The Other Side of Despair: Jews and Arabs in the Promised Land

The Other Side of Despair: Jews and Arabs in the Promised Land
Daniel Gavron | 2003-11-19 00:00:00 | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. | 272 | Israel
This compelling book takes the reader behind the headlines of the confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians, examining its human dimension and setting it in a balanced historical context. In his search for understanding, Daniel Gavron talks to Israelis and Palestinians of all backgrounds and shades of opinion. Politicians and economists, entrepreneurs and writers, psychologists and teachers, men and women, veterans and youngsters, fervent militants and pragmatic realists all speak in these pages. We hear the Palestinian fighter and the Israeli soldier, the Jewish settler and the Arab Israeli, the negotiators from the opposite sides of the table, the bereaved parents. Reflecting the excruciating agony of both societies, these diverse voices emphasize the basic humanity of both peoples.
Reviews
Daniel Gavron is a veteran reporter in Israel who has a great knowledge of the local scene. This book is an effort at finding a solution to the Arab- Israeli conflict, or as Gavron prefers to define and confine it here, the conflict of two peoples over one land. Gavron makes an effort to grope toward a solution by sympathetically interviewing people from both sides, people who seem closest to the idea of accomodation and peace. Gavron's fundamental idea is that the basic plan for solution of the 'peace camp' has been mistaken. He believes that it is impossible given the present mix- up of populations- over two hundred thousand Jews within ' the West Bank' and over a million Arabs within Israel to divide the land. He advocates instead one unified state that would presently have a small Jewish majority.

Gavron has good - intentions and has a real capacity to listen to others and hear their stories. However his whole enterprise is undermined by the false symmetry he works to apply between the traditional Jewish and traditional Arab stances to the problems. i.e. the great majority of Jews have always sought a peaceful answer, and have made generous offers to that effect throughout the course of the conflict while the Arabs have said ' leh' repeatedly and continue to do so. Gavron also does a serious injustice to the Jewish citizens of Judaea and Samaria in indicting them as principal cause of the absence of peace. He makes a very serious moral error in not seeing that there is a world of difference between the deliberate murders of civilians the Palestinian Arabs have been engaged in, and the civilian casualties inadvertently caused by Israeli preventitive acts against terror.

Aside from the fundamental misreading of the conflict in this sense Gavron also fails to flesh out his ' one- state - plan'. There is of course no sign whatsoever that the Arabs would agree to such a plan. And there is too no reason the Jews should accept a plan which would mean that in a fairly short number of years the Jewish state would be transformed into an Arab- majority one. For anyone who cares for the historical struggle of the Jewish people to return to their land and establish a state of their own this book's program is a non- starter.


Reviews
Gavron is to be commended for trying to find a solution to the long conflict between Arabs and Jews over Israel. And he has some good points to make. But I still think he fails to come up with any ideas that will prove useful as they stand.



The author starts by saying that there are four ways to resolve the conflict. One is to expel the Jews from the area. Two is to expel the Arabs. Three is to divide the area into two states, one for each side. Four is to have a single-state solution.



Gavron dismisses the first two solutions. I agree with him on that. Not only do I think these would be immoral and unjust, I think they would fail to achieve peace.



The next issue is the "two-state" solution. That might make sense if a few things were true. If there really were two nations that needed states there to defend their people and their rights, and if both of these nations really wanted a state, then I think we'd try to figure out how much land each side had, how much land each side could propose to purchase, and so forth. That is, we could try to accomodate each of them. If they were willing to keep their side of a bargain, they could get what they needed.



Gavron sees part of the problem here. Right now, neither side wants any part of a two-state solution. Israel wants one only if it can thereby have peace. The Arabs want one only if they can keep fighting Israel. And he concludes that the only way a two-state solution will work is if it is totally unnecessary.



That is a very useful point. And the author then states that we do not really need a border between two states, so a one-state solution is the right answer.



Still, Gavron says that we also need to get rid of the Israeli Law of Return. In exchange, the Arabs could drop the demand to give millions of Arabs a right to move into Israel.



I think this latter idea misses the point, and it is a serious error. In fact, many Zionists in the period between World War One and World War Two did not demand a Jewish state. All this changed when Jewish immigration to Israel was curtailed by the 1939 White Paper. At that point, it became clear that to protect human rights, Jews needed a state. That is why Israel exists today. A solution to the present conflict that curtails immigration takes us back to the pre-state problem.



Moreover, the problem is an Arab problem as well. Arabs are going to need to live in peace with their neighbors. And that means that one day, they will need to demand rights for both themselves and their neighbors, rather than for neither. Unless they do that, they'll wind up in wars with all their neighbors, not merely in a war with the Jews.



All sorts of peoples have states. The French do. The Germans do. I see no reason to deny the Hebrews a state. But let's suppose that for some reason, our species needed to deny statehood to the Jews and only to the Jews. Well, in that case, I think as a minimum, we'd need to make such a state unnecessary by making sure that Jews would have rights to life, liberty, and property in the region. And a right to immigrate into it. That's why I think Gavron's idea is so bad. By asking to get rid of the Law of Return, he's showing us that we really need to find a solution in which the Jews themselves have control over Jewish immigration.



What we need is a serious discussion of a proposal that would permit all this. After all, there are over five million Jews in Israel. They live on less than ten thousand square miles of land. If one wants peace, why not simply make peace with them? Why not let them live on this rather small amount of land and enjoy human rights there? It's unlikely that the Jews would refuse such an offer! More important, peace would benefit the Arabs as well. Solutions such as the one Gavron proposes will not contribute to peace or to human rights.
Reviews
As a fresh perspective on the world's most intractible (and dangerous) conflict, this book has to be worth more than 3 stars so I'm giving it 5 (unread - but see Arnold Wesker's review in the Guardian Online) - but why has no-one else reviewed this? Do those spectators most involved in the conflict, Jewish or Moslem, want to see it resolved - or perpetuated?
Reviews
Although I find it hard to be as optimistic as the author is, I feel that the mood of this book gives an excellent feel for what's going on here today. The 12 people interviewed in the book are not major players in the conflict between the Jews and the Arabs in Israel, but their views provide insight into what the issues are.

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