Israel Needs To Acknowledge Palestinian Pain

Zionists, inside and outside Israel, should ask themselves if acknowledging the Palestinian plight in 1948 really is synonymous with full-scale return (of refugees to their homes), as the fearmongers argue

By Jonathan Freedland
First Published 2009-09-25
Courtesy Of Middle-East-Online

Many of Israel's supporters around the world have spotted an alarming trend in the debate on Middle East peace. Call it the "Back to '48" approach, which argues that any attempt to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is doomed unless it gets to the root of the problem, tackling not only the "1967 file" - ending the occupation, plus or minus a chunk of land here or there - but also the "1948 file," consisting of the issues left outstanding by Israel's birth.

These 1948 questions are even knottier and more sensitive than the 1967 ones: among them, whether Palestinians can at last come to terms with what was established in that fateful year, namely Israel as a Jewish state, and whether Israelis can at last acknowledge the impact of that event on Palestinians, including the creation of at least 700,000 Palestinian refugees.

Plenty of Jews and Israelis shy away from that latter question, even if they can see that the Oslo approach - focusing narrowly on clearing up the mess left by 1967 - has not exactly been a stellar success.

For one thing, many, perhaps even most, Israelis believe there is nothing to answer for. Sure, they argue, bad things happened, but that was the Arabs' fault for making war on the nascent Jewish state; if Palestinians had only accepted the UN partition plan, all this heartache could have been avoided.

Of course, Palestinians respond to that by asking why they should have accepted 45% of the land in which they were then a majority.

But even if you reject that, even if you blame the Arabs for starting the war, you can still see that by the end of it, 700,000 people were dispossessed - and, as those Israeli historians who have trawled through the key archives have established, Israel played a crucial part in that process.

Others are wary of looking back at 1948 because they fear any discussion of the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem will end with the demographic death of Israel as a Jewish state. They fear any right of return for those refugees and their descendants would see a wave of migrants numerous enough to erase Israel's Jewish majority. Pretty soon Israel would become just another Arab-majority state.

What's more, Jews and Israelis fret that any discussion of 1948 will, almost automatically, call into question the legitimacy of the state of Israel. Why else would anyone want to discuss the circumstances of a state's birth if not to undermine it?

Those diplomats and others currently arguing that the peace process, set to be revived by U.S. President Barack Obama later this month, needs to go back to 1948, have to tackle these fears head on. Which may not be as impossible as it sounds.

Some might be tempted to fall back on the usual method of reassurance, telling Israelis that even if a Palestinian right of return were ceded in the abstract, it would never be implemented in any concrete fashion worth worrying about.

Recognition of the right would be expressed by the return of a purely symbolic number of Palestinians and, mainly, by a multibillion dollar restitution fund, just as the Clinton peace plan of 2000 envisioned.

The trouble is, that may not convince too many doubters, if only because Palestinians themselves so far have seemed unlikely to accept such a package.

Another tack might prove more fruitful. Zionists, inside and outside Israel, should ask themselves if acknowledging the Palestinian plight in 1948 really is synonymous with full-scale return, as the fearmongers argue.

Isn't it possible to acknowledge someone's pain without promising to turn back the clock and undo the events that led to it? Surely we know from our personal lives that sometimes it is simply the acknowledgment itself - the admission of responsibility - that has a healing effect.

Indeed, this might provide a clue as to why previous efforts have failed. It's possible that, in this relationship, Israelis are from Mars and Palestinians from Venus; Israelis have been the man who interrupts a sobbing woman as she explains a problem, rushing to come up with the mechanics of a solution instead of just listening. Such a man won't realize that what the woman wanted most was to be heard, for her sorrow to be acknowledged.

So Israelis have sought to cut short the discussion of 1948, preferring to pull out the calculator and work out the compensation package that might make the problem go away. But done like that, it never will. If Israelis and their supporters were able instead to face the truth of what happened in 1948 and admit it, who knows what progress might be made?

Some will immediately ask - Martian-style - what form this acknowledgment would take. We might revive an idea floated at Taba, establishing a panel of historians from both peoples, or we might adapt South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation process. But the precise form is less important than the idea: an honest reckoning with the events that led those refugees to leave rather than a legalistic focus on preventing their mass return. My own conversations with Palestinians in the diaspora suggest it is this reckoning, this acknowledgment, that they are after.

Would admitting the truth of 1948 instantly undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel? Only if you believe that Israel's legitimacy was predicated on the notion that its birth would be bloodless. Israel's advocates can argue that the creation of a Jewish national home in 1948 was so morally necessary it remained, and remains, just - even if it came at a tragically high price.

If most Zionists believe that - and they surely have to - then they should not balk at spelling out precisely the price paid by others. It is the morally honest thing to do - and, taken together with a similar process of national contemplation on the Palestinian side, may just unblock a peace effort which desperately needs unblocking.

Jonathan Freedland is an award-winning British journalist and broadcaster. He writes a weekly column in The Guardian, as well as a monthly piece for The Jewish Chronicle. This article is distributed by t Common Ground and can be accessed at GCNews. It appeared in Ha’aretz .