As Israeli Jews were preparing to light their first Hanukkah candle, the Prime Minister of Gaza, Ismael Haniyeh, told a press conference: "We accept a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital, the release of Palestinian prisoners, and the resolution of the issue of refugees."
Speaking for his Hamas party, he added that if a referendum of all Palestinians -- in Gaza, the West Bank and the diaspora -- agreed to a peace deal with Israel, "Hamas will respect the results, regardless of whether it differs with [Hamas] ideology and principles." Haniyeh also said that "a priority of his government was to avoid a military escalation with Israel by persuading other militant factions to preserve a de facto ceasefire."
Was it just coincidence that Haniyeh, who rarely holds press conferences, chose the eve of Hanukkah to repeat what Hamas political chief Khaled Meshal has already said several times? Perhaps Haniyeh has studied history and knows that the common story of Hannukah -- brave Jewish warriors, led by the Maccabees, defeating a foreign tyrant -- is a vast oversimplification. Perhaps he knows that the Jews of the Maccabeean era were caught up in a bitter cultural civil war, one that is mirrored in the Israeli Jewish cultural split today.
Many ancient Jews did resist the Hellenistic king Antiochus Epiphanes, not merely because he was a foreigner, but because he represented new and discomforting ideas: national borders didn't mean so much any more, people and goods and ideas should move freely around the world, what the people of the world share in common is more valuable than what divides them. Other Jews embraced these ideas, and so they embraced the foreign ruler, or at least found his entry into Jerusalem acceptable.
Even if Ismael Haniyeh does not know this history, he knows that he faces an Israeli Jewish public divided by similar differences in values today.
Many Jews keep alive the spirit of the Maccabees. They see the Jews as a group set apart from all others. They prize that separation as a mark of their distinctiveness. At the same time, though, they complain that they are forced to be set apart because they're unjustly besieged, victims of undeserved enmity. So they respond by separating themselves even more. They build an what they call an "Iron Dome" anti-missile system, even though it will do little to protect them from missiles.
They build an enormous wall between themselves and their neighbors, the West Bank Palestinians, for the sake of security, they say. Israeli columnist Bradley Burston calls them "the Jews of the Wall." Yet the longer the wall grows, the more they feel like victims. Indeed, "they want to be told that they are eternal victims," as Israeli pundit and peace activist Uri Avnery has written. "People here are so eager for words and images that tell them... that they're still one step from Auschwitz, that their backs are to the wall."
These Jews must have a threatening enemy on the other side of the wall. Their worldview requires it. Once that enemy was "the Arabs." Then it was "the Palestinians." Now that their leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has declared his commitment to a two-state solution, it can no longer be all Palestinians who are framed as the great threat. So Hamas must play that role.
Hence the Jews of the Wall in Israel -- and their many allies in the U.S. and around the world -- must simply refuse to listen to Ismael Haniyeh's words of reconciliation. So they perpetuate the fiction, so eagerly swallowed by most of the U.S. mass media, that Hamas is adamantly committed to destroying the Jewish state. Only occasionally do those media allow Hamas leader Meshaal to speak for himself, holding out the very same peace offer that Haniyeh gave the Israelis as a Hanukkah gift.
Nevertheless, when Meshaal and Haniyeh reach a hand of peace across the border to deliver such a gift there are Jews in Israel and around the world willing to receive it. These are the moral descendants of those other Jews of ancient times, the ones who looked for what they shared in common with others and prized what they found, their common humanity, above anything that set them apart.
Burston calls them "the Jews of the Gate," because they insist on finding ways to reach across borders and make connections with values, cultures, and lives of their neighbors in other lands. And they ready to live in peace with their Palestinian neighbors, even if those neighbors democratically elect a parliament with a Hamas majority.
Touring the United States, Burston found that "the voices of young American Jews of the Gate have never been stronger." Like all Israelis, though, he knows that in his own land the Jews of the Wall are in the ascendant.
To show their strength, they responded to the conciliatory Hamas gesture with yet another show of aggression in the place that Palestinians as well as Jews hold most sacred: Jerusalem. Within hours of Haniyeh's press conference, Haaretz reported:
"The Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee announced Wednesday its plan to build 625 new housing units in the Pisgat Ze'ev neighborhood of East Jerusalem. The move comes despite wide international opposition to Israel's construction in East Jerusalem, with U.S. President Barack Obama calling it 'unhelpful' to peace efforts."
"Unhelpful" is, of course, a massive understatement. The Israelis know full well that the more they build in East Jerusalem the harder it will be for the Palestinians ever to use their side of the city as their capital. And no Palestinian leader will ever sign a peace agreement that denies his people a capital in Jerusalem. It would be political suicide. Jewish building in East Jerusalem is thus a way of bringing even the most distant possibility of a negotiated peace to a screeching halt. That was the Israeli government's Hanukkah gift to the Palestinians -- and to the Obama administration.
It was surely a most unwelcome gift in Washington. According to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, "continued construction in Jerusalem is a central issue in Israel's negotiations with the US. ... Sources close to the negotiations said the two nations have reached an impasse on the deal."
This leaves a looming question: What Hanukkah gift will Barack Obama deliver to the Israelis and Palestinians? If he wants to, he can deliver an insistence that the Israelis cease new construction in East Jerusalem. He's done it before with significant success.
For most of the past spring and summer Israel observed what the Independent called "an undeclared freeze on Jewish construction in East Jerusalem." Bowing to U.S. pressure, "Netanyahu had restrained settlement building," with only a few exceptions.
Even when Netanyahu OK'd some new building in East Jerusalem, in October, Yedioth Aharanoth confirmed that he "was apparently forced to give up plans to market another 600 apartments after the US administration made it clear that this would put an immediate end to peace talks with the Palestinians." Construction of another 1,300 homes in Jerusalem were "frozen in practice," the paper added.
As the Israeli government allows the latest building projects to begin, no one knows how many they may be refusing. Netanyahu scores no political points at home for refusing. He scores points only in Washington and around the diplomatic world.
The Obama administration has lots of carrots and sticks it can hold out in front of the Israelis during this Hanukkah season. It might even announce that, if the negotiations remain stalled, the U.S. will present its own plan for borders that will "create the new Palestinian state on the equivalent of 100 percent of the land beyond the 1967 Green Line with one-to-one land swaps" and demand that Israelis as well as Palestinians simply give that plan a yes or no -- an idea now being promoted by J Street, the biggest and most moderate group representing American "Jews of the Gate." Though J Street may hesitate to come out and say it, everyone knows that any American plan will include East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.
This is an idea that strikes fear into the hearts of the "Jews of the Wall," because they know that when the U.S. speaks firmly even right-wing Israeli politicians must listen. And they suspect that, when forced to say yea or nay to a concrete plan for peace, most Israelis will choose the Gate over the Wall.
As Israeli Jews light the rest of their Hanukkah candles, they should keep in mind that the plan they may one day receive from Washington and be forced to decide on is very much the same plan Hamas has offered to them as a Hanukkah gift. What do they gain by waiting? Why shouldn't they accept the gift of peace now?
Avraham Burg: Racists Are Over You, O Israel!
Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie: Hanukkah Matters
Hanukkah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hanukkah - Chanukah 2010 - Menorah, Dreidels, Latkes, Recipes ...
read for yourself
http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm
The brain requires a minute or two to digest what is taking place. Women and children crying bitterly, their faces giving off an expression of horror, sensing their imminent deaths, begging the journalists to save their lives. Stones land on the roof of the home, the windows and the doors. Flames engulf the southern entrance to the home. The front yard is littered with stones thrown by the masked men. The windows are shattered and the children are frightened. All around, as if they were watching a rock concert, are hundreds of Jewish witnesses, observing the events with great interest, even offering suggestions to the Jewish wayward youth as to the most effective way to harm the family. And the police are not to be seen. Nor is the army.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/analysis-hebron-settler-riots-were-out-and-out-pogroms-1.258871
Now it is the Iranians, who Israel has threatened with multiple nuclear strikes.
What is there to consider? Either Hamas recognizes Israel's right to exist or it doesn't. It seems pretty clear to me that by saying they will "consider formally recognizing Israel" that what they are really saying is that they do not.
So riddle me this....why should Israel recognize Hamas and a Palestinian state if they don't reciprocate?
Excellent point
"We accept a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital, the release of Palestinian prisoners, and the resolution of the issue of refugees."
It is a Declaration of War.
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-palestinian-arabs-will-never.html
If the status quo is not significantly changed, then all that means is that the ethnic cleansing will not stop, the settlements will not stop, the confiscation of lands will not stop, and the forced subjugation and subordination of the Palestinans will remain.
You are correct in stating the status quo will not change if the Occupied East Jerusalem settlement-colonies continue to built. The status quo is occupation, oppression, colonization, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. And by maintaining the colonies, there will still be occupation etc.
May the Israelis accept the offer of peace, may the Palestinians follow the example.
This long conflict is not the worst the world has had to deal with, but it's been the most tragic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VfChLAADS8&feature=fvw
I understand why many people percieve Israeli's and Israeli governments as not supportive of a peace deal at the momen. Quite simply, Israeli's have become skeptical of rhetoric from Palestinian leaders who say they want peace yet never constructively work towards a compromise. Israeli peace offers have consistently been rebuffed by Palestinian leaders throughout the last few decades. Israel has pulled out of land, forcibly removing their own citizens, to try and work towards peace and what do they get? Rockets.
What's the saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Can you blame Israeli's for being skeptical of taking a man such as Meshaal, who self-admittedly has coordinated several attacks on innocent Israeli civilians, on his work that he would respect a peace deal? I certainly can't.
There is no innocent side in this conflict. Both Israelis and Palestinians are responsible for the status quo and will be necessary to form a constructive peace. What is not constructive is the constant blame game often build on blatant double standards.
The problem is, the desire for peace without the willingness to take necessary risks (regardless of the presence or absence of appropriate distrust) is an empty dream.
What you are describing is a desire for peace, without a desire to make peace.
I know that you're not going to like to hear this, but I think this is the crux of the conflict. The Palestinians (and by that I mean the populace, not any particular leadership or faction), perhaps because they are currently in a less desirable status than Israelis, are willing to take risks for peace, while, for the reasons you cited and others, are not.
You and I have agreed before that both sides are going to have to make meaningful compromises to reach a lasting and stable peace... maybe one of the compromises Israelis will have to make is putting aside that lack of trust.
Waiting for trust to regrow organically (if it ever existed to begin with), in the face of a situation that only seems to get worse, would be an exercise in futility.
It's nice to remember that the lights of Hanukkah symbolize joy in the time of darkness. Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights preserves the memory of a war for freedom, when our ancestors fought for their ideas and the right to worship G-d. The feast of Hanukkah reminds us of how strong we can become, when we stay strong and have faith.