My dear friend:
I am writing to you this letter to convey feelings of friendship. I view you as a respectable, intelligent and industrious person, with whom I can share ideas and values. I have met you in a University classroom, in a hospital ward, in an industrial R&D laboratory, in your law office, and in your place of business where you kindly offered me a cup of aromatic coffee. Both of us strive for a better future for ourselves, for our families, and for our people. Yet, when we met last time, you were evasive, you hardly shook my hand, you avoided looking into my eyes. Instead, you seemed looking over your shoulder as if to make sure that no one sees you talking to an Israeli, to an enemy.
You were born and raised in an ancient land, the written history of which dates back more than four thousand years, very much like that of Egypt, Mesopotamia, or China. Very few other counties have such long histories. Moreover, the country both of us were born in, you in Ramallah and I in Rehovoth, was the place where the Bible was created, where our common God revealed himself to humans, where the Israelite Prophets expressed their eloquent ideas about ethics and human destiny, where Christianity emerged, and much of the Jewish Talmud was written. And then, some two thousand years after the ancient Israelites settled in their homeland, your ancestors emerged from the Arabian desert with their own interpretation of the Jewish ancient scriptures, they occupied the land, and forced most of the Christians and Jews who lived there to accept the Arab “new” religion. Unlike the Christians who incorporated the ancient Jewish scriptures into their Bible, the Arabs chose to use their own interpretation in their new scriptures. I have no problem with that, as long as you recognize the historical origins of your faith and acknowledge the long history of the land you happened to be born in. You surely realize that the history of humanity did not start 622 years after the traditional birth of Jesus Christ or 1622 years after King David made Jerusalem the capital of Israel. The Arab conquest of Jerusalem by the Omar in 638 and then again by Saladin in 1187, by the Mamelukes in 1250 and by the Ottomans in 1517, were transient episodes in the long history of this ancient city, as were its conquests by the Babylonians in 586 B.C., by the Romans in 71 A.D. and by the British in 1917.
You happened to have been born and raised in an ancient land that belongs to another people, just as if you were born and raised in France, Spain or Germany. You would then have been an Arab Frenchman, but France would not be an Arab country and Paris would not be claimed as an Arab capital, just because you and some of your relatives were born there. If you were born in Spain, you would not claim Madrid as an Arab capital even if Arabs ruled for hundreds of years in Granada. Then why are you upset at the current Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem, the ancient capital of their ancient homeland, the cradle of their culture and the site of their ancient temple? I assume that you, like the rest of the world, were amused at the claim of Yasir Arafat at Camp David that Jewish and Christian historical ties to Jerusalem are unfounded myths. Knowing you as a sensible person, I am sure that you do not share the rhetoric non-sense of your “Rais”. On the other hand, I would fully justify your outrage if non-Muslim foreigners claimed possession of Mecca or Medina, the historical birthplaces of your culture and faith.
Now, millions of Jews from all over the world came back to reclaim sovereignty over their country of origin. They had to fight bitterly to regain control of their old homeland. Unlike most of their Arab neighbors, who cruelly oppress ethnic and religious minorities, the Israelis respect the political aspirations of their ethnic Arab minority. Israel has been ready at Camp David to grant most of the Palestinian Arabs independent statehood and full territorial sovereignty within the boundaries of the small Jewish historical homeland. This offer was mandated by their democratic political convictions, as they wish to maintain a Jewish majority in their state. Your current dictatorial leadership refused this generous offer, trying to get rid of those “Jewish infidels” by threatening to murder them one by one. To substantiate this threat, your leadership has been teaching the kids in your towns and villages to hate Jews and murder them in any way possible. Your leadership hijacked your meager economic resources and invested them in tools of terror to further non-realistic political ambitions. Unlike some of your political leaders, I am certain that you know very well that this is an utterly futile policy. Arafat’s “salami” doctrine of slicing off pieces of the Jewish state by terrorizing its citizens, until that state eventually disappears, is as realistic as his denial of the history of Jews and Christians.
Arafat may be encouraged by a political minority in Israel that calls for yielding to his terrorist blackmail. He does not understand that dissention of the few is an integral part of democracy, but at the same time it is the will of the majority that remains the determining factor. The Israeli majority has sound instincts, knowing that any concession to terror breeds more terror and that Arafat’s policy threatens in the long term the very existence of the Jewish people. The State of Israel will not vanish whether it appears in Palestinian textbooks or not. Israel is likely to prevail, even if all Arab states together tried to vanquish it. In brief, any objective observer will tell you that Arafat’s policy is doomed to failure. The very recent events in the Palestinian domain suggest that part of the Palestinian leadership realizes this.
You may be oblivious to the fact that almost half of today’s Jewish people live in Israel, while the Palestinian Arabs, on the other hand, constitute less than 1% of the Arab people. Just as a Jew born anywhere in the world is recognized as a member of the three-thousand-year-old Jewish nation, you could have been born in Damascus, Baghdad or Jeddah and still be member of the same Arab nation. Attempts to artificially create a Palestinian nationhood, as a reaction to the establishment of the State of Israel, are futile. Unlike political nationalities, which come and go, nationhood requires distinction in culture, language and religion; these cannot be generated de novo at the whim of politicians. The attempts of your political leadership to become the spearhead of the Arab nation that drives the Jewish nation into oblivion will lead only to futile bloodshed and frustration; numerous such attempts have failed for thousands of years. These attempts are just as futile as Bin Laden’s attempt to vanquish Western culture.
If you think objectively, you will realize that Israel is ready to be more generous to you than most contemporary Arab regimes. Were you born a Kurd in Northern Iraq, or a Druz in Southern Syria, you would never have been offered independent statehood by the respective Arab dictatorships. I am sure that deep in your heart you realize that the problem of the Palestinian Arabs is not Israeli “occupation” but their being subjected to an autonomous, corrupt dictatorial regime, with no free press or freedom of political dissent. Have you ever heard a call for “peace now” in the Palestinian autonomous territories? Why are the calls for “martyrdom” and murder of Jews the only ones permitted in Palestinian streets? Will things change now with the incipient reform?
Let us consider the alternatives: What would be the consequences for the Palestinian Arabs of accepting political independence in a substantial part of the Land of Israel, stopping the wanton murder of Israelis; murders which are inevitably followed by subsequent bloody incursions into the autonomous Palestinian Arab territories? True, the military aspirations of the proposed Palestinian state would be restricted – it would have to be a demilitarized state in order to cease being a threat to the very existence of the State of Israel. But this is a small price to pay for becoming neighbor and potential economic partner of one of the most advanced technology driven economies on this planet. Looking at the UN, there are numerous small, non-militaristic, politically independent states in this world – why could not the proposed Palestinian state be one of these. A list of UN states that have no expansionistic military ambitions includes, for example, Andorra, The Bahamas, Costa Rica, Djibouti, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Fiji, Grenada, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Kuwait, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Nepal, San Marino, Singapore, and Slovenia. These independent states, from large to very small (many of them smaller in size and population than the current Palestinian autonomous territories), include people of different nations, cultures and religions who have one thing in common – non-aggression toward any of their neighbors. Why can’t the proposed Palestinian state be one of these? Nobody would deny the Palestinian Arabs the right to consider themselves as part of the greater Arab nation. Why can’t Gaza flourish again as a sovereign, politically independent, international trade center (which it has been for millennia), like Singapore or Djibouti?
You will agree with me, my friend that it all depends on the leadership of the people and on the people who elect or tolerate their leaders. I hope that this letter will give you some material for thought.
Sincerely,
Michael Anbar, Ph.D.
Formerly, Professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovoth, Israel