121 Days to Go
What We Must Do Now!

By Sherwin Pomerantz

It is now just 121 days to September 14th and the opening of the fall 2011 session of the United Nations General Assembly. It is clear that we must do something this week to get ready for that event! Yesterday’s Nakba demonstrations on our northern border should have proved to everyone that a problem left unattended does not simply go away.

Over the past week I have been critical of the Prime Minister of Israel given the fact that while the Palestinians have been crystal clear as to what they want in order to agree to an end of the conflict agreement with Israel, our government has been quite unclear as to what it is we want.

A number of respondents have indicated to me that whereas yesterday I enumerated the “no’s” it is time to talk about the “yes’s”.

Of course it is much easier to deal with the “no’s.” Yesterday I said that these were no to the right of return! No to an armed Palestinian state on our borders! No to the re-division of Jerusalem! And no to any agreement with an entity that will not clearly recognize our legitimate right to live here in peace and security.

According to the press, on Thursday of this week US President Obama will lay out his vision for the future of this region. The Palestinians have already laid out theirs. Everyone assumes that Prime Minister Netanyahu when he goes to the U.S. later this week to speak to AIPAC and separately to a joint session of the Congress, will layout Israel’s position. But I am in the camp of people who believe that we, as citizens of the state who whose blood will be the price of victory in any future war, deserve to know what the Prime Minister is thinking before he shares that with the world as part of a U.S. forum. Leaders of countries who choose to make their foreign policy speeches abroad gain little respect from me.

Hopefully in today’s opening speech to the Knesset here in Jerusalem we will get some inkling of what the Prime Minister intends to say in the U.S.

But I promised you the “YESs” so here goes. Following is a statement of principles followed by Sherwin’s 10 Commandments of YES.

The principles:

For the record, we, the Jewish people have moral, historical, religious, and legal claims to the disputed lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea that are every bit as strong, or stronger, than Palestinian claims. Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem make up the heart of the historical Jewish homeland. Legally binding international treaties all designated the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea to be a Jewish national home and that these areas were for centuries home to Jewish communities. Remember it was Jordan which unilaterally occupied this territory from 1948-1967, and also unilaterally renounced all claims to it in 1988!

In addition, the modern State of Israel was built overwhelmingly on land purchased by Jews. The forcibly exiled Jewish people never ceded their claim to their homeland. In fact, there has been a Jewish presence in Jerusalem for three thousand years and the city has been majority-Jewish for over 150 years.


Sherwin’s 10 Commandments of YES

In spite of the principles we acknowledge the following:

1. YES, we are committed to making peace with all of our neighbors and to being good citizens of this corner of the world.
2. YES, we believe that every human being has a right to a dignified life with a government that is committed to his/her welfare at the highest level.
3. YES, we understand that in the long run Israelis and Palestinians have to find a way to live together constructively in this small parcel of land that we inhabit, else we will destroy each other.
4. YES, we know that to accomplish this goal we will both need to make compromises and we are prepared to do so and we hope that the Palestinians are willing to do so as well.
5. YES, we know that it is no longer possible for us to occupy large areas of Judea and Samaria and, in spite of our historical claim to these lands we are prepared to exit from those areas in the context of a peace agreement that ensures security for our people.
6. YES, we understand from statements made by the Palestinian leadership that they would find it preferable if there were no Jews living anywhere in these areas, but evacuating the large settlements blocs such as Gush Etzion, Ma’ale Adumim and Ariel, for example, is simply not an option that we can entertain.
7. YES, we are aware that for the last 63 years since 1948 and for the last 44 years since 1967 the Palestinian leadership with the support of UNRWA has promised the refugees who left their homes here that they would one day return, but for us to agree to that would be committing demographic suicide which we are not prepared to do.
8. YES, in spite of the fact that the armistice lines of 1967 were never borders, but simply lines of demarcation defining who sat where when the fighting stopped, we would be prepared to live within those “borders” in return for a secure peace, an end to the conflict and recognition of Israel as the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people by all Palestinian factions.
9. YES, we understand the visceral need of the Palestinian leadership to have Jerusalem as the capital of its new republic, but we are not prepared to divide the city once again and risk being second class citizens in the holy city as we were from 1948-67. Rather, we would be prepared, again in the context of an end of conflict agreement, to expand the borders of the city towards Abu Dis so that the new Palestinian state could have its capital in Jerusalem.
10. YES, we are even prepared to deal with Hamas and, of course, lift the siege of Gaza, in the context of an end of conflict agreement, their recognition of Israel as the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people, and a complete cessation of all violence amid a demilitarized Palestine.

Our ancestors gathered at Sinai just weeks after the exodus from Egypt responded to God’s offer by saying the words na’aseh v’nishmah, we will listen and we will do. I am not naïve enough to believe that the Palestinians will respond equivalently. But our government, representing the Jewish people in Israel and with an effect on Jews worldwide, must put into play our vision for peace in this region. To do less would be an abrogation of its responsibility to its constituency. The time to put our demands on the table is now!