pm

known among our rabbis of the time as the Baal Peor Declaration – a pun referring to the idolatry mentioned in the Bible), based on the “right” of the Jews to establish a state in Palestine, and ultimately the state itself to our great misfortune.  http://www.nkusa.org/Historical_Documents/YDeHaan.cfm }

God did not, in his time, give back the lost lands. Jews were told they would not have the promised land until God in his time made it so.. God had nothing to do with the politics before after the second world war. Nothing! Men doing what men do best covering the assets, resources, lands of others made this Zionist move back into the lands of Israel possible,,

Comment by Barbara Williams on 2/24/11 at 12:26 pm

All who are extreme in their faith, Christians, Muslims and Jews, are enemies of Gods flock. Jesus made it clear. Love one another as I have loved you.. The God that led the Jews out of Egypt using Moses was stern and angered by their false God antics, as was Moses, and that was the beginning of Jews being dispersed throughout the world.

You and others have the right to your opinions. You do not have the right to your own facts! Get out of that hateful mode. Understand that children, no matter whose child it may be, are being punished for something they don’t even understand. Hate is a learned emotion….As is LOVE!

Comment by Barbara Williams on 2/24/11 at 12:27 pm

Ya know, it’s ironic to watch the convergence of views of the clear cut antisemites like “Barbara Williams” and the leftist “Jews” like Lara Friedman.  I actually can deal with gentile anti semites, they are the cost of being a “light onto the nations”.  It’s the Lara Friedman’s of the world that most bother me - to think their ancestors once directly received the word of Gd at Sinai, and three thousand years later they are enablers of those who would murder the Jews.  Gd weeps.

Comment by george on 2/24/11 at 12:30 pm

Ya know what bothers me George? Your mind. It’s closed! You’re so sure of your opinions you refuse to listen to other points of view. I shared some very interesting points for you to ponder. I know you’ve not taken a look at my offerings. CLOSED MINDS, stiff necks, are the problem many of GODS children have. If you respected the lord, God, you would not “Dare” abbreviate GOD! There’s no doubt God weeps. God weeps for all of creation…I’ll pray for you George. An anti-semite would not!

Comment by Barbara Williams on 2/24/11 at 12:47 pm

Whether it be a human being or the other critters of this planet all deserve LOVE & RESPECT! 
Yuval’s Pit bull rescue in Israel. THE ONLY PIT BULL RESCUE IN ISRAEL!

http://yuvalhelpsdogs.chipin.com/yuval-mendelovitz-dog-rescue  

http://www.2all.co.il/web/Sites/OsherDog_shelter/DEFAULT.asp

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=101147323773

Comment by Barbara Williams on 2/24/11 at 1:02 pm

“Barbara”, I’m trying to come up with a descriptive word for you: so far “nutjob” is beating out “antisemite”.

Comment by george on 2/24/11 at 10:22 pm

George, or whatever you’re really called, you’re a coward. Have a good life!

Comment by Barbara Williams on 2/25/11 at 1:04 am

Barbara William
Everybody is sick of your antisemitic stereotyping and slander. Someone like you has as much insight into the culture I was born into than a squirrel in the park. And as little insight into the culture of our genocidal enemies as well. Under the guise of do-gooding you are literally subscribed to evil. If you were a person of faith I would call you a Satan worshiper. As it is I will have to settle for a Soros worshiper.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 2/25/11 at 5:25 am

Barbara William
Capturing a drunk teenager on a videotape is like shooting a fish in a barrel. Where’s the context? What led up to this moment? Here is a tough and brave boy who has lived his whole life under harrassment of primitive lying stealing squatting evil savages, whose parents and community daily endures rock throwing, tree destruction, sheep stealing, cursing and shoving and bullets, who has attended funerals of neighbors. Not to mention the harrassment of foreigners like you and foreign funded NGO’s, as well as the non-support of their government and international opposition. He is truly a child of Abraham, the man standijgn alone against the entire world.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 2/25/11 at 5:25 am

Barbara William
What he said certainly did not sound nice, but it came from a place of pain, the fact of the matter you or your partners in perfidy were standing on his land and the land God gave to him. While if there was an Arab family really there for generations which I douubt, it could not have been for more than two generations when the Jews were forcibly expelled from those lands by Arab rioters and their British enebalers, and they squatted illegally there anyway. Arabs are not indeigenous to Israal or Palestine or Canaan or anywhere in the middle east except Arabia for that matter.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 2/25/11 at 5:29 am

Barbara William
If there was an Arab home really was being bulldozed which I doubt, it could only be because they committed and enabled crimes against innocent Jewish civilizns. Rachel Corrie was trying to protect not a house but a house covering a tunnel used to smuggle heavy weapons into Gaza. I notice you people are never around when the PA or Hamas bulldozed a home of someone they don’t like for some reason.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 2/25/11 at 5:31 am

Barbara William
If you want to know what’s going on we could spend all day and all night on the MEMRI and Palestine Media Watch websites to learn about the propaganda and incitement against the Jews that have supposedly been part of every so-called peace negotiation between Israel and the Arabs.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 2/25/11 at 5:32 am

Barbara William
If you really cared about children you would be moaning about the lies fed to Arab Children in their very textbooks, not to mention television on children’s shows, with ‘commercials’ showing martyrs in heaven having a great time, and training camps for children where they are given combat instruction, and being kicked and beaten into compliance. This is now another ruined Arab generation thanks to you, ensuring that there can be no peace even if it stopped today for at least two more Arab generations until the poison has been diluted.

Have an awesome day.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 2/25/11 at 5:33 am

To Avi, Ben and others
Sharon was never convicted a mass morder. That is on of reasons why we do not have peace in the M. East

Comment by Pelle on 3/15/11 at 1:37 pm

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