Why don’t I find president Obama’s push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement based on 1967 borders to be “historic,” as Goldy writes below?
Simple: This map.
Or, really, any other map showing Israel’s borders before 1967’s Six Day War. Just Google around, you’ll find plenty of these maps. And what you’ll see is a 1967 map that looks pretty much exactly like the map you see of Israel and the Palestinian territories right now, in 2011; pretty much exactly like the map that everyone (including U.S. policy makers, for some time now) want as the final map; pretty much exactly what most non-policy-making people expect the lines in that part of the Middle East will look like when—if—this is all over.
Yes, it’s probably true that no U.S. president has explicitly used the words “1967 lines” before. But that’s essentially what many U.S. presidents, including Obama, have been pushing for going back many years.
Here’s another statement from Obama’s speech that is not exactly new, but that I think may be more important for the parties involved to pay attention to than the “1967 lines” bit:
The international community is tired of an endless process that never produces an outcome.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
And it’s not in the interest of either side to exhaust the patience of their international supporters.
I also found his statement that the Palestinians are going to have to tell Hamas to go fuck themselves before anyone takes them seriously to be bang-on.
Eli, you haven’t visited the West Bank in a while. That map bears little resemblance to the current de facto border. The West Bank is covered in undisputedly illegal Israeli settlements and a snake-like wall winding its tail around the neck of Ramallah, squeezing tighter with every exhalation. Reinstating the 1967 borders are by any measure a capitulation, though potentially necessary and long overdue.
Nobody cares.
Bring the troops home.
@2: Yes to long overdue. And that is my point: That roughly, a return to the “1967 lines” is what the U.S. has been promoting for a long time. And, roughly speaking, we’re not very far from those lines currently.
Politically speaking… That’s a whole different story.
@2 is correct. Eli, do more research.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank_B…
“And it’s not in the interest of either side to exhaust the patience of their international supporters.”
Really? What evidence do you have from the last 40 years to suggest that this is so?
@6: The last 40 years.
@4: Agreed that many western governments have essentially been pushing for the 1967 borders for a while. I think what’s new here is a formal adoption by a standing POTUS of a “two-state solution.”
However, the 1967 borders are nowhere near the current de facto borders. I don’t know if you consider that a political distinction, but it’s an important one. It’s not fair to either side to claim that reinstating the 1967 borders wouldn’t be that big of a change from the status quo.
No seriously here. When, precisely, was the “patience” of the US with Israel and/or the P.A. “exhausted”, and what effects did it have?
Carter strong-arming Begin into signing the Camp David accords is about as close as we’ve ever come, and even that was half a loaf at best: the original plan had been to move from there directly into final status talks about what was then laughably called “the refugee problem” (ie: the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in camps in Jordan and Syria), and the Israelis happily returned to building settlements and invading Lebanon pretty much the moment the ink was dry.
@9,
It seems to me that “international supporters” necessarily includes people and nations that are not the United States.
And no one outside of the U.S. and Israel has any patience with Israel anymore.
This will work if Obama’s seriousness forces Israel to reconsider Netanyahu AND Palestine to reconsider Hamas. Not otherwise. Neither Netanyahu or Hamas have even the slightest interest in “solving” the problem. Netanyahu is utterly dedicated to Greater Israel with no Palestine at all, and Hamas is still dedicated to driving the Jews into the sea. Both of them are eager to go to war over it.
Netanyahu’s already made his initial response: 1500 new settler homes in East Jerusalem. Israel MUST GET RID OF NETANYAHU. There are plenty of Israelis who hate his guts and want peace, but the opposition is disorganized and leaderless. Seriously, the best thing that could happen would be Netanyahu’s plane going down on his way to Washington, but barring that, Obama’s got some tough things to say when he gets here.
On the Palestinian side, there is some evidence that young Palestinians are sick to death of Hamas’s bullshit, and Fatah’s as well, and just want to live in a functioning country, but that’s a long ways from actually happening.
@8: I don’t think talk of a “two-state solution” is even that new. See here.
And of course the on-the-ground difference between the 1967 borders and the current borders is not merely a “political distinction.” That’s not at all what I was trying to suggest.
What I mean is that roughly speaking, the physical distances that need to be traveled are really not all that great. The political distances—that’s a different story.
And yes, of course, in that sense a return to 1967 borders would be a change from the political status quo.
But even Obama, in his speech today, said he was only setting out to “state frankly what everyone knows.” In other words, he was telling the creators of the current political status quo what has long been obvious and long been the de facto U.S. aim: Two state solution, 1967 borders.
What no one outside of Israel seems willing to admit is that the pre-1967 borders were drawn specifically to make Israel difficult to defend. The land corridor between the northern and southern sectors is so narrow that Arab or Palestinian forces could effectively stop all traffic between the two and destroy Israel’s rail transportation system, and the Golan Heights is a critical offensive position for disrupting Israel’s agricultural production as well as for shelling much of what would be the northern portion of the country.
The linked article briefly mentions the few thousand Jews expelled from Arab states as a result of the ’67 War, but gives no detail about the half-million who were expelled with the same “single satchel” in 1948 after the Arab governments sequestered their property. The history is long and complex, and pressing for a return to the pre-1967 borders is not a realistic solution no matter how much the West would like it to be or the Arabs wish it would be.
@13, your points are excellent, except for the big one: no one is talking about PRE-1967 borders except you. Everyone else is talking about 1967 borders.
Don’t underestimate this president. He is a “yes we can” man.
@14 – You think the Palestinians will allow Israel to hold the West Bank and Gaza? The current international border runs along the Jordan.
Its about time. Vast majority of nations have long agreed to this type of plan, that the west bank does NOT belong to the settlers. Removing them by force, will probably provoke Israeli terrorism, taking up arms against the IDF as well as going after Palestinians (Pricetag violence will explode).
Our traditional view and definition of terrorists, will then be used to define the settlers.
What everyone seems to be missing as they play pundit: a two-state solution is now official US policy. At last.
Israel occupies the West Bank, which it captured from Jordan, not the Palestinians. Jordan grabbed it after the war of 1948, and after the Arab countries had rejected a state when the UN voted for partition. Israel does not hold Gaza; it is an independent area ruled by Hamas.
More than 200,000 long-time Jewish citizens of Arab countries were expelled by those countries after Israel became a nation. Those Jews either went to the US, European countries, or (almost all of them) to Israel, which took them in and made them citizens. The Arab refugees from Israel went to Jordan, Lebanon, and other Arab countries which did NOT let them become citizens and kept them living in refugee camps; their descendants are still there more than 60 years later. Those are the people who expect to be given their parents’/grandparents’ property back.
Yes, there should be two states. Israel should tell the settlers in the West Bank: “Either come into Israel proper or go somewhere else” and deal financially and legally with the fallout from that decision. Israel should not let people “come back” to Israel when they never lived there.
Can someone please explain to me, an idiot, why there needs to be two states? Didn’t Jews and Arabs live ok beside each other prior to the formation of Israel? Not wonderfully perhaps, but ok? Why can’t there be one state? And why do we continue to say that there is such a thing “Israel” — wasn’t the land always basically taken from the Arabs through British and American firepower? I admit I am ignorant on this; please educate me and correct any racist/bigoted/Western/Eastern/xenophobic opinions I may unknowingly hold.
@20: I suggest buying a history book. One or two may have been written on the subject.
Not trying to be snarky here: it’s a really long and tortured history and it doesn’t lend itself well to a 500-word slog comment. Suffice it to say that yes there were Jews living in Ottoman Palestine before WWI, but not many of them, and their history there was… interesting.
To be a little more helpful, the book that I actually recommend to everyone who’s curious about the history here: A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of th…
The problem no one seems to directly address, and Obama only mentioned in passing, is that since 1948 & especially 1967, large portions of both sides have increased their existential hatred of the other. For many Palenstinians, hating Israel defines who they are, as they have never known a world without occupation. For Israelis, they have lived in and participated in a veritable police state, which is commonly blamed on the existence of Palestinian terrorists. It has become part of their respective cultural identities to hate the other side. These are cultures that do not change quickly and tend to hold grudges for centuries, if not forever.
This is the world’s longest running bloodfeud, it’s not going to end in a speech or conference room.
The only way this truly ends is with massive bloodshed, in the millions, that forces at least one side to completely re-think their cultural identity. We would be wise to stay far, far away from that calamity.
@20 “Why the need for two states”
Because one state says lets take both populations, including the refugees living in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt and allow them to live all on one land, one border. Overnight the Arab demographic would go from 20% of the population, to 60-70% and thats a big problem for those who want a Jewish state (similar to how Taliban wanted a pure Islamic state in Afghanistan). A two state solution allows for Israeli to maintain its Jewish majority & identity.
Prior to 1948, specifically back to early 1900s, most Jews and Arabs lived in peace. But the closer you got to 1948, the more you saw a conflict brewing.
@24: prior to the 1940s, most Jews and Arabs lived nowhere near each other. Just something to keep in mind.
And I say that not to exculpate any Israeli behavior: just to note that there seems to be a persistent fantasy that the Ottoman Empire was this awesome place that was just like Israel except everyone got along. Wasn’t so, never was. I recommend the Fromkin book again. Also Benny Morris’ “Righteous Victims”, although Morris himself has turned into a bit of a crackpot recently.
@24 Thanks.
“As long as there’s a border, there will be a war.”
-Professor Mohammed Mohammed, Oregon State University 2001
And if I may make another comment, extending from several others but chiefly from #19, the physical territory covered by Israel including the West Bank is approximately 0.01% of the physical territory of the Arab world. There is no economic reason, and never was, for the Arab states not to take in the Palestinians who left Israel in 1948 and give them citizenship. And it’s absolutely not true that there were “few” Jews living in the area before World War I — there were few European Jews living there, but the majority indigenous Jewish population had remained essentially stable for centuries, dating back long before the idea of Islam even occurred to Mohammed.
Calpete: “majority indigenous Jewish population”?! What on earth are you talking about? The Jewish population of Palestine was in no way anything close to a majority prior to the Zionist migrations. There was this little thing called the expulsion and disapora, perhaps you’ve heard of it?
In 1918, the League of Nations estimated the entire population of Palestine at 700,000 people, of whom only 70,000 were Jewish — and the vast majority of that 70,000 had arrived in the previous 20 years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic…
To Fnarf “On the Palestinian side, there is some evidence that young Palestinians are sick to death of Hamas’s bullshit, and Fatah’s as well, and just want to live in a functioning country, but that’s a long ways from actually happening.
“If the Palestinians want to live in a functioning country,maybe they should move to Israel. The Islam point of view is “the only good jewish person is a dead jewish person” Too bad so many of you are so rusty on history and reality.