THE BUSH VISIT TO THE MIDDLE EAST: SOME AFTERTHOUGHTS (Part 1)

When US President George W. Bush visited Israel recently, he received a warm welcome. This was, after all, his first visit to the country, as President, and Israelis appreciate his consistent friendship and support – in line, it needs to be said, with a long-standing record in Israel-US relations, based in no small part on a commonly held reverence for biblical values and traditions.

Moreover, Bush expressed himself very clearly, during his visit, on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict and on the way to resolve it. Thus, on January 10 he declared that the agreement to be hammered out this year "must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people."

Two practical conclusions may be drawn from this declaration:

1. The first step on the road to a resolution of the conflict must be mutual recognition, by Palestinian Arabs and Israel, of each other's national rights.

2. If there is to be a "return" of Arab refugees, it must be to the Palestinian homeland, not the Jewish one.

Mutual (?) Recognition

With regard to Point No. 1, Israel has made it clear on many occasions – beginning as early as in the Camp David Agreements of 1978 – that it has no problem recognizing the Palestinian Arabs' right to national self-determination and statehood.

The Arabs, on the other hand, have persisted, for over 60 years now, in their denial of Israel's right to exist and in their refusal to recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. This was so in 1947, when the Arab world unanimously rejected the UN resolution calling for the partition of Palestine into two states – a Jewish one and an Arab one. And it is so today, when again we hear the Palestinian Arab leaders, from Mahmoud Abbas down, insisting that they will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state. In fact, the failure to resolve this conflict in all these years may be laid directly at the feet of this adamant refusal, by one side in the conflict, to acknowledge the other's most elementary existential rights.

In his weekly radio address, a few days after he made the above-cited statement, President Bush said that, in his visits to some of the Arab countries of the region, he would be pressing Arab leaders "to do their part" for peace. As the Jerusalem Post wrote in an editorial on January 13, "The Arab leaders could change the climate completely if they would do two things: meet Israeli leaders – and say, as Bush did, that the Jewish people has a right to a state just as the Palestinians do.
Such actions cannot wait for an agreement because, without them, there will be no agreement, only more stalemate and war."

Refugees

As for the second conclusion, regarding the Arab refugees, we must be clear, first of all, about one thing: There is no absolute or automatic "right of return," as the Arabs constantly claim. The 1948 UN resolution (General Assembly Resolution 194, of December 11, 1948) citing the possibility of a return of Arab refugees to their former homes hedges this point in a number of ways: First of all, it speaks of allowing such a return with respect to refugees "ready to live at peace with their neighbors." In addition, it also raises the option of resettlement in other countries, with compensation being paid to refugees opting for this solution.

Concerning the first point: The Arabs were not "ready to live at peace with their (Jewish) neighbors" back then in 1948. It certainly is highly doubtful – to put it mildly – that they would be willing to do so today, following a half-century of ceaseless hate propaganda and hate-education against Jews and Israel!

When the UN resolution cited resettlement as an option, it merely reflected the almost universal solution to refugee problems, involving many millions of people, that was then being applied, the world over, in the wake of World War II. Why does the Arab refugee problem have to be the only one to seek its resolution by repatriation rather than by resettlement with compensation? Could the reason be that this would be a "convenient" way to put an end, God forbid, to the Jewish state of Israel?

It is most unfortunate that a few days after his forthright statement about Israel as a Jewish state President Bush himself diluted this statement by naming "the right of return" as one of the "core issues" to be discussed by the Israeli and Palestinian Arab negotiators.

Two Refugee Problems

The Jerusalem Prayer Team is a group of more than 300 American Christian leaders. Here is what this team had to say on the subject in an internet message posted on January 17:

"In 1948, two refugee problems were created as a result of the Arab states' war against the newly established state of Israel: about 750,000 Palestinian Arabs and some 850,000 Jews from Arab countries. But while Jewish refugees were absorbed into Israel and granted citizenship, the Arab refugees were, with the exception of those in Jordan, forced to remain in camps, stateless, for the past 60 years by their host Arab countries, to cynically perpetuate their 'refugee' status and use this as a weapon against Israel. … The Jews who were forced out of their homes by Arab governments, which then confiscated their property, were the

victims of the same aggression carried out by the Arab states against the newly founded state of Israel. …

"When the Palestinian Authority claims a 'right of return' for Palestinian Arabs whose great-grandparents once lived in what has become Israel, it is only with the cynical intention of inundating the country with enough Arabs to eliminate it as the world's only Jewish state."

(The Jerusalem Prayer Team may be accessed at http://jerusalemprayerteam.org or: jpteam@sbcglobal.net )

Before returning to Washington, President Bush said that he would like to see an Israeli-Palestinian agreement signed by the end of this year. Needless to say, this is a hope shared by many. The question is whether we will witness the change of attitude – the "new spirit," perhaps, of which the Prophet Ezekiel (11:19) speaks – that needs to take place before this hope can be realized.

January 17, 2008 Moshe Aumann

(Mr. Aumann is a retired diplomat with Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.)