“We already know there is no alternative” to the two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
So contended Carmi Gillon — former director of the Shin Bet Israel internal security service, former Israeli ambassador to Denmark and now vice president for external relations of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem — during his visit to Milwaukee on Nov. 7.
Speaking to an audience of about 150 at Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun, Gillon acknowledged that “it is popular [in the Jewish community] to say we want to keep the holy places” in the territories Israel captured during the 1967 Six Day War — the region called the West Bank (of the Jordan River) or Judea and Samaria.
These places include the sites traditionally known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, among others.
But “we can’t ignore” that this area “is not an empty land… that there are millions of [Palestinian Arabs] who live there for many generations,” Gillon said.
Therefore, whether to have a two-state solution — a Jewish state of Israel and an Arab state of Palestine — “is not a question anymore,” Gillon said.
In fact, most mainstream Israeli politicians, “left or right, except the extremists,” including all prime ministers since Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s, have acknowledged that truth and have negotiated on the basis of the two-state solution, Gillon said.
Gillon said three issues need to be resolved within this solution:
• Borders: “It is agreed by all” that the state of Palestine will occupy “about 97 percent” of the West Bank, and that some of the largest Jewish settlements — containing about 100,000 people — will become part of Israel in return for “an exchange of territories,” he said.
• The “Right of Return”: The Palestine Liberation Organization and all other Palestinian anti-Israel organizations have been adamant in publicly demanding that Israel should allow the return of all the Palestinian Arabs who fled from Israel during the 1948 War of Independence and their descendants.
Nevertheless, said Gillon, Palestinian leaders “know there is no way Israel will accept” this demand, as that would mean “the end of the Jewish state.”
• Jerusalem: Gillon said that in effect the city is already divided by a road into east and west sections and that it is for the most part already effectively split into Jewish and Arab neighborhoods.
Still, Jerusalem is “a big question” because it contains sites holy to Judaism, Islam and Christianity. “It is a religious matter” that must be determined by religious leaders of the three faiths, “maybe [including] the Pope himself,” Gillon said.
Even so, “we need to find a way to live together” in Jerusalem, he said.
Gillon said the role of the United States has been and should continue to be “an honest broker” between the Israelis and the Palestinians. He praised U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for having recently appeared on both Israeli and Palestinian television stations and made demands for negotiation to both sides.
Gillon also said the threat of Shi’ite Muslim Iran and its effort to obtain nuclear weapons may provide for the first time in Israel’s history “a common interest” between Israel and such predominantly Sunni Muslim countries as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the Persian Gulf states.
“This is an opportunity for us,” but “there is only one obstacle” to improved relations with these countries, and that is lack of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Gillon said.
Gillon said that Israelis today want to have “a normal country,” and “This is the best news I can bring you from Israel.” A normal country means one in which Israelis live in security and can invest their tax money in education and the country’s infrastructure instead of weapons, he said.
In response to questions, Gillon said most of the some 400,000 Jewish settlers in the territories would not constitute a serious obstacle to the two-state solution.
This is because some 150,000 live in Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem, which are already part of Israel; about 100,000 live in the larger settlements that will become part of Israel in the land swap; and about two-thirds of the remaining 150,000 are Israelis who couldn’t find housing within the pre-1967 borders, but will move back readily if housing is available, he said.
The remaining 50,000 ideological settlers will protest, but most will do so “in a legal and legitimate way,” Gillon said. Only a minority of them might resort to violence, and “I believe they will be put in jail before they succeed.”
Gillon also defended the right of American Jews to express their views of Israeli policies.
He said he believed in “the vision of David Ben-Gurion” — Israel’s first prime minister — that “the citizens of Israel are all Jews all over the world. Every Jew has the right to say what he thinks as long as you support the existence of Israel.”
Israelis, he said, have “a little more” such right because they serve in the Israeli army and pay taxes; but apart from that, “if you don’t have the right to speak out, who does?”
Gillon’s appearance was sponsored by J Street Milwaukee, the local chapter of the national organization that calls itself “the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans committed to fighting for the future of Israel as the democratic homeland of the Jewish people.”
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