For those attending Israel in the Gardens, the Bay Area’s biggest annual public expression of its love for Israel, it is an opportunity to reflect upon our relationship with the Jewish state. For the sake of argument, thoughts about Israel’s future can be boiled down to two fundamental questions:
Are Israel’s momentous birth in 1947 and its improbable military victory in 1967 still relevant today?
Are Israel’s history and future personally significant?
I hope to prove that the answer to the first question is an emphatic “yes.” As for the second, that is for the reader to decide.
Israel’s struggles for survival influence the dynamics of the modern state — the consequences of the Six-Day War of 1967 are still very much with us today, while the reverberations of 1947 are no less important as we celebrate Israel’s 65 years.
1947: An obligation to act
On April 28, 1947, in the ï¬rst-ever U.N. emergency session, the Special Committee on Palestine was established to address the conflict between national movements in the land then under control of the British Mandate. The committee produced three different options: At stake was nothing less than the self-determination of the two peoples that inhabited Palestine.
A federal solution (known as the minority plan) that envisaged Arab and Jewish regions within a federal union with Jerusalem as its capital, was considered, as well as a unitary Arab state, but a partition into two independent states was favored. The adopted proposal was the establishment of two independent states — one state for the Jewish people and one Arab state; a two-state solution. That plan is known as the Partition Plan.
On Nov. 29, 1947, the historic vote on the partition plan was held in the U.N. General Assembly in Flushing Meadows, N.Y. The Soviet representative, Andrei Gromyko, described the partition plan as the “only workable solution,” one that “will meet the legitimate demands of the Jewish people, hundreds of thousands of whom, as you know, are still without a country, without homes,” following the terrible ravages of the Holocaust.
The result of the vote was 33 for, 13 against and 10 abstentions.
This vote was a moment of biblical magnitude for Jews in the land of Israel and all over the world. After 2,000 years of forced exile, 2,000 years of dreams and prayers, Israel was to be reborn by international consensus. Immediately after the vote, the Jewish leadership accepted the partition plan. In contrast, leaders of the Arab states and the Arab community in Palestine rejected it.
What is the importance of commemorating those events of 66 years ago today? Is there a lesson to be learned? Sixty-six years ago, the international community assumed the responsibility of establishing the two-state solution and bestowed on that decision international legitimacy. That decision was not only rejected by the Arab states but ultimately resulted in the invasion of the newly declared State of Israel in May 1948.
That attempt at annihilating the newly established state of the Jewish people failed and resulted in our victory — the creation of the modern State of Israel.
1967: An obligation to act, Part 2 — Israel goes solo
Just 19 years later, and less than 25 years after the Holocaust, Arab countries once again converged on our tiny nation to try to complete the unfinished job of destroying Israel, while chanting, once again, “Death to lsrael” and “Slaughter the Jews.”
Of course, we could rely on the solemn commitment of the international community to protect a fellow member of the U.N., or could we? The U.N. forces withdrew hastily from the Egyptian-Israeli border at the ï¬rst behest of President Abdel Nasser, and nobody was willing to do anything to remove the recently imposed Egyptian naval blockade. Israel was strangled and left to fend for herself.
While preparing to launch an attack against the massed Egyptian troops, on the brink of the Six-Day War Gen. Israel Tal, the commander of the Israel Defense Forces’ armored corps, issued his first battle order: “We have not come to destroy their county or to inherit it … We have come to wipe out their plot of destruction.” These famous words were composed by none other than Amos Oz, then a young reserve soldier under Tal’s command.
In contrast to 1947, in 1967 the international community failed to act in order to maintain stability in the Middle East, and Israel found herself in an excruciating dilemma between a military campaign and annihilation. Israel was left with no alternative but to act. The rest is history.
If, in 1947, the international community’s decision to act resulted in Israel’s creation, in 1967 the international community’s failure to act caused a war that led to yet another victory and to Israel’s expansion.
Immediately after the 1967 war, Israel extended her hand in peace and offered to return the captured territories of the West Bank and Gaza in exchange for recognition, security and peace. The response of the Arabs was, once again, “No!” and a rejection of yet another chance for the two-state solution.
Notwithstanding the peace treaties achieved with Egypt and Jordan, the unfortunate pattern of rejection of peace and the two-state solution and the resort to violence repeated itself at the Camp David summit in 2000 and the Annapolis meetings in 2007. The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank has continued to avoid substantive negotiations, and Hamas remains firmly ensconced in Gaza.
2013: An obligation to act, Part 3?
Six years after Annapolis, 13 years after the Camp David Summit, 46 years after the Six-Day War, and 66 years after the U.N. partition plan vote, we are again at a crossroads. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leadership. This represents an attempt to renew Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in order to achieve the realization of that same old vision of two states for two peoples.
The success of the new effort will be judged in retrospect by the degree of progress made in the coming year. A process has been launched. Will it succeed? Both the Palestinians and the Israelis have heavy obligations under the Road Map, which must be fulï¬lled — that is our responsibility. However, Israel committing to its obligations is just not enough. International support is crucial for the success of this process.
Now, in 2013, as in 1967 and 1947, the international community is tasked with securing stability in our region. The challenge is formidable for Israel, for moderate Arab countries that are still hanging on amidst an increasingly radicalized Middle East, and for the entire world.
The international community has an important role to play in capacity-building of a legitimate, terror-free Palestinian government. This prerogative extends to marginalizing the extremists of Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank and of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and in standing up to Iran’s threats to Israel, the region and the entire world in its attempt to acquire weapons of mass death.
The lesson learned is that action is not a choice, it is an obligation. One thing we have learned from history is that people often do not learn from history.
For we Israelis, the big question is: Can we rely on the international community to take action responsibly and courageously as it did 66 years ago, or will it fail us with a lack of willingness to act as it did 46 years ago? Would the necessary action be taken against extremists and in support of the moderates who are still yearning for peace and who are willing to meet for the same old purpose — the one voted for by the U.N. 66 years ago — the realization of the vision of two states living side by side in peace?
Israel’s history and future is personally significant to anyone who cherishes the words of one of Israel’s foremost diplomats, Abba Eban, in 1967:
“We hear many formulas: back to 1956, back to 1948 — I understand our neighbors would wish to turn the clock back to 1947. The fact is, however, that most clocks move forward and not backward, and this, I think, should be the case with the clock of Middle Eastern peace — not backward to belligerency, but forward to peace.” n
Andy David is consul general of Israel to the Pacific Northwest.