Reader Post: A Comprehensive Blueprint Towards Peace

peace-between-israel-and-palestine-thumb17548004_0.dem trans slideshowA little more than a week and a half ago, Professor Raphael Cohen-Almagor – Founder and Director of the Middle East Study Group at the University of Hull – joined with Manual Hassassian – Palestinian Ambassador to the UK – and published ‘The Two State Solution: The Way To Peace’ in Fathom Journal, an online magazine I once respected. For many Palestinians, it was a highly controversial article, because the latter not only recognized Israel’s right to exist, but it’s right to exist as a Jewish state. For Palestinian and Islamist radicals, recognizing Israel’s right to exist at all, under any borders, is bad enough; recognizing it as a Jewish homeland is an unforgivable sin. Needless to say, it was a great start, and an indispensable step towards peace.

But alas, that’s all it really was….. a start. While the article itself is very good, there were couple of key points that I felt got lost in the shuffle, or were ignored outright. I tried posting my suggestions in the comment section below, but the site refused to publish them. Meanwhile, they were more than happy to accept a couple of virulently anti-Israel posts on their article, which did a great deal of damage to the site’s reputation in my eyes.

The following is what I tried to post on the article. And yes, I know that some of these were addressed in the Fathom article, but I am including them here as well because I want to give them extra emphasis.

1. Mutual compensation and acknowledgement of the crimes committed by and against both sides. For Israelis, this includes: arbitrary arrests, kidnappings, reckless expansionist policies in Yehudah and Shomron aka West Bank, the abusive treatment some Jewish residents in the territories inflict upon innocent Palestinians (see above), and (as much as some Israelis hate to admit it) partial responsibility for the refugee crisis of 1948. For Palestinians (note that many of these could also apply to the Arab/Muslim world as a whole), the list includes: targeting civilians with rockets and suicide bombers, pogroms, wars of (attempted) ethnic cleansing, incitement to genocide, collaboration with Hitler and the Nazis in the Final Solution, history and heritage theft, the deplorable treatment of Jews throughout the Arab world since the Islamic conquests, and the ongoing worldwide delegitimization campaign in the form of the BDS movement, which has resulted in a significant spike in antisemitism all over the globe. Oh yes, and ?#?BringBackOurBoys?.

2. An immediate end to genocidal incitement against Jews in the Palestinian Territories and the dissolution of Hamas. It’s leaders need to be brought to justice and tried in an Israeli court, and Palestinian newspapers, television, radio, etc need to be cleansed of antisemitism as thoroughly as possible. Israel also needs to do everything in its power to integrate its Arab minority, end housing discrimination, and address their needs and concerns (within reason of course), meanwhile providing assistance and compensation to families negatively affected by the military occupation.

3. The Temple Mount needs to be governed by the UN, and it should be open to visitation and prayer by both Jews and Muslims. A third Temple should be built alongside the Dome on the Mount as well.

4. Jewish holy sites in Hebron, Bethlehem, etc must be respected, or placed under Jewish control i.e. the Jordanian control of the Temple Mount. Ditto for Muslim and Christian holy sites located within Israel proper.

5. Palestinians and the larger Arab and Muslim world need to start telling the truth about the indigenous roots of the Jews to Israel/Palestine. If the Palestinian Arabs really do see themselves as Israelites/Canaanites and wish to celebrate it, that is fine. In fact, we encourage our Palestinian brothers to embrace it. However, we will not tolerate, let alone accept such false myths as: “Jesus was a Palestinian Arab/Muslim shaheed”, “Palestine was always an Arab/Muslim country”, “the Jewish Kingdom never existed”, “there was never a Jewish Temple on the Mount”, and “modern Palestinians are the “real” descendants of the ancient Hebrews (that is, if they’re even willing to accept that Jews once lived there at all) whereas modern Jews are European invaders from Khazaria with no Israelite roots to speak of”. I am entirely confident in saying that this heritage theft is not only unacceptable, but unconscionable. This is nothing short of colonialism, and it needs to stop right now. The Jordanian waqf also needs to be reformed and told that if it doesn’t cease in its efforts to destroy any and all archaeological evidence of the Jewish Temple, or the 4000 year old Jewish heritage in the land, that it will be removed and exiled forthwith.

I am open to further suggestions. If they are good enough, I will consider adding them to the list. I left out al-Farhud and the expulsion of Jews from other Arab lands because this is something that cannot be directly pinned on either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

11 thoughts on “Reader Post: A Comprehensive Blueprint Towards Peace”

  1. ahad_ha_amoratsim

    Your suggestions are obviously well-meaning, but several of them are ill advised.
    The Jewish religion does not permit construction of the Third Temple at this time and in this manner. Please do not do us any favors.
    Most rabbis also hold the opinion that Jewish law does not even permit Jews to set foot on the Temple Mount at this time. Perhaps Jews whose rabbis hold the opposite opinion should have the legal right to set foot there, perhaps not, and certainly the decision should not be up to the Muslim authorities. But again, you are doing us no favors.
    Apart from that, history shows that turning any site over to the UN will assure that Jewish rights there will not be protected, but that people who expel Jews, or who use the site to murder Jews, will be protected.

    1. The rabbis you are thinking of are Ashkenazic rabbis who have (unfortunately) internalized Christian antisemitism. The idea that exile is “divine punishment” that can only be reversed by God is a medieval Christian idea.

      1. ahad_ha_amoratsim

        I assume you are talking about building Bayis Shlishi, and not about ascending Har HaBayis in a state of tumah; it is primarily Ashkenazi dati leumi rabbis who permit the latter.
        As to the idea that we cannot build Bayis shlishi ourselves, are there sefardi rabbis who say we can allow it to be built by the lo-yehudim such as the UN?
        And when you say it is Ashkenazi rabbis who say we cannot decide ourselves to rebuild it simply because it pleases us, do you mean such Ashkenazi rabbis as Reish Lakish? Rabbeinu Bahya?
        The idea that exile is “divine punishment” that can only be reversed by G*d is in the chumash and unanimously accepted by chazal, long before their were Ashkenazi rabbis or medieval Christians.

  2. “The Temple Mount needs to be governed by the UN”
    I am sorry, but the UN is one of the most biased institutions in our day.

  3. Norman_In_New_York

    The Temple Mount, of right, belongs to us and our sovereignty over it must never be questioned. Those rabbis who would bar Jews from the Temple Mount are still living in a 19th Century shtetl worrying what the goyim think.

    1. its the Waqf’s sovereignty. not ours. I, like you, would like to think it is ours, but it is not. When jews, in the only jewish state, our banned from visiting, let alone praying in such a place, it doesn’t not belong to them. It belongs to those that refuse to allow jews there. i.e the muslims.
      thank you very much, Moshe Dayan…

    1. haha…my thoughts exactly…the author is well meaning and all, but he might as well have written a treatise on how to colonise the Andromeda galaxy… it won’t happen, it’s not feasible, it’s beyond utopian. arab minds are not ready to accept jewish sovereignty over anything, jewish rights over anything.
      kudos to Benny for his good intentions, but his words belong in the realm of fiction for now.. Maybe in 500 years, maybe, this would have a semblance of reality.

  4. I think you’re close to zero for five for these ideas.

    1. I don’t think replicating the Versailles war guilt clause is advisable, even if mutual. There’s no discernable practical benefit and it just rankles terribly (as did the original).

    2. Your suggesting that an Arab authority in the West Bank or Gaza liquidate a political organization which currently speaks for about 45% of the population and suppress like-minded media to please their Jewish neighbors? Not going to happen. Please recall the words of Otto von Bismarck: the one thing you cannot do with a bayonet is sit on it.

    3. The United Nations is a boil on the bum of the world that needs to be lanced and drained. It is ever corrupt and comically truculent and mendacious when not completely vapid. Israel and the United Nations should withdraw and tell those cretins to get their sticky fingers and their lying lips out of New York. Send them to Cairo, where the hate is pervasive and the climate is what they deserve.

    4. That sounds like a practical and decent idea. They’ll never concede that, of course. One impediment concerns the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. You cannot turn it over to the administration of the denominations housed there. You need special squadron of your national police force to superintend the buldings and grounds of that Church. I suggest it be staffed with rude and wiseacre Jewish mothers armed with rolling pins.

    5. Again, you cannot make an artifact of the public discourse of another country. How would this ever be enforced?

  5. Most of what you say is good, but this:

    “The Temple Mount needs to be governed by the UN”

    You might as well just give it over to Hamas!

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top