Fifty Years On: Honoring Israeli and Palestinian Peacemakers and Making 2017 the Year for Peace

Fifty years ago this month, the third Arab-Israeli War started with Arabs declaring and Israelis dreading the imminent destruction of Israel, but ended six days later with Israel occupying Egypt’s Sinai, Syria’s Golan Heights and the Palestinian-populated West Bank and Gaza.  Six months later the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 242 that provided the framework for resolving the conflict based on two interdependent principles: Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied and recognition and security for all states in the region including Israel.  Over the years, these principles became the basis for a negotiated two-state resolution of the core conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

With the major exception of Egypt’s President Sadat who, after a fourth war in 1973, launched an initiative for peace with Israel, most political leaders on both sides officially stayed stuck until the late 1980’s on a series of negatives toward the other side.  For the Arabs, including the Palestinians, the formula was: “No negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no peace with Israel.”   For Israeli leaders, the formula focused on frustrating the Palestinians’ historic competing claim to the same small land: “No recognition of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), no negotiations with the PLO, and no to a Palestinian state.”

There were, however, Israelis and Palestinians early on who saw the dangers of deadlocked conflict clearly and advocated publicly for two-states. Some paid dearly for their vision, including a few who paid with their lives, murdered by their own side’s extremists. In this fiftieth year since the 1967 war, with President Trump confidently committed to achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace, it’s important to appreciate these early peacemakers and the wisdom of what they envisioned as necessary compromises to resolve the conflict.

Clearly, the biggest blow to the Oslo peace process was the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist in 1995. At the time, apparently, Rabin wanted to speed-up the negotiations in part because he believed stretching them out gave extremists more time to sabotage the process. Two years earlier, Rabin worked with American Jewish leaders to form the two-state oriented Israel Policy Forum to support the Oslo process, which helped block a Republican effort to force President Clinton to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem before a peace agreement.

Rabin followed in the path of Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in strongly defending Israel while recognizing that holding on to the occupied territories threatened Israel’s existence as a majority Jewish state.

There were many early Israeli peacemakers. General Matti Peled, member of Israel’s General Staff in 1967 from the start opposed putting settlements in the occupied territories and advocated Israel talking with the PLO, views for which he was virulently attacked by more hawkish Israelis. Lova Eliav, along with Peled and Palestinian PLO leader Isam Sartawi, organized the Israeli-Palestinian Council for Peace. Mordecai BarOn, Executive Assistant to General Moshe Dayan, was a founder of Israel’s Peace Now movement. Yehoshafat Harkabi, former Chief of Israeli Military Intelligence, was an early advocate for negotiating with the PLO and supported a two-state solution until his death in 1994. On several occasions, I was with Harkabi when he impatiently chided conservative American Jewish leaders for endangering the future existence of Israel by their uncritical support for Israeli policies.

Early Palestinian peacemakers were just as inspiring and courageous, and some of them also paid with their lives. In 1976, after the Israeli Labor Government allowed elections of mayors in the West Bank and Gaza, many mayors elected were politically positioned to help launch negotiations between Israel and the PLO. Tragically, it would be another ten years before Israel would be ready for that and in 1980 the Israeli military expelled several moderate mayors across the river into Jordan.

One of the most important of these was Fahed Qawasmi, Mayor of Hebron, the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank. Qawasmi, who joined the PLO Executive Committee and became an important advisor to Yasser Arafat, advocated nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation and supported a negotiated two-state resolution for the conflict.  He travelled with Israeli Mordecai BarOn on a two-state speaking tour to US synagogues.  In 1984, Qawasmi was assassinated by a Palestinian extremist. Following a funeral march by several thousand Palestinians in Amman, Arafat gave an emotional graveside eulogy honoring Mayor Qawasmi as a “national hero.”

Nabil Shaath, longtime supporter of the two-state solution and currently serving as President Abbas’ advisor on Foreign Affairs, is another early Palestinian peacemaker.  I remember Shaath telling an American interfaith delegation that it was only when he personally got to know Israeli Jews in the 1980s, that he understood that their feelings of connection to the land were as bone-deep and genuine as Palestinian connections.

There are many more well-known and lesser known peacemakers on both sides, including those who participated in official negotiations in Oslo, Taba, Camp David and Jerusalem and in informal peace initiatives, such as the Geneva Initiative, Peoples Voice Initiative, and One Voice, an organization doing incredible work today with Israeli and Palestinian youth. As a result of all these peacemaking efforts a realistic framework for a two-state agreement is widely known. For one reliable version, see Daniel Kurtzer, “Parameters: Model Framework for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations.”

Given current Israeli and Palestinian political leadership, if President Trump hopes to succeed in helping finally to resolve this decades-old conflict, he should present the parties with a framework for peace. Combined with the Arab Peace Initiative and UN Security Council support for a two-state solution, 2017 could be the year for peace. Israeli-Palestinian peace would not only benefit both peoples, but would be a much-needed boost for US interests and hope for peace in the region.