When I read in detail the “Geneva Accord” drafted some years ago by left-wing and moderate Israelis and Palestinians, I discovered with astonishment many articles of this text with which I did not agree at all. For example, at the risk of shocking some, I do not see at all why the Esplanade of the Mosques of the Temple should be handed over to the exclusive sovereignty of the Palestinian State, as the “Accord” says. Why should it be so, when this site is holy for the three monotheistic religions, and in any case for Islam and Judaism? The argument I heard, I believe from my friend Avraham Burg, who had actively participated in the negotiation, was that, since the Palestinians were renouncing in this text the right of return of the refugees, they had to be given the Esplanade in exchange… A curious reasoning!
But if there is one thing that greatly pleased me in the “Accord,” it is indeed the abandonment of the “fetishism of borders” that had characterized, until then, every Israeli-Palestinian discussion. The “fetishism” consists in saying: the border between the State of Israel and the future State of Palestine must necessarily pass, down to the centimeter, where it passed on June 4, 1967, on the eve of the Six-Day War. We know that this is still the watchword of the Arab world as a condition for a peace with Israel and that it is the central point of the Saudi initiative, taken up in the peace plan of the Arab League: recognition of Israel in exchange for an absolute and total withdrawal of Israel to the exact line of June 4, 1967. Such a demand was already that of Sadat, from Camp David and the negotiation of the Israeli-Egyptian peace onward; it is still the demand of Syria concerning the entire Golan Heights up to the very shore of Lake Tiberias, where President Bashar al-Assad wants to be able to fish, or the pretext advanced by Hezbollah for continuing the war with an Israel that, it says, does not want to “let go” of the Shebaa Farms.
But it is also the approach of those in Israel who would like to keep, at any cost, settlement blocs in the West Bank, without having to concede exchanges of territory, without having to give the State of Palestine equivalent lands, which would be taken from Israeli territory.
Now, in a refreshing way, the Geneva Accord broke with this fetishism of borders, by agreeing to redraw and reshape them.
Why is this necessary?
Let us observe first of all that Israel’s borders on June 4, 1967, were, in all and for all, the borders of the cessation of combat at the end of the War of Independence in 1949. The armistice agreements signed at Rhodes that year are ceasefire agreements that ratified the positions of the combatant forces on the date of the cessation of hostilities. From the very second that followed these agreements, the border-lines were contested. In Israel itself, let us not forget that the revisionist right of the Herut, behind Menachem Begin, continued to oppose the partition of Palestine, with its traditional slogan “Both banks of the Jordan are ours!” Within the Labor current itself there has always existed a movement at once socialist and expansionist, principally represented by Tabenkin’s Ahdut HaAvoda. For this movement and its network of kibbutzim, the HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, the whole land of Israel belongs in fact to the State of Israel. It is this atypical approach of a part of the Labor current that explains why, after the Six-Day War, its ministers in fact favored the creation of the settlements and committed themselves alongside Greater Israel. Let us recall that it is the principal representative of this movement, Yigal Allon, who allowed Rabbi Levinger and his troops to install themselves at the Park Hotel in Hebron in order to reconquer the Jewish Quarter of this West Bank city…
Even on the side of the other forces of the Israeli left, the permanence of the 1949 borders was never clear. Very often the Labor leaders, with David Ben-Gurion foremost, evoked the problem posed by the fifteen-kilometer bottleneck between Netanya and the West Bank. This bottleneck posed a serious problem, that of the eventuality of a cutting of the State of Israel in two during an Arab assault… It was a situation widely considered provisional and abnormal. But it is above all the division of Jerusalem and the loss of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and of the Western Wall that the Israelis never “accepted” between 1948 and 1967. This is what explains the first decision, taken practically without any discussion as soon as the Six-Day War broke out: the annexation and reunification of Jerusalem which alone, it was said, would make it possible to guarantee eternally to Jews and other religions access to their Holy Places.
Throughout the period 1949–1967, in secret discussions, two zones were already defined as highly problematic for the security of Israel, zones that it would be good, when the time came, to control. It is first of all the Golan Heights, from which Syrian units ceaselessly fired on localities situated along the Lake, and whose positions clearly threatened the Israeli plain. Well before the conflict of 1967, the Israeli strategists and security specialists considered that, sooner or later, it would indeed be necessary to occupy this territory or even annex it. Moreover, from the seizure of power by the “Free Officers” in Egypt and the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the fedayeen raids from the Gaza Strip intensified, a dangerous situation that in fact led to the Suez Campaign in 1956, and already, there again, a number of high-ranking officers and Israeli politicians considered that one day it would indeed be necessary to “enter” Gaza and control this territory.
All in all, the armistice borders were accepted in Israel in 1949, but I think one can say that they were never considered “sacred” and that it was obvious that “secure and recognized borders” would doubtless require, on occasion, major corrections. All the more so since, for whoever is willing to look closely at the map, a great number of absurdities resulted from this line of cessation of combat: in particular the cutting of Arab villages into two parts, one of which was in Israel and the other in Jordan. Such is the case, for example, of Baqa al-Gharbiyye (in Israeli territory) and Baqa al-Sharqiyye (in Jordanian territory), or again of Beit Safafa, in the suburbs of Jerusalem, half of whose families were in Israel and the other half in Jordan…
On the Arab side, things were even simpler, since the Arab world, as a whole, had not recognized the State of Israel and did not see in the armistice lines borders with a State. The Arabs saw in these lines only an eminently provisional situation. For the moment, the Arab armies, beaten by the Jewish army, had to reconstitute their forces and gain the military advantage over Israel in order, when the day came, to crush the Zionist entity. This non-recognition of the ceasefire lines as borders was a constant position of the Arab world for thirty years. The first change of position was of course the one effected by President Anwar el-Sadat in 1977, since the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty that followed the historic journey to Jerusalem and Camp David recognized Israel within its 1949 borders. We know that this recognition would be followed by that of the PLO in 1993, within the framework of the Oslo Accords, then by that of Jordan with the 1994 peace treaty, followed finally by the Arab League in the wake of the Saudi initiative. What it is important to underscore, then, is that the Arab attitude regarding the borders was totally modified with the “acceptance” of the Israeli fact. The Arab country doubtless the most “inconstant” in this regard is Jordan. In 1948 King Abdullah seized a large part of the territory reserved for the Palestinian State by the resolution of the UN General Assembly in 1947, before King Hussein “retroceded” the rights over the West Bank to the PLO…
All this leads to the following conclusion concerning the borders. It is clear that the only just and reasonable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resides in the coexistence, side by side, of a State of Israel and a State of Palestine, the latter being obviously established on the site of the territories occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War. But the borders between the two States will have to be discussed, negotiated, and ratified by the two parties in the future peace agreement, and it is obvious that the international Community, the Arab world, and the Jewish world will have to accept and recognize these borders as definitive.
It is radically impossible that these negotiations be founded on a fetishism of the 1967 lines. Indeed, forty years have passed since the conflict of 1967 and the occupation of the territories by Israel. Over the course of these long years, a great many Israeli settlements have been created in the occupied territories, some for religious-messianic reasons, others for strategic reasons. It serves no purpose to seek out the responsibilities for this state of affairs that exists on the ground. It is certain that the various Israeli governments that succeeded one another under Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Shamir, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert committed a very grave fault, a very grave error, when they allowed such settlements to take root or even initiated and encouraged such implantations. The Israeli governments, on this point, can rightly be considered spineless, soft, inconsequent, imprudent, lacking in perspective, stupid, etc. How and by what madness could men as brilliant and intelligent as Yitzhak Rabin, for example, have imagined that this situation could endure and that the whole world, which refused this occupation made in a time of decolonization, could one day accept it?
In an article published in the review Diasporas some years ago, I attempted to explain the reasons why the Israeli population, instead of becoming aware of this madness and revolting by stopping the colonization enterprise, had, on the contrary, accepted with benevolence the multiplication of the settlements in the territories. For me, such benevolence came from the memory of the first pioneers, pure and disinterested, who had cleared a virgin and arid country. Nostalgic for this purity and this simplicity, the Israelis, engaged in an unbridled capitalism and an exaggerated Americanization, recalled with emotion the pioneers who had built this State with their hands, and “assimilated,” as it were, the settlers to those first clearers of the land…
But beware! The Israelis are not the only guilty ones. The Arab world, which continued after its defeat of 1967 to advocate the destruction of Israel (the three No’s of Khartoum), also bears a very grave responsibility. Many Israelis told themselves that, in any case, since the Arabs continued to refuse totally and absolutely Israel within its 1967 borders as within those of the 1947 partition plan or those of the 1949 armistice, since in any case Israel was rejected by its neighbors, why not expand, settle, and annex? In any case, they told themselves, Israel will be doomed…
The result is there: a great number of Jewish settlements of all sizes in the occupied territories, which the Israeli government, which would now wish to do so, does not manage to stop, to restrict, or at least to remove, for the most illegal of them. On the other hand, it must be said clearly: it is unthinkable that these Jewish settlements of a fundamentally anti-Arab inspiration should remain like thorns planted in the very heart of the State of Palestine! So then?
So one must be realistic: it is impossible, I do indeed say impossible, to suppress, to uproot, and to remove from the map the Jewish cities (for they are veritable cities) that are found in Palestinian territory at the confines of Israel: Ariel and Maale Adumim. Whoever advocates their suppression does not have his feet on the ground; no Israeli government, even if it wanted to (and no major Israeli party advocates it), would ever manage it! One need only see with what extraordinary difficulty the government tried to take on a few illegal outposts, with what violence the settlers reacted against the army, and finally the failure to dislodge them. So then, to uproot a city? For that, one would need a totalitarian government… Likewise, it is unthinkable today that the Etzion Bloc, Jewish before 1948 and rebuilt by the sons of those who had been driven from it, should be evacuated anew.
The other settlements, small and medium, will in all likelihood be suppressed and their inhabitants repatriated, for it is a necessity, even if I absolutely do not see how, in practice, Tsahal will manage to do it, even with the general mobilization of all its forces. One must always remember that the successful experience of the evacuation of the Gaza settlements was made possible only as a result of a coincidence unique of its kind: a charismatic leader, determined and without any scruple, at the head of Israel; the massive support of the population for the disengagement; an exceptional mobilization of the army and the security forces; and above all the choice of the settlers (which they bitterly regret today) not to use violence in order to avoid their eviction.
In any case, the border of Israel with the West Bank cannot be that of June 4, 1967. I think that Ariel, Maale Adumim, and the Etzion Bloc will be joined to Israel, and perhaps a few settlements on the edge of Israel that will form these famous little settlement blocs. That said, it is obvious that Israel will have to hand over to the State of Palestine, in return, equivalent territories that are today inside Israel, whether on the edge of the West Bank or of the Gaza Strip. If such an “exchange” of territories is carried out, necessarily rather far from the line of the 1967 border, I do not see who could complain of it.
As regards the Israeli-Palestinian border in Jerusalem, I think it must be repeated forcefully. On the one hand, the absurd and unjust annexation of the eastern part of the city by Israel in 1967 must be annulled; on the other hand, the city must on no account be cut in two again, and its Jewish part and its Arab part separated by barbed wire. Besides, where would these barbed wires and these border posts, these fences and these watchtowers be positioned? In the middle of the streets of the souk of the Old City? No! the only solution is that this city remain open, entirely free of circulation and open, without barriers and customs posts… Certain neighborhoods will be attached to Israel, the others to the State of Palestine. The attachment could also be made on an individual basis. In any event, a material border must not divide this city anew, this city in which, willy-nilly, for forty years, each has learned, more or less, to live with the other.
There remains the problem of sovereignty over the sacred quadrilateral of the Mosques of the Temple. On this subject all the solutions are bad save one. For Israeli sovereignty over the Al-Aqsa Mosque, third holy place of Islam, would be unbearable to Muslims the world over and would perpetuate an eternal conflict. Arab sovereignty is not acceptable either from a Jewish point of view, all the more so since experience shows how, for years, the Arabs prevented the access of Jews to the site of the Wall and of the Temple. The solution of co-sovereignty would be seductive but it would in fact open the way to endless disputes between Jews and Muslims, which would risk degenerating very quickly.
There remains a single solution, with which I will conclude here. This sacred space for Jews and Muslims must remain a space “without sovereignty.” There is, to be sure, only a single example on earth of such a regime that forbids the taking of sovereignty by a State: that is the case of Antarctica. So, I know full well, the climate is not at all the same, but I think that it is the only solution — non-state, non-sovereigntist, non-border-related — that could, perhaps, one day, definitively close the conflict over Jerusalem.