Putting Cards on the Table

Bradley Burston is making a lot of sense. I particularly liked the following excerpt because it is something that has been on my wish list for a while.

What if, in an evolving Middle East, people speaking about the Israel-Palestine issue actually spoke their hearts. For example, what if high-profile voices on the right, actually, finally, came out with the unvarnished bottom line:

“I want my settlements.”

Even for some of the most erudite and intellectually credentialed of neo-cons, it comes down to this. A measure of the ferocity of the attacks against the likes of NGOs, the New Israel Fund, J Street, Peace Now, has to do with the challenges that they pose to unbridled settlement expansion and permanent occupation.

As far as I’m concerned, “I want my settlements” is as valid, and certainly as honest, an argument as anyone needs to make. At long last we can have a real discussion. I fully respect the fact that you want your settlements. I don’t. Now we’re getting somewhere.

The other argument that the government hesitates to make is that “We have to stay in East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria because God and His Bible want us to.” I respect that as well. It’s honest. For the record, His book tells me the opposite.

Of course, whenever you are asking people on the right to make honest arguments and reveal their true motives, you’re spitting in the wind, whistling past the graveyard…pick whatever analogy you want. But it would be nice if we could place our true cards on the table and see how much support there is for our arguments without the aid of distortion and obfuscation.

Burston describes the mood in Israel as a “sabra-grade panic, a black dread.” And, without providing any supporting evidence, he asserts:

Some of the very rightists who for years have pointed to hasty, unilateral Israeli withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza as proof that no withdrawal can ever work, that pullouts lead only to war, have changed their tune overnight.

Suddenly, Burston says, Land for Peace seems like a good idea again. I’d like to believe him, but I’ve seen the exact opposite conclusion bandied about, which is that Israel now feels far too insecure to even consider making concessions, and that the peace process is as dead as a doornail. I think I would have to live in Israel and work among its people for me to have a feel for which argument is more accurate.

I do hope, at a minimum, that Israel gets rid of Netanyahu’s government and puts someone new in change. New times call for new thinking.