Open Letter to President Bush
The question of the Palestinian right of return does not have to be an obstacle to peace. Though they can’t say so in public until
they can demonstrate to their people that politics and compromise will deliver “something concrete” (as Arafat used to put it), mainstream Palestinian leaders have long been reconciled to the fact that in the event of a genuine and viable two-state solution to the conflict, the right of return could only be to the Palestinian state. As Arafat and his senior leadership colleagues once said to me, that would probably mean that only about 100,000 Palestinian refugees could be accomodated in the new state. The rest would have to settle for financial compensation for their lost land and related rights. That is the full measure of the compromise the Palestinians were required by Arafat to make for peace with the Zionist state of Israel. Emotionally it is a compromise too far for all Palestinians, (it would be for me if I was a Palestinian); but the only alternatives are unending conflict which, to use your words, would “yield nothing good for the Palestian people” and could take us all to hell; or the creation of one secular, democratic state for all – by definition a state in which Arabs and Jews would enjoy equal rights. (The latter is the ideal solution because it’s the only one that would right the wrong done to the Palestinians by Zionism with the connivance of the major powers. But because one state for all would mean the end of the Zionist colonial enterprise, it’s by no means impossible that nuclear-armed, Zionist zealots would stop at nothing to prevent it happening. What could “stop at nothing” mean? When she was prime minister, Golda Meir, Mother Israel, said to me, on the record for the BBC’s Panorama programme, that in a doomsday situation, Israel would be prepared “to take the region and the whole world down with it.”)
Mr. President, you know that all the regimes of the existing Arab Order are ready, willing and able to make a full and final peace with Israel in exchange for its withdrawal from all the Arab land occupied in 1967. That being so, and given that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians have been ready for peace on that basis for more than a quarter of century, PEACE IS THERE FOR THE TAKING if the White House will use its leverage to require Israel to behave in accordance with UN resolutions and international law.
What is it, Mr. President, that is stopping you from using the leverage? The short answer is what has stopped all previous presidents – the power of the Zionist lobby and, in particular, its control, more or less, of both houses of the pork-barrel Congress on matters to do with Israel.
So yes, to be a real peacemaker, you would have to confront the Zionist lobby. Missionimpossible? No. All you would need to do is summon the leaders of the lobby to the White House, look them in the eyes, and tell them it was inAmerica’s best interests, and also those of the Jews of the world, that Israel not be allowed to go on being the obstacle to peace. And that, you would add, is why, if necessary, you were going to use all the leverage you had to require Israel to withdraw from all of the Arab land it occupied in 1967. You would then ask them as patriotic Americans to redirect their influence to serving the best interests of America and the Jews of the world by getting behind your insistence on a complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory.
I anticipate, Mr. President, that you might not understand why it’s in the best interests of the Jews of the world as well as the best interests of all Americans for Israel to be obliged to make peace on terms which the vast majority of Palestininans and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere can accept. It’s not very complicated.
The sleeping giant of classical anti-Semitism has been re-awakened in the nations of the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian or Western world; and theprime cause of the re-awakening is the Zionist state’s behaviour… behaviour which, in my view, qualifies it to be described, at least sometimes, as a terrorist state. (It’s also my view that after the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, and because of it, the giant most likely would have gone back to sleep, remained asleep and, in all probability, would have died in its sleep – IF Zionism had not been allowed by the major powers, first Britain, then America, to have its way, as Balfour put it, “right or wrong“. There is a case for saying that with British and American politicians as “friends”, the Jews of the world have not needed enemies).
If you asked me what, really, is the basis for believing that anti-Semitism is seriously on the rise, I would give you the following answer.
Page 4 of 6 | Previous page | Next page