Towards an evidence-based discourse about the Arab-Israeli conflict – who is responsible?
In my first blog, I called for an evidence-based approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. That seems entirely uncontentious. I have yet to encounter anyone who opposes it. Why, then, do so many critics of Israel ignore almost all of the evidence?
I can think of a few reasons but let us clarify language at the outset. Evidence does not mean “arguments that I muster to support my point of view” since that sets up an endless reiteration of a vicious circle of prejudice. Evidence means the objectively verifiable facts relating to the conflict. There is no room here for the fatuous post-modernist concept of “competing narratives.” Either something happened or it didn’t.
Perhaps the most crucial piece of evidence that all parties should be capable of affirming relates to the so-called “two sate solution.” The conflict may be characterised as a territorial one between two peoples struggling to establish sovereignty over a tiny scrap of territory. All attempts to mediate have proposed a stunningly obvious and simple answer – share it. The British thought they had implemented such a solution when they carved an Arab state, Transjordan, out of the Jewish National Home in 1922 but that failed to meet Arab aspirations. The Jewish leadership, in an act of extraordinary generosity motivated by a desire for peace, acquiesced both in that initial partition and in later attempts to divide the remaining 22% of Palestine that lay west of the River Jordan. And indeed two states for two peoples (Jewish and Arab) could have been brought into existence in the 1930s had both sides accepted the Peel Commission proposal of 1937.
Why didn’t it happen? The Jewish leadership reluctantly agrees to the idea, subject to negotiation, while the Arab leadership rejected it outright – fact. Then in 1947, the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine proposed the same, albeit with slightly different boundaries. Again, it didn’t happen because the Jewish leadership accepted partition while the Arab leadership rejected it – fact. In neither case did the Arab opposition derive from the precise details of the proposal but to its principal. Their view was expressed repeatedly and explicitly – no Jewish state, within whatever borders might be suggested, would be acceptable in any form whatsoever. There are no “competing narratives” and to insist that there are merely obfuscates.
Over the years there have been many opportunities to resolve the conflict through negotiations based on that formula that all moderate commentators agree provides the only means of an equitable settlement. Think of all the misery that could have been avoided had both sides signed up to it when it was first proposed. That is the true tragedy – that the entire conflict and its myriad consequences could have been avoided. That it wasn’t cannot be attributed to anything other than the incontrovertible fact that one side refused to agree to it and expressed that refusal violently. And that side was the Arab/Palestinian one. Whatever transpired subsequently, the Arab leadership bears the entire moral culpability for the initiation – and to a large extent the perpetuation – of the conflict through their persistent refusal to accept the two-state solution. That is not my opinion. That is an evidence-based statement that is fundamental to any fair-minded and clear analysis of the problem.
Isra-Prof
In my first blog, I called for an evidence-based approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. That seems entirely uncontentious. I have yet to encounter anyone who opposes it. Why, then, do so many critics of Israel ignore almost all of the evidence?
I can think of a few reasons but let us clarify language at the outset. Evidence does not mean “arguments that I muster to support my point of view” since that sets up an endless reiteration of a vicious circle of prejudice. Evidence means the objectively verifiable facts relating to the conflict. There is no room here for the fatuous post-modernist concept of “competing narratives.” Either something happened or it didn’t.
Perhaps the most crucial piece of evidence that all parties should be capable of affirming relates to the so-called “two sate solution.” The conflict may be characterised as a territorial one between two peoples struggling to establish sovereignty over a tiny scrap of territory. All attempts to mediate have proposed a stunningly obvious and simple answer – share it. The British thought they had implemented such a solution when they carved an Arab state, Transjordan, out of the Jewish National Home in 1922 but that failed to meet Arab aspirations. The Jewish leadership, in an act of extraordinary generosity motivated by a desire for peace, acquiesced both in that initial partition and in later attempts to divide the remaining 22% of Palestine that lay west of the River Jordan. And indeed two states for two peoples (Jewish and Arab) could have been brought into existence in the 1930s had both sides accepted the Peel Commission proposal of 1937.
Why didn’t it happen? The Jewish leadership reluctantly agrees to the idea, subject to negotiation, while the Arab leadership rejected it outright – fact. Then in 1947, the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine proposed the same, albeit with slightly different boundaries. Again, it didn’t happen because the Jewish leadership accepted partition while the Arab leadership rejected it – fact. In neither case did the Arab opposition derive from the precise details of the proposal but to its principal. Their view was expressed repeatedly and explicitly – no Jewish state, within whatever borders might be suggested, would be acceptable in any form whatsoever. There are no “competing narratives” and to insist that there are merely obfuscates.
Over the years there have been many opportunities to resolve the conflict through negotiations based on that formula that all moderate commentators agree provides the only means of an equitable settlement. Think of all the misery that could have been avoided had both sides signed up to it when it was first proposed. That is the true tragedy – that the entire conflict and its myriad consequences could have been avoided. That it wasn’t cannot be attributed to anything other than the incontrovertible fact that one side refused to agree to it and expressed that refusal violently. And that side was the Arab/Palestinian one. Whatever transpired subsequently, the Arab leadership bears the entire moral culpability for the initiation – and to a large extent the perpetuation – of the conflict through their persistent refusal to accept the two-state solution. That is not my opinion. That is an evidence-based statement that is fundamental to any fair-minded and clear analysis of the problem.
Isra-Prof
