Dershowitz's solution for Palestine at UN

Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz, is a veritable industry for writing, lecturing and preaching.  Although overbearing, even boorish at times-- and not really the expert on Israeli-Arab relations that he thinks he is-- his core views on the conflict are not bad.  He believes in a two-state solution and sees Israel's settlements as problematic.

According to The National newspaper of the United Arab Emirates, Dershowitz and a visiting professor of Islamic Legal Studies at Harvard Law, Chibli Mallat, have agreed upon a reasonable text for the United Nations to adopt regarding the Palestinian Authority's application for recognition as a state. It is strikingly similar to a framework I've hoped for, and that Tikkun has endorsed, including a provision to recognize Israel "as the Democratic State of the Jewish people with due regard to the full equality of the Palestinians in the Israeli State...", with parallel language for Palestine as an Arab state with equal rights for non-Arab and non-Muslim citizens. 

It further calls for immediate renewed negotiations on borders and other outstanding issues, with an understanding that the end result will not be the pre-June '67 lines, but that modifications will be negotiated on a basis of one-to-one territorial swaps.  Moreover, it "Establishes a Nonviolent Israeli-Palestinian Committee, ... to accelerate the peaceful solidification of the two states, and meanwhile to ensure that facts on the ground and the use of violence do not imperil the security and viability of the two states...."

On singing songs and boycotting 'Ahava'

Last Saturday night, I attended the Peoples' Voice Cafe in New York for the first time.  It's a kind of left-wing nightclub and hangout that's been around for a long time.  Interestingly, I see that it closed for Yom Kippur, and I know that it used to be housed in the old Workmen's Circle & Jewish Daily Forward building, which was sold a year or two ago. 

One of the performers was a satirical singer named Dave Lippman, a talented and funny guy.  But unfortunately for my comfort level, one of his songs savagely went after Ahava, the Israeli cosmetics company.

I understand from someone I know who also was there, that Lippman is Jewish (at least nominally) but feels absolutely no sympathy or compassion for Israel, not even according it a right to exist.  And his lyrics, which included the words "apartheid" and "ethnic cleansing," illustrate his contempt.

Still, Meretz USA includes Ahava on its "don't buy" list of West Bank settlement products.  An Ahava factory for refining Dead Sea minerals is located at Mitzpe Shalem -- a West Bank settlement.  Once a Nahal military outpost, it became a kibbutz in 1976 and is now a privatized cooperative community with about 200 residents.

E. Jerusalem construction 'scuttling' 2-state peace

Sarah Kreimer is associate director of Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO dedicated to creating a more equitable Jerusalem and reaching an agreed-upon political future for the city (including a progressive Zionist agenda).  She visited Meretz USA a few years ago, and our Israel Symposium has often included very informative tours of East Jerusalem, sponsored by Ir Amim. The following is from Kreimer's op-ed in today's Haaretz, "East Jerusalem construction scuttling two-state solution":

".... Givat Hamatos is the first new Jewish neighborhood to be built over the Green Line in East Jerusalem since Har Homa in 1997. Har Homa, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initiated during his first term as a kind of 'price tag' for Israel’s withdrawal from parts of Hebron, has embroiled Israel in international controversy ever since. Is Givat Hamatos Netanyahu’s 'price tag' for the Palestinian decision to apply for UN membership?

"What’s clear is that Givat Hamatos is the keystone of a plan that quietly, piece by piece, with no Israeli public debate, is unilaterally sealing the southern border of annexed East Jerusalem with Israeli construction. In the last year, plans for building more than 5,000 homes in this southern area have been approved or advanced − 2,000 to expand Gilo toward Wallajeh and Beit Jala, almost 1,000 to expand Har Homa toward Beit Sahur, and now more than 2,000 units to link Har Homa with Gilo. These plans are presented under many guises − as an answer to the social protest, as an expression of Israel’s right to build in its capital. But never is the Israeli public allowed to see the full picture: that, despite its rhetoric, the Israeli government is working on the ground to scuttle a two-state solution.

"Taken together, these expansion plans in southern East Jerusalem wreak havoc with the one set of principles agreed upon by most Israeli and Palestinian negotiators ‏(including former prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak‏) − the 'Clinton Parameters.' Under these guidelines, Gilo would have been recognized as Israeli − swapped for a commensurate piece of land from within the Green Line − and the rest of the land on Jerusalem’s southern borders would become part of a Palestinian capital. Thus, through this construction, we are ... foreclosing on the option of a two-state solution. For, without an agreement on Jerusalem’s borders, there will be no Palestinian-Israeli peace. ..."

Postscripts on Gilad Shalit

A school-age chum of Gilad Shalit is actually living in my home right now. Lior is the nephew by marriage of an Israeli cousin of mine.

Gilad Shalit (photo released by IDF)

Lior describes Shalit as shy and a bit of an oddball, who "hung out" with Lior's circle of friends, a year or two older than he.  When rumors would fly of efforts to free Gilad, Lior would discuss these with friends & family via Skype.  

There’s a lot more that can be said on this, of course. For example, the diverse reasons that so many Palestinians have been imprisoned, some justly and others not: from participating in heinous mass murders to offenses that should not be cause for  imprisonment, e.g., merely being a member of Hamas. (This NY Times article is about the serious crimes committed by some of the freed Palestinian prisoners.)