Haarertz editorial (Thursday): It's in our hands, and in our power

[Jack Rabbit]

From Haaretz (Tel Aviv)
Dated Thursday May 12

Editorial: It's in our hands, and in our power

Fifty-six years ago, the War of Independence ended with the armistice agreements, thus achieving the goal we celebrate today on the 57th Independence Day: the establishment of an independent state for the Jewish nation in the Land of Israel. The success of the utopian Zionist enterprise was never guaranteed from the start, nor was it guaranteed in the first few years of statehood. But over the years, the state prospered, its population increased beyond expectations, and its military strength grew to enormous proportions.

Nonetheless, there are still those who believe that nothing significant happened in the chronicles of our people in 1948, and that nothing was finalized in that declaration of statehood and in that war. Those who have not yet grasped the meaning of the establishment of the state are still trying to stretch the border of this tiny, blood-soaked land for the sake of their camp - some with arguments for the right of return, some with bulldozers, prayer shawls and weapons.

Permanent borders have never been set for the state, and the dispute over the borders continues. Even the Green Line was but a route that the Arabs tried to erode, and from which Israel tried to distance itself after the Six-Day War with a combination of a search for security and for redemption.

The absence of a border divides the public into two camps with two world views: "Grab what you can," and "grab too much and you'll lose it all." Facing off against the camp that wants to use force to settle among the Arabs and dispossess them is a camp that is ready to use force only to defend the existing state without dispossessing the neighbor.

Read more.

[Coastie for Truth]

1. Last two paragraphs are insightful

The disengagement from Gaza must be the first stage on the way to a logical partition of the country, an opportunity to create two independent entities, which through cooperation could bring prosperity while pettiness will lead to their destruction. Since Israel is more powerful and prosperous than its nascent neighbor, it can allow itself some calculated concessions; to give up the impulse to always appear the victor, to acquire more land, to contain the Palestinians in suffocating enclaves, tiny nooks in a fence between them and their farmlands, their families, and their sources of livelihood. A border of peace can exist only if it takes into account the interests of the neighbor; if not, it will lead to the next clash and bloodshed.

"If the entire intent in the departure from Gaza is to temporarily calm things down, neutralize international pressure and buy time, while looking for new subterfuges with which to grab more land with the help of the flexible route of the separation fence; if every outpost in the West Bank turns into "the rock of our existence;" if every further evacuation is perceived as a trauma and not as a building block for peace - an historic opportunity, nearly the last opportunity to be a truly free nation, will have once again slipped out of our hands."

I put them in to avoid their being misquoted or ignored by those "of bad faith" who seek to pour gasoline on troubled waters.