Pragmatism may bring peace to Mideast

Geoff Sifrin

TAKING ISSUE

Partly because Pretoria is not Jerusalem, and the Magaliesberg is not the hills of Judea and Samaria. The religious sites between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean are claimed by a huge portion of the world’s population – billions of Christians, Muslims and Jews. Citing “ownership” of a particular spot because of a Divine promise, ensures there will never be peace.

Muslims have done that: “Muslim land is forever Muslim – therefore we cannot accept the Jewish state of Israel!”

The Zionist movement was wise enough not to do that. Israel was successfully created partly because Theodor Herzl’s Zionism defined itself as a political, not religious movement, and could therefore make necessary compromises.

David Ben-Gurion accepted the UN’s partition plan and declared the state of Israel in 1948 even though its borders did not include numerous Jewish holy sites. The pragmatic approach.

A potentially problematic line was taken by Israel’s new Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely last month upon taking office, when she said the promise of the Land of Israel by G-d to the Jewish people as recorded in the Torah, should be cited in defending Israel’s rights internationally. Which immediately sets the Torah in confrontation with the Qur’an and the Christian Bible. “Your” G-d against “my” G-d.

If Hotovely’s approach were to dominate politically – that we cannot negotiate about a Palestinian state in the West Bank because “G-d promised us Judea and Samaria” – there will be no two-state solution.

This is not a left-versus-right issue, but has to do with Israel’s survival as a Jewish state. A heated debate took place on Monday at the Herzliya Conference between two rightwing Likud politicians – Hotovely and former top Likud Minister Dan Meridor. She opposed the two-state solution, he defended it.

Meridor said that reliance on the Torah regarding Israeli rights to the land, “endangers our ability to manage this difficult conflict with reason and maybe also solve it when the day finally comes”.

In the Israeli Declaration of Independence no reference to religious rights to the Land of Israel are made: “We cite the history, and not the religion that explains we left the land because we sinned and were exiled from it.”

He wants Israel to submit a plan to the UN to establish a Palestinian state based on the 1949 Armistice lines “with changes”, which were agreed to by former US President George W Bush and current President Barack Obama.

Without this, as former Israeli President Shimon Peres warned at the Herzliya Conference, Israel would eventually become an Arab state with a Jewish minority.

When negotiations are cast in political, pragmatic terms, all sorts of things become possible, such as co-operating with countries you thought would always be enemies. For decades, Saudi Arabia was a foe – an ultra-conservative Muslim country. Now it appears the Saudis may be allies (of a sort), based on pragmatism.

A credible opinion poll conducted recently found the Saudi public more concerned about threats from Iran and Islamic State than Israel – only 18 per cent saw Israel as the main enemy. The vast majority – 85 per cent! – support a 2002 Arab Peace Initiative offering Israel peace with dozens of Arab and Muslim countries in exchange for withdrawing from territories captured in the 1967 war and establishing a Palestinian state.

The proposal came from the Arab League, and was re-endorsed at the Riyadh Summit in 2007. Israel cannot accept every detail of the plan, but as a starting point for negotiations, there is much to work with.

The threat from Iran and Islamic State have created mutual interests between Israel and pragmatic Arab regimes like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. It is time for the pragmatists – Israeli and Arab – to seize the moment.

Geoff Sifrin is former editor of the SAJR. He writes this column in his personal capacity