Two big breaks in the Israeli discourse. Two moments of moral clarity. First, the man who invented the Palestinian Authority calls on PA President Mahmoud Abbas to shut it down. Palestinian activists have been telling us this for years. Now it’s out in Israel. Noam Sheizaf reports:
This is as big as an op-ed gets: Yossi Beilin, the Israeli architect of the Oslo process, has published a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, urging him to shut down the Palestinian Authority and let Prime Minister Netanyahu bear direct responsibility for the fate of the Palestinians under Israeli control.
“Do not hesitate for a moment! Do not accept the request of President Obama, who merely wants to be left undisturbed before election day. Do not let Prime Minister Netanyahu hide behind the fig leaf of the Palestinian Authority — impose upon him, once again, the responsibility for the fate of 4 million Palestinians. Remain as the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which will give you the authority to lead the political negotiations if and when they resume.
“But for the sake of your own people, and for the sake of peace, you cannot let this farce continue.”
For years, Beilin was known as a relentless advocate of the peace process, even as more and more people came to realize that the endless process was keeping the occupation alive. Beilin still believes in the two-state solution – but even he knows that the Palestinian Authority won’t get us there, so he begs the Palestinian president to “end this farce.
And Gideon Levy in Haaretz says the two state solution is dead, we must have equal rights for all in Israel/Palestine. Oh my. Peter Beinart will join Levy one day.
It’s time to raise the white flag, to admit publicly that the two-state solution has been foiled…
If the apartheid neighborhood in Hebron could not stir Israelis from their moral fog – and any decent person who visits there is shocked to the depths of their being – and if life goes on undisturbed, with no moral questions, even as this horror occurs in our own backyard, then what difference does another stolen house make? Let it go, let other houses go; the chance for a solution is long past.
Even the twitching of the dead are moving. The determination of organizations such as B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence and Gush Shalom not to surrender should evoke admiration here and abroad. But it’s hard to revel in them when they are fighting a final battle…
The Palestinians, as everyone knows by now, aren’t going anywhere. There is even a handful of settlers that has begun talking about giving them citizenship. If this, too, is not a ruse, then this little group is openly reconciling with the great victory of Israel’s most extreme left.
The struggle? From now on it must focus on human rights. Yes, equal rights for everyone who lives in Greater Israel, just as you wanted.
Again, I would emphasize: Palestinian leaders have been saying this for a couple of years now, this is a struggle for equal rights, forget about how many states there are. This is why Adam Horowitz says that the Palestinians are leading the discourse. Though yes, I’m waiting for the American choir to take up the hymn of equal rights.
It’s on.
My eyes are clenched tightly shut as I try to imagine N’yahu and Knesset offering citizenship to the non-Jewish residents of OPTs (or even just WB and EJ). Even all that clenching does not suffice — my imagination is not strong enough.
Even if PLO disclaims the Oslo agreement, in its entirely, including its construction of the PA, that still would not persuade Israel to perform the wedding dance and break the wine glass to marry Israel and Palestine. (And in these days of Pink-Washing, which would be the bride? Or the groom?)
My take.
WOW. The Beilin letter is unbelievable. Let’s get Yossi on a plane to the states RIGHT NOW and explain his letter in public, repeatedly.
Levy is a force.
“Yossi Beilin, the Israeli architect of the Oslo process, has published a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, urging him to shut down the Palestinian Authority and let Prime Minister Netanyahu bear direct responsibility for the fate of the Palestinians under Israeli control. ”
This won’t work either. Israel has always “had control” of Palestines. And the US has always ‘had control’ of Abbas and the effort at the UN for Palestine statehood.
Palestine is boxed and f’ed either way they go. But to me the one state solution is a trap for Palestines, Israel would officially ‘own’ them and all of Palestine resources. And this call is an unintentional step further into the trap.
I don’t know what this guy is thinking except that in doing this Israel will commit even more atrocities, which it will, and one will finally be so horrendous in deaths it will be the last straw for the US and everyone else.
But for the US congress there is no last straw that will move them.
The only way to ever help Palestine is to remove the US. Among the US powers that be there are no better natures to appeal to. In the public’s efforts if there any way
to overcome US support of Israel and I/P and it’s minions other than demonizing and delegitimizing Israel, our Israeli politicans and all their supporters until there is a frenzy big and loud enough against them I’d like to know what it is. Reason and fairness hasn’t worked in 63 years…..trying “to reason with monsters” is another trap.
Awesome development, maybe this will lead the American Jewish community to consider other positions other than the cold war mentality that has proven itself a failure in achieving peace of any sort.
The U.S politicians need a signal so they can know which way to go so that they do not offend their base, and this can only come from “the community” itself, the more fragmented “the community” becomes the more chance the U.S will have of breaking the chains that bind them to this non productive ideology.