Expect a Palestinian State, Israeli General Tells Jewish Audience

By Kate Casa

Expect a Palestinian state.

That was the message delivered to U. S. Jewish communities by Retired Maj.Gen. Shlomo Gazit, one of Israel's foremost military experts, on an Israeli government-sponsored West Coast speaking tour.

In November, Gazit bluntly told Jewish congregations in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and many points between, that the Israel-PLO agreement "is the first step in allowing an independent Palestinian state. "

"We may hate it,'' Gazit told members of Sacramento's Mosaic Law Synagogue. "We may dispute it, but we should face the facts of life."

Gazit, whose military career began in the pre-1948 Palmach, currently is a senior resident at Tel Aviv University's prestigious Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. He was Moshe Dayan's chief of staff and later ran the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza from 1967 to 1974. He was a negotiator on the Camp David Accords and helped forge the Declaration of Principles signed Sept. 13, 1993 in Washington.

The hard-edged major-general used the Biblical tale of two women who brought a baby to King Solomon, each claiming to be its mother, to illustrate a point few Israelis so close to the government have yet made public. Solomon watched the reaction of the women when he suggested cutting the baby in two. The woman who protested, the king determined, was the real mother.

"We, Israel and the Palestinians, are today facing a very similar problem,'' Gazit said. ''What happened on Sept. 13 showed that the other mother is also true and legitimate, with legitimate claims to the same baby."

Gazit admitted that any of a host of major issues–final borders, Jerusalem, the future of Jewish settlements, the Palestinian refugees of 1967 and 1948–could become the trip wire that sends all hope for a peace settlement sprawling.

But, he said, Israel's recognition of the Palestinian people and the Palestine Liberation Organization's acceptance of Israel's right to exist have transformed the issue from an ideological one into a ''normal political" conflict, creating a frame work under which such questions can finally be resolved.

The Declaration of Principles specifies that negotiations on those and other issues should begin after two years, Gazit said, because their settlement today would be ''literally impossible.''

"It can be possible tomorrow," he said, "on condition that the coming five years create an attitude on both sides that. . . will allow Israel and the Palestinians to accept compromises that today are totally unacceptable . . . If we had negotiated these issues today, nothing would have happened. It would have been an immediate crisis."

Gazit dismissed the threat from hard-liners on both sides who have rejected the agreement, saying he doesn't believe either the Palestinians or the Israelis will allow minority opinions to derail the process. But he cautioned that continued violence will erode momentum.

"Nothing will move ahead if we do not see an end to violence and terrorism" Gazit said. "It's one thing for [PLO Chairman Yasser] Arafat to denounce terrorism...and another thing to be able to [stop] it. He will have to fight his own people without giving them what they want.''

Gazit was skeptical about the Palestinians' ability to oversee even the limited territory they have been allocated under the agreement. "In four to five months the Palestinians are to take over Gaza and Jericho, and I don't know if they can do it," he said. "There is no record of former Palestinian self-government. I don't blame them. It's not their fault. The Palestinians don't enjoy the advantages we had in 1948. We had our own local administration and they have to start from scratch.

''But there are some serious problems between Tunis and the new [Palestinian] leadership in the occupied territories. How will they be worked out? I don't know. But the killings of Palestinian leaders are part of that process."

Candid Assessments Unchallenged

Gazit's candid assessments went largely unchallenged by the large Sacramento Jewish audience. In a question-and-answer period following his speech, no one disputed his prediction of a Palestinian state.

Nor was there any challenge to his hint that Israel may be ready to negotiate issues that were left out of the Declaration of Principles, such as the issue of Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948–a subject not addressed in the declaration. That omission–glaringly obvious to Palestinians–has contributed to widespread rejection of the accord throughout the Diaspora.

Many American Jews, on the other hand, seem genuinely optimistic about prospects for peace. A spokeswoman from the Israeli consulate in San Francisco who accompanied Gazit to his speeches said the reaction of his audiences was consistently positive throughout the tour.

Addressing related issues, Gazit said:

The end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union have reduced the significance of Middle Eastern oil in the international community. ''The former Soviet Union has one important export: oil. The world is suffering from an over-supply of oil. Nobody is interested if there's a military conflict in the Middle East," Gazit said. ''From an international standpoint, who cares?"
Although the Golan Heights and the West Bank are of "extreme military importance" to Israel, ''the demographic threat of 2 million Arabs is far more serious than the military threat."
Jerusalem is a problem that "will never be resolved as long as there is no change of attitude on the Israeli and the Palestinian sides."

Gazit recommends that Israel should "under no circumstances give up the military security of the West Bank (which he categorizes as far more important militarily than the Golan). But he stressed that political borders and military borders can be different, and Israel does not have to claim sovereignty over a territory that it considers important to military security.

Again recalling the story of Solomon, Gazit said, "I don't want to see the baby called Jerusalem cut in two. . .Jerusalem is a religious, political and municipal problem, but the most difficult aspect is the religious one...No other place on the globe has the religious symbolic significance of Jerusalem to all three religions. I suggest we Jews should be the first to understand that and allow all three religions freedom."

Gazit asked his audience to imagine the pope asking Israel's chief rabbi for permission to pray in Jerusalem. "I can't see how that would work," he said. "Can you?"

Noting that Israel is "at peace with Jordan," Gazit added, "I wish we would have relations that good with any other country in the world."
Gazit dismissed the issue of water as "a lot of PR." The Middle East has "plenty of water for the needs of its population," he said, unless Israel insists on continuing to subsidize water-intensive agriculture.

Israel's three options, he said, are to buy water from Turkey or Egypt, to pay for desalination, or to eliminate expensive crop subsidization.

Finally, on trade, Gazit predicted bluntly that "a Middle East free trade agreement is not in the cards . . . Israel has to thank the Arab world for the Arab boycott and being at war for 45 years," he explained. "These have forced us to develop an economy that is not Middle East-oriented. We have nothing to buy or sell to the Arab Middle East."

Kate Casa is a free-lance writer based in California.