The Israeli government’s linkage of security concerns with economic growth, while a good idea, is being handled too tentatively and, worse, obliquely. The prime minister and Knesset would do better to look with clear and unsentimental eyes at (1) what Israel has to offer; (2) what the other parties wish to obtain; and (3) what the other parties are willing to pay.
When this is done, a variety of indirect and meandering gestures carried out heretofore will be clearly seen as having been pointless. An entire assortment of strategies based on grand or not-so-grand visions will fall naturally away.
In their place will come an awareness of a strict quid pro quo that will be able to satisfy all parties in the Israel-Arab conflict. When Israeli policy-makers will tear aside the cobwebs of illusion, they will come to a realistic solution that is both strategically and symbolically fulfilling and that can at last bring peace to this deeply-troubled region.
The good news is that many Israeli policy-makers already have common points of view with their Arab neighbors. One hears, for instance, their unease with the concept of undisputed Israeli sovereignty. This is an excellent beginning. Beyond that, however, there is a more inclusive shared value that has not yet been publicly expressed. Perhaps the old taboos imposed by primitive nationalism have, as usual, been hard at work.
The core value shared by Israelis and Palestinians may be summed up in the simplistic, but essentially accurate, slogan: Jewish blood is cheap.
This proclamation deserves a paragraph of its own — more, it requires an entire newspaper page entirely white except for those few simple, yet liberating words: Jewish blood is cheap.
Like the sword slicing through the Gordian knot, that one verity — that single unwavering principle — provides the solution to the mysteries of apparent weakness, dithering and even stupidity that seem to have plagued all aspects of the Israeli political spectrum with equal vigor.
For decades, Arab spokesmen, global politicians and media analysts have pressed upon Israel the message that Israeli blood is cheaper than that of its neighbors. Initially, Israelis threw back this message. In their trauma and struggle for existence, they rejected the words without ever considering them.
Now, however, Israelis are at last weighing the propositions that they have no right to Jerusalem, no right to Rachel’s Tomb, no right to complain when their soldiers are killed, no right to whimper when their civilians are murdered, no right to defend themselves if that will disturb the aspirations of their neighbors.
And so the Israeli intellectual, the politician, the thinker…thinks. And he himself resonates to that message, one that has echoed for 2,000 years. He begins to hum along, and from his own lips at last bursts forth that lovely song of the sirens.
He considers, ?Shall I really demand my place on this planet to the same degree as anyone else? Am I not a thoughtful and sensitive being? If my existence troubles some other human being, shall I be so small-minded as to object? After all, we Jews have done well enough in the last two thousand years without a homeland or any civil rights. Perhaps that itself is the source of our superior character.
“Let me consider the matter intellectually, philosophically, artistically, and even religiously. Are there not greater issues in life than a plot of land and a this-worldly existence” If somebody else desires my land or my life, do I not have better things to do than engage in an unseemly squabble? And to the contrary, if I give up my land, or perhaps my neighbor’s land, if I realistically accept some loss of some Jewish life, perhaps those voices will stop dinning at me. Perhaps I shall at last enjoy tranquility.
