By Jeremy Ben-Ami
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Tomorrow (July 18), the Republican National Convention will kick off in Cleveland. The Democrats will start pouring into Philadelphia the week after. After almost a year of heated political maneuvering, we’re about to enter into the homestretch of 2016.
In the lead-up to the conventions, the Democratic and Republican parties completed work on their party platforms this week, and the documents tell the tale of two parties moving in very different directions when it comes to Israel.
While Democrats made modest progress toward a balanced, productive policy, the GOP took an alarming turn in a dangerous direction.
The Democratic platform, for the first time, included language recognizing the legitimate rights and national aspirations of the Palestinian people. While affirming the importance of the two-state solution for securing Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, it made clear that Palestinians too deserve “independence, sovereignty and dignity.”
This step brings the party’s doctrine more into line with the consensus of its members, who want to see American diplomacy bring the sides together to resolve the conflict and improve the lives of both peoples.
And it moves past the tired trope that being pro-Israel means ignoring the legitimate rights of Palestinians — a trope that both Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders rejected during their primary campaigns, when they engaged in substantive conversations about the conflict and the two-state solution.
Of course there must be and will be further movement in the party’s position in the future. It’s established, bipartisan American policy to oppose unlimited expansion of Israeli settlements and a party that stands for equality and justice will one day call out the ongoing occupation. In fact, over 40 percent of the platform committee supported an amendment that would have done just that, signaling the direction in which the party is moving on these issues.
Yet while the progress in the Democratic Party is an encouraging sign for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans, changes in the Republican Party platform are a sobering reminder that irresponsible and extreme ideas are gaining traction on the American political right.
For decades, Republican presidents have combined strong support for Israeli security with opposition to settlements and support for two states. President George H.W. Bush withheld loan guarantees and President George W. Bush called for a Palestinian state in a landmark Rose Garden speech. Both put the full weight of American diplomacy — at Madrid and Annapolis — behind efforts to resolve the conflict.
These positions have formed the basis for decades of bipartisan consensus around Israel and the US-Israel relationship.
The 2016 Republican platform disregards that legacy entirely. It withdraws support for the two-state solution, deletes all reference to Palestinians and makes a point of emphatically rejecting the notion that Israel is an occupying power in the West Bank.
These positions move the GOP far outside the American consensus and place the party at odds not just with the 80 percent of Jewish Americans who support two states — but with the stated position of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Republican abandonment of its commitment to resolving the conflict and securing Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state lines the party up with the minority of Israelis who support the settlement movement and one-state annexationists.
These changes didn’t come from nowhere — they appear to be driven by the concerted lobbying efforts of far-right activists in groups like “Iron Dome PAC.” These hardliners have even slammed AIPAC from the right, insisting that they give up on bipartisanship altogether. They want their party to equate support for Israel with support for Greater Israel — and they want to treat Palestinians as if they don’t exist.
These ideas are not just hopelessly out of touch with reality, and with most voters. They are dangerous.
But one need look no further than this Congress to feel concern that these forces are succeeding in promoting legislation, sometimes supported by more mainstream groups, that seeks to blur the Green Line and undermine the basis for the two-state solution.
For those who believe the future of Israelis and Palestinians — and possibly the peace and security of the Middle East — depend on a negotiated resolution of their conflict, the growing partisan divide on these issues must be of real concern.
We can only hope that once Election Day is past, responsible leaders in the Republican Party who understand the region and the world will stand up to those advancing a reckless agenda and help bring the parties back into alignment on these critical issues.
Our goal must be rebuilding bipartisan consensus around diplomacy and two states, not making Israel even more of a partisan political football.
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Ben-Ami is president of J Street, which supplied his column. Comments intended for publication in the space below MUST be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the United States.)
What’s ‘dangerous’ is to be close-minded towards alternatives to the two-state solution.
You are insisting on an outcome that, even if it were feasible, isn’t necessarily in the interest of Israelis or Palestinians. That sounds quite illiberal and arrogant to me.
–Beryl Epstein, Hyattsville, Maryland
The minutes of the six month ‘debate’ over the wording of Resolution 242 showing that draft resolutions attempted to brand Israel an aggressor and illegal occupier as a result of the 1967 Six-Day War, were all defeated by either the UN General Assembly or the Security Council.
Professor Eugene Rostow, then U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, went on record in 1991 to make this clear:
“Resolution 242, which as undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969 I helped produce, calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until ‘a just and lasting peace in the Middle East’ is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces ‘from territories’ it occupied during the Six-Day War – not from ‘the’ territories nor from ‘all’ the territories, but from some of the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.”
Professor Rostow continued:
“Five-and-a-half months of vehement public diplomacy in 1967 made it perfectly clear what the missing definite article in Resolution 242 means. Ingeniously drafted resolutions calling for withdrawals from ‘all’ the territories were defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly. Speaker after speaker made it explicit that Israel was not to be forced back to the ‘fragile’ and ‘vulnerable’ Armistice Demarcation Lines [‘Green Line’], but should retire once peace was made to what Resolution 242 called ‘secure and recognized’ boundaries …”
Lord Caradon, then the United Kingdom Ambassador to the UN and the key drafter of the resolution, said several years later: “We knew that the boundaries of ’67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers; they were a cease-fire line of a couple decades earlier. We did not say the ’67 boundaries must be forever.”
Lord Caradon added: “The essential phrase which is not sufficiently recognized is that withdrawal should take place to secure and recognized boundaries, and these words were very carefully chosen: they have to be secure and they have to be recognized. They will not be secure unless they are recognized. And that is why one has to work for agreement. This is essential. I would defend absolutely what we did. It was not for us to lay down exactly where the border should be.”
Briefly: “Palestine “is not and has never been an independent nation nor a self governing state of any sort. Since the second Jewish War, fought against the Roman Empire, those territories have only been part of either various empires and/or administrative districts, without stable borders. They have never, in all of history, been recognized by any political entity holding an ability to persuade the political world,as an independent, sovereign political entity.
2: Regarding any distinctive cultures, religions,languages of people residing in the territories:
The Arabs residing within those territories, and Israeli citizens who are Arabs, speak the same exact Arabic language that is spoken throughout the Middle East region.Islam, their culture and their customs are likewise, the same.
The word “Palestine” was coined by the Roman Empire. It was intentionally derived by the conquering Roman leadership and “latinized” from the plural Hebrew noun, “palashtim”, recognizable to the common person who speaks English as – “Philistines”.
The Hebrew verb root form, “palash” (Hebrew:”פלש”),both then and still used in Hebrew, translated into English is,”to invade”, which is what the Philistines, Romans, Crusaders, Ottomans and others did. That is all history.
–Robert Arnow, Beersheva, Israel