American diplomats acknowledge that they do not have the votes to prevent the General Assembly of the United Nations from recognizing Palestine and granting it some of the rights of member states. The U.S. can block full membership only by exercising its veto in the Security Council, an act likely to intensify hatred of the U.S. in many countries around the world.
A far wiser strategy is for the U.S. to introduce a resolution to the Security Council providing full membership in the U.N. to Palestine while simultaneously reaffirming Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Both sides win.
The resolution should make clear that this recognition is contingent on both Palestine and Israel respecting the rights of all its citizens and offering them equal protection under the law, and not imposing any religious practices on any of its citizens.
The primary concern that Palestinians have voiced about calling Israel a Jewish state is the fear that this would a. validate the right of Israel to continue to discriminate against its Arab citizens in housing, employment, education and allocations to Israel’s municipalities, and b. close the door to the Palestinian “right of return.”
The primary concern that the U.S. has voiced about supporting Palestinian membership is that doing so might end any inclination by Palestinians to engage in negotiations with Israel.
The resolution that the U.S. should introduce could deal with these concerns, using the following formulations:
We call upon both Israel and Palestine to give equal rights in protection, employment, voting, housing, education, health, and all other government-supported activities and programs to all their minority citizens.
We call upon Israel and Palestine to negotiate (in a spirit of open-heartedness, generosity and understanding that both sides’ well-being is intrinsically tied to the well-being of the other side and the other side’s perception that it is being dealt with respectfully and justly) a lasting peace, to affirm each other’s right to exist, and, to make territorial swaps of equivalent territory and strategic and economic value — based on the pre-1967 border of Israel, as part of creating borders agreed upon by both sides.
Once an agreement has been reached between Israel and Palestine, we call upon all other states in the region to recognize and create warm relationships with Israel and Palestine and to take necessary steps toward the creation of a Middle East common market.
Nothing in this resolution is meant to determine the detailed outcome of those negotiations or to take a stand beyond previous U.N. resolutions on how to best deal with the legitimate security needs of Israel or the best way to end the suffering of Palestinian refugees.
Israel was the first affirmative action state, recognized by the United Nations primarily out of a global recognition that the Jewish people had faced extraordinary persecution through much of the past two thousand years, culminating in the Holocaust. Its policy of giving a special right of return and special rights to immigrant housing is a legitimate response to the vulnerability the Jewish people continue to face in light of continuing hatred of Jews based on prejudicial views of who Jews are and what we stand for.
But that affirmative action should not extend to treating Palestinian citizens of Israel in discriminatory ways in any other respect except immigration. Israel can continue to privilege Jewish culture and history, while encouraging its citizens to also learn Arabic and supporting its Muslim and Christian minorities to celebrate their own holidays and teaching their cultures in Israeli schools, as well.
Similarly, the Palestinian state that is now emerging should be recognized as an affirmation action state, recognized by the United Nations before it has control over any territory of its own as a way to alleviate the special suffering of the Palestinian people. It should have a special right of return and special rights to immigrant housing for Palestinians living anywhere in the world in light of the suffering that Palestinian refugees have faced under occupation by Israel and in Arab countries which have often treated Palestinians in harsh and discriminatory ways.
Why not turn this moment into a victory for both the Israeli and Palestinian people, and one in which the U.S. emerges as a hero rather than a villain?
Please sign the petition to Recognize Palestine and Recognize Israel as a Jewish State: click here.
This post was also published on the Huffington Post.
While I applaud the generosity and warmth of this proposal, I wonder why it is necessary for any sovereign country in 2011 to declare it is a state characterized by its religious practices. In a global society, which is surely where we are headed if we are not there already institutionally, all faiths are legitimate and none are to be preferred. As a Canadian citizen, I feel my country is enriched by diversity, not weakened. This does not mean we do not have religious/racist strife, but what it does insure is that the norm in Canada is respect for difference and accommodation where possible. It is what we constantly aim for in our communities and in our institutions. While I understand the legitimate concerns that caused this “affirmative action” to be taken after the Holocaust, I think it is time for a different way of thinking about relationships in the Middle East. We are all human beings with the same desires for our children and this planet…Let us begin there and create the world we want, rather than a world still blinded by the same old fears, no matter how generous we are to the “others” in our midst….
Grace, I would like to point out that as an Israeli citizen not only can I not live in Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, I can’t even visit! This means I can’t go to Bali with my friends, I can’t hop on a cheap flight to India that stops in Dubai on the way. In Iran if I were able to obtain a visa as Jew I would be escorted by a government security agent throughout the duration of my stay. The citizens of all these countries can travel freely in Israel with a proper visa. They just can’t live there, even if their grandparents did. I agree with you that in an ideal world states ought to be secular. But imagine if these prejudices that I as a Jewish woman would experience were I to travel in the Muslim world should be exercised on someone because their skin was too dark! We live in the world we live in, and while that can and often is used as an excuse for evil, the protection of the democratic state of Israel by declaring it Jewish may be a necessary evil, at least until the reformation of Islam.
Rabbi Lerner’s approach …..particularly US going to Security Council…makes great sense, but why is he invoking this last minute effort so disturbingly LATE in the game??…moreover, I fully agree with above first poster’s compelling W I S D O M!
………….botton line irony: The US was INSTRUMENTAL in creating Israel through the UN!!!…..What prevents U.S. from granting the same support to Palestine, an occupied territory undergoing a more subtle Holacaust of unending policy of EXCEPTIONALIST EXPULSION OF MOSLEM PEOPLE from land THEY too has always called home!
Answer: Cold War mentalty growth of an ever-metastizing cancer called the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Media Complex that has destroyed the post-war humanity that still characterized the people and government of our country when a “sympathetic” Harry Truman was president!
By declaring Israel a Jewish state it automatically makes every non-Jew a second-class citizen, no matter what is written on paper. It assumes the land is divinely ordained by God to the Jews and no other people on earth can care for the land as Jews can. This is, as the first commenter said, outdated and outmoded thinking. Israel — and I know this will not happen in my lifetime — needs to declare itself a secular, independent state. The religious zealots who persist in believing in the sanctity of one piece of soil over another (and their diving right to kill over it) can remain there, practicing away in their delusion. But the only true path to peace is through secularism and integration. This is not to deny anyone the right to practice their religion, but to deny them the right to declare the state a force of it. Religion and statehood together have always made a volatile mix, and I can’t think of any in history that we could point to and say, “There was a state to aspire to!” Israel needs to get its head out of the clouds and realize this.
Matthew Kressel and Grace will hopefully understand one day that being Jewish is not only a religious identity. For some people, including my very secular father, it was not a religious identity at all; he followed both a traditional and a modern Jewish view (echoed by Soviet and Eastern Europe practice) in viewing “being Jewish” an ethnic or cultural identity.
Jews have been second class citizens and worse in most countries for nearly two millennia. Certainly, after the Holocaust and then the expulsion of most Jews from the Muslim world, it should not be unreasonable for there to be one country in the world with a Jewish-identifying majority. Non-Jewish citizens of Israel should be accorded every reasonable right. But until all other countries in the Middle East, at least, cease identifying themselves as Arab or Muslim, it should not be incumbent upon Israel (or Israel alone) to divest itself of its majority cultural affiliation.
“Jews have been second class citizens and worse in most countries for nearly two millennia. Certainly, after the Holocaust and then the expulsion of most Jews from the Muslim world, it should not be unreasonable for there to be one country in the world with a Jewish-identifying majority.”
I agree. But that doesn’t therefore require that the country declare itself as Jewish. One can have a Jewish majority in a secular country.
“But until all other countries in the Middle East, at least, cease identifying themselves as Arab or Muslim, it should not be incumbent upon Israel (or Israel alone) to divest itself of its majority cultural affiliation.”
Really? So Israel should wait until all the Arab dictatorships see the light before setting its own enlightened course of government? That’s absurd. If Israel wants to be the modern enlightened democracy it pretends itself to be then it needs to declare itself as a secular and not a religious state, like every other enlightened democracy on the planet. There is no possible way you can declare Israel as Jewish without turning all Arabs and non-Jews into second-class citizens. If the true goal is to have peace, then all sides must have equal rights in government.
Mathew, somehow I don’t think the Moslems have gotten the word from the book of “Kressel”. Just a hunch. BTW, The importance of this point is thus: If the palestinians can’t bring themselves to do this then in their minds this whole gambit is just a cease fire in the wider war. Its important that Israel knows that., And you cannot deny this point.
When there is a roadblock, you go around. The Palestinians have heard promises from Israel for years, but the right-wing hawks have stopped all movements toward peace. So the Palestinians are bringing their case to the UN in the hopes to lend their cause the legitimacy in the world courts. And why shouldn’t they? I haven’t heard any valid reasons why the shouldn’t except perhaps that they are “ruining a real chance at peace.” But I don’t see how peace is possible with the current government of Israel. A truce, maybe. But peace? That will only happen when every Palestinian has true self-determination as we have in the US (assuming that’s where you are from) and that most Israeli’s enjoy. Getting UN approval for statehood is one step in that direction, a step I see no other way for the Palestinians to take.
Interesting, but back here in the real world let me ask you this. Since in your mind this is all the fault of Israel it follows that they have the ability to wind this up by next week. Say you were prime minister. What would you do. And keep in mind that surrender and dissolution of the country is not an option. But again, what would your plan be.