Simha Nyr’s Facebook page

Quimka’s Website Facebook page

Under the title Middle East peace is not possible (Sun Sentinel, letters, April 22, 2011), Robert M. Prowler says, inter alia:

“… The Arabs do not really want peace with the Israelis.

“… The first Arab who tries to make peace will either be shot or blown up in his car. That’s why we don’t hear from any moderate Arabs; they know danger.

“It’s time to stop wasting everyone’s time and just go on. Nothing will change”.

As a politically non-identified Israeli, let me express my absolute agreement with Prowler’s bottom line, but dispute his reasons, giving my own ones for the same conclusion.

First, I fear that the writer doesn’t remember that the Israeli prime minister, Itshak Rabin, the Israeli co-father of the Oslo Agreements, was not murdered by Arab-Moslem-Palestinian terrorists, but by a Jewish Israeli (wearing a kippa, Mr. Prowler!), supposedly lead by his rabbis – most of them Jewish, I guess – on the ground of dissenting to the Oslo Agreements.

So not only the Arabs are to blame for peace refusal, but also the Jews.

Second: every nation, as well as any human being on earth, wants peace – provided it will be given for free (and I bet that in a referendum on peace-for free, most Israelis and most Palestinians will vote YES).

But – alas! – there is no peace-for-free in the whole world (“there is no such animal”, as we Israelis say), and the question is whether a reasonable agreement can ever be reached between the parties in the Mid-East dispute.

There can be six theoretical solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian problem:

;Throwing the Jews to the sea

;Throwing the Arabs to the desert

;Two states for two peoples

;One state for two peoples with equal civil and political rights to Jews and Arabs, as well

;The same, but without (or with limited) civil and political rights to the Arabs

No solution.

In order to reach any solution to the problem there must be a majority of at least 51% both in Israel and in the Palestinian community, but in the predictable future there is no chance for such an occurrence.

Why is there no chance for such an occurrence? This is a subject for another discussion. Moreover, a majority of 51% is good only on paper, because the minorities in both communities will wage war against their own respective leaderships.

So, the sixth solution, which is no solution, needs no majority, no vote, and no decision. It is just there – and this is why I agree with Prowler’s conclusion, but for quite different reasons.

It’s very easy to blame others. It’s even easy to say that the Arabs are “more obstinate”, but in the Mid-East bazaar – like in any other bazaar – every party to the negotiation wishes to get more, and give less.

When will Israel have the moral right to blame the Palestinians for “not really wanting peace”? When the majority of the Israelis will agree on any peace plan, and the Arabs will not agree on any plan of their own.

_____________

Simha Nyr’s Facebook page

Quimka’s Website Facebook page