On the Palestinians and Middle East Peace

Richard Murphy, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs:

"The costs of inaction are high for Israel, whose future security and well-being can be assured in the long run only if peace is achieved and the Palestinian dilemma is resolved." (USA Today, July 1, 1986)

George McGovern, former U.S. Senator:

" . . . There can be no resolution ... of the Palestinian issue until Israel's right to exist is clearly affirmed by the Arab and Palestinian community. But neither can there be any peace or any justice until Israel understands and accepts the deep longing of the Palestinian people for recognition and at least some measure of sovereign control over their lives as a free people." (Excerpted from an address delivered by Sen. McGovern at a conference entitled US.-Arab Relations: The Political and Economic Future, held in Toledo, Ohio, in March, 1986)

Abba Eban, former Israeli Foreign Minister:

"The (1967 June) war was a military success but a moral disaster. It created a hegemonistic frame of mind in Israel, one with which we have never really come to terms. Above all, our victory transformed the nature of our society. A society which governs itself within its own limits, which knows what it is and what it is not and whose democratic nature is beyond question, is a different kind of society from one which rules a people larger than one-third of itself, a people disenfranchised and without civic definition, living under the kind of regime which would be cause for demonstrations if a modern Jewish community were so governed. No Jewish community lives the way West Bank and Gaza Arabs live. Even Soviet Jews have citizenship, which is not an unimportant thing. We underestimated the degree to which the territories acquired in 1967 would transform our society." (Spectrum, June 1986)

The Saudi Gazette:

" . . . When Peres, or any other Israeli talks of negotiations, his first condition is that the talks should be without preconditions from the Palestinian side, while he reserves for Israel every right to put this or that condition . . . . If the peace negotiations require no precondition, this should be equally applicable to both parties .... If he (Peres) or any other Israeli politician really and sincerely wants peace, he will have to recognise the existence of all the Palestinians and their representatives who have their mandate. Ask any Palestinian, and he will say that the PLO represents him or her and his or her aspirations." (August 9, 1986 Editorial)

Ofir Pines, chairman of the Israeli University Student Union:

"The Israeli political system, including the Labor Party, is busy taking a giant step backward .... Does anyone really think that if a law banning meetings with Palestinian elements is passed, no such meetings will be held? ... There is no avoiding meetings, both official and unofficial, with Palestinian elements of one sort or another. . . . we surely cannot ignore the existence of the Palestinian people, going back a generation to the time of the late Golda Meir, who said there was 'no such thing' as the Palestinian people . . . . We must cease our apathy, our passive indifference; we must take a courageous stand and start direct talks with the Palestinian people. This is a real need. The ostrich must pull its head out of the sand." (Maariv, June 29, 1986)

Zeev Chafets:

"The future of the West Bank will be decided by the Arabs, not by the Israelis. The only way to solve the West Bank problem is for the Arabs to convince us that ... the word peace is meaningful. Until that day comes, any sane Israeli would rather face a demographic problem 50 years from now than the probability of having his house shelled tomorrow." (Quoted in the Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1986)

Amos Oz, Israeli Author:

" . . . the celebrated Jewish pyramid is being turned on its head, and the state that was founded to turn the Jews from a class into a people is now returning us from nationhood to being a ruling, exploitative, profiteering class .... The cost of ceding part of this land may be heavy. But the cost of perpetual reliance on military might (a might which in part is not ours but rather has been borrowed from others), the cost of using force to impose the will of some of us on the rest of the people, on the Palestinians, and on the world, may be fatally high." (Davar, June 6, 1986)

Michael Adams, British Journalist:

" . . . The Israelis, moderates and extremists alike, have to decide whether they want a Jewish or a democratic state, for both it cannot be so long as a million and a half Palestinians remain within the boundaries of the present 'Greater Israel,' but without any of the rights of equal citizens .... If they (the Palestinians) do stay ... then sooner or later Jewish as well as international opinion must surely force the Israelis to grant them equal status. If and when that happens, Israel will have become the binational state which the PLO proposed ... in 1967. For the great majority of Israelis such a conclusion is still unthinkable; but they have to acknowledge that there is only one alternative .... By hook or by crook.... the remaining Palestinians will have to be driven out of the land of their birth." (Middle East International, May 30, 1986)

Abdul Salam Massarueh, president of the Foreign Correspondents Association in Washington, D.C.:

"A stable and peaceful Middle East where U.S. and Israeli interests are protected and served is impossible to achieve as long as the suffering of 4.9 million Palestinians continues. If Israel and the U.S. Administration are genuinely interested in realizing a just and lasting solution to the conflict, then they must attempt a serious effort to relieve Palestinian suffering by advancing a credible proposal for Palestinian national self-determination on the West Bank and Gaza. Short of that, war will continue to flare up in the Middle East as long as the stigma of Palestinian dispossession and dispersion prevails." (Middle East Insight, Volume IV, Number 6, 1986)

Jonathan Broder:

". . . From now on, more of Israel's history since 1948 will have been spent in possession of the West Bank than without it. Between 1967 and today, a generation of Israelis has grown up never knowing what their country was like without the West Bank. There are Israeli high school students today, educated using maps without pre-1967 boundaries and with the biblical terms Judea and Samaria, who don't know what the term 'West Bank' applies to. One Tel Aviv 10th grader, asked recently about the West Bank, said it was in Paris." (Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1986)

A former, unidentified director of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) in the mid-1950s:

". . . the passage of time has not improved the prospects for a settlement of the problem and the longer the refugee problem remains unsolved, the more dangerous would be the consequences for the countries of the Near East .... It is no exaggeration to state that every aspect of life and human endeavor in the Near East is conditioned and complicated by the Palestine refugee problem, (Quoted in The Arab-Israeli Dilemma, Third Edition, p. 139)

Yehoshafat Harkabi:

"The Emperor Hadrian goes up to an old Jew planting a tree. Hadrian says to the Jew, 'By the time your tree bears fruit, you'll be dead.' And the Jew says, 'Yes, but my father planted a tree whose fruits I enjoyed, so I will plant for my sons.' The older generation is betraying the younger, bequeathing it a terrible situation. We had better start thinking about our sons." (Quoted in the Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1986)