Peace between Israel and the Palestinians is more complicated than talking about borders
Sitting in his home in Tully, Dan Jezer recalled visiting the home of his cousin in Israel. “From one window you look out and you can see the sea, and from the other window you can see the West Bank.”
Grounded in that geography, Jezer, a notquite-retired rabbi, tries to be an optimist, but lately finds himself “totally confused” about the current political state of affairs in the Middle East. I called him after listening to President Obama give a speech outlining his idea of a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and after receiving a response from Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle.
The road to peace has gone exactly nowhere in the past two years, prompting even George Mitchell, the ever-patient former senator charged by the president with helping the parties make nice, to throw up his hands and head home to Maine.
In light of the uprisings in the Arab world and the reconciliation between Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and Fatah, the Palestinian power on the West Bank, the president came out with a speech that predictably pleased no one. Especially Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who arrived at the White House a few days later to emphatically reject his host’s proposal, specifically Obama’s reference to a settlement based on Israel’s borders before the 1967 war.
Buerkle, in a written statement, had this to say in response to the Obama speech: “President Obama’s words of support for Israel ring hollow when considering the context of his remarks. In his speech, he continued a long and unsavory tradition of many American liberals by implying moral equivalence between the Israeli government and the Hamas-led Palestinian government. One has to question whether the belief in Israeli/Palestinian moral equivalence influenced the president’s demand for Israel to revert to its pre-1967 lines. President Obama’s vague language regarding ‘swaps’ of land fails to acknowledge Israel’s sovereignty over its own country and its own capital, Jerusalem.
“A return to pre-1967 lines would leave Israel indefensible, and that is not a reality that friends of Israel can or should accept. America must demonstrate to Israel and the Jewish people true friendship by refusing to pressure Israel to make itself even more vulnerable to terror attacks on its soil.”
None of us should expect Buerkle, the firstterm congresswoman from the 25th District and a conservative Republican, to praise Obama. This was the same Buerkle who couldn’t even bring herself to mention Obama’s name, much less give him credit, in her press release after the killing of Osama bin Laden.
But this statement linking Obama to some undefined yet “unsavory” liberal tradition seemed particularly partisan. Is the cause of peace in the holy land somehow advanced by bashing liberals back home? What exactly is to be gained by questioning the president’s motives? Prime Minister Netanyahu disagreed angrily with the president’s proposal, but didn’t question motive or resort to name-calling.
Since thinking about the Middle East makes my head hurt, I called Jezer, who retired a few years back after a long career as rabbi at Congregation Beth Sholom Chevra Shas in DeWitt but still teaches religion at Le Moyne College. For years Jezer worked with the InterReligious Council (now known as Interfaith Works), where he developed a reputation as someone who both loved Israel and loved reasonable arguments about her future. Jezer and his wife, Rhea, who once ran for the seat now held by Buerkle, are Democrats whose views on many issues can safely be described as liberal.
A strong supporter of Israel, Jezer sees a lack of leadership on both the Israeli side and the Palestinian side. So was President Obama suggesting a “moral equivalence” between the two sides? “I listened to the speech and I read the speech. I did not find in the speech ‘moral equivalency.’ I found a number of issues that need to be addressed,” Jezer says.
To another point, I asked him whether it was accurate to describe the Palestinian government as “Hamas-led.” No, says Jezer. Buerkle is just about alone on this one. Hamas and Fatah are just getting around to setting up elections for the fall, but it’s pretty clear that the future involves power sharing between the two groups.
And those “indefensible” borders? (The term is not just Buerkle’s; Netanyahu uses it as well). Jezer believes that it is not the line on the map that places Israel in jeopardy; it is the refusal of Hamas to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. “Until there is a full acceptance of Israel, all borders are indefensible,” says Jezer.
And was the president’s speech a “demand” that Israel return to the 1967 borders? While the rabbi understood why some would interpret it that way, when he listened, he heard the president call for Israel “to announce that as part of a peace process they would be willing to go to those adjusted borders.”
“The president was very clear,” says Jezer, “that there cannot be negotiations if the Palestinian government, which includes Hamas, calls for the destruction of Israel.”
And what about that “long and unsavory tradition” of liberals bashing Israel? Jezer does not see this as a liberal monopoly. “We are used to this from both sides,” says the rabbi. “People accused Bill Clinton of that. We remember James Baker {secretary of state for George H.W. Bush} pressuring Israel in negotiations. We have long memories.”
I would prefer to let him speak to the matter of what constitutes a “true friend of Israel.”
Read Ed Griffin-Nolan’s award-winning commentary every week in the Syracuse New Times. He can be reached at edgriffin@ twcny.rr.com.
