The Balfour Declaration gives Israel legitimacy.
The Balfour Declaration was promulgated in 1917 by the British, then on the verge of victory over the Ottoman Empire in the Levant. It was formulated by Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, heavily influenced by Chaim Weizmann. Weizmann wanted it to say that Palestine would become the national home of the Jews. In fact, it said that a national home for the Jews would be established in Palestine.
Let's put this in context. This was at a time when the Ottoman Empire was disintegrating and a lot of wild and contradictory promises were being made. The Armenians were promised northeastern Anatolia. The Greeks were promised southwestern Anatolia. The Russians were promised Constantinople. The Arab King Faisal was promised Greater Syria for a kingdom, an area that included Palestine. Of all these promises, only the Balfour Declaration is remembered today.
The Israeli historian Tom Segev quotes Arthur Koestler as saying that the Balfour Declaration was ``one nation promising another nation the land of a third nation." If you believe Israel's right to exist rests on the Balfour Declaration, you can hardly be surprised that the Arabs view Israel as the last vestige of European colonialism. (This has to be one of the supreme ironies of Israel's situation, since Israel resulted from Jews fleeing European persecution and prejudice.)
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.
This is almost true. Turkey is a democracy, although it has gone through some rough patches. Iran is struggling toward meaningful elections, and Pakistan has struggled along as a kind of off-and-on democracy for decades. There have been sporadic and questionable elections in Algeria and Egypt. Yasser Arafat won an election in the West Bank and Gaza.
But how sincerely do people trumpeting Israel's democracy really want democracy in the Arab countries. In December 1991 there was a parliamentary election in Algeria and the Islamic fundamentalists won 188 of 230 seats. The military took over and nullified the election. I don't recall many voices of protest from the West.
Is Israel really a democracy? Yitzhak Rabin said about the time of the Oslo Accords that whereas Israelis would like their country to be a Jewish democracy occupying all of Palestine, they could only have two out of the three conditions. In signing the Oslo Accords, he was opting for a Jewish democracy. If they were to keep all of Palestine and give full citizenship rights to the Palestinians, they would lose their fundamental Jewish character. The present situation is the third possibility. They control all of Palestine, and they retain their fundamental Jewish character, but the Arab Israeli citizens, 20% of the population of Israel proper, are second class citizens in that they do not serve in the army and they are excluded from living in certain strategic zones. The Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza are very much under the control of the Israelis and they are third class noncitizens, with essentially no rights, subjected to daily harassment, torture if arrested, and collective punishment. In its present situation Israel is a democracy in the same sense that South Africa was a democracy in the days of apartheid. First class citizens have the right to choose their leaders, and the rest of the people are oppressed.
Israel is America's strongest ally.
This is certainly true, but what other choice does Israel have.
There is a question as to why America gives Israel unconditional support. The general belief in the Arab world is that it is the power of the Jewish lobby in America. I have always resisted this as a complete explanation. One cannot dismiss it entirely. Lobbying has always been important in the history of Israel. Chaim Weizmann, the first man to hold the honorary position of President of Israel, was first and foremost a lobbyist par excellence with the British. But the Saudis, for example, would never be able to achieve as much with the same amount of effort and money.
I had a conversation about ten years ago with a young Israeli traveler in south India. He felt Israel had no reliable friends, and that America was Israel's ally only because of Israel's strategic position. That doesn't make sense to me either. Whatever America gains from that oil-poor toehold in the Middle East it loses tenfold from the oil-rich Arab states. America's position would be immensely stronger in the Middle East if it were to abandon Israel.
I argued that, to the contrary, the first reason for America's, and Europe's, support for Israel is a feeling of guilt for allowing the Holocaust to happen, a feeling that after all the Jewish people have been through they deserve a country of their own as a refuge. The second reason is that in America, Jews are viewed as honorary Christians, whereas Muslims are thoroughly Other; indeed, even a rabid right-wing Christian fundamentalist like Pat Robertson is careful to refer to the ``Judaeo-Christian tradition" when he clearly means the ``Christian tradition". I think there is a feeling on the part of many American Christians that under the Jews, the ``Holy Land" is in good hands; under the Muslims it is not.
There are no Palestinians, only Arabs living in Palestine.
Theodor Herzl, one of the founders of Zionism in the late nineteenth century, promoted Palestine as ``a land without people for a people without a land". A friend of his went to Palestine and wrote back with surprise that there were already people living there.
Throughout subsequent history there have been among Israelis strong currents of denial of the existence of a Palestinian people, as opposed to Arabs who happen to be living in Palestine. In my youth I drove across some of the wilder parts of Africa with an Israeli man who had fought in the wars of 1948 and 1956. He spoke fluent Arabic and would engage every Arab or Somali we met in a debate about Israel's right to exist. He had a map that he would pull out, showing tiny Israel occupying only a tiny sliver of land, Palestine, while the Arabs ranged all the way from Morocco to Sudan to Yemen to Iraq. ``Why can't you let the Jews have just this little bit?" he would ask.
Suppose the Chinese decided to move into and take over all of Massachusetts. Picture the map. Imagine your reaction to a similar argument on their part.
Still today I see the occasional letter to the editor blaming the Arab countries for the problems in Palestine, because they have failed to accept and integrate the Arabs from Palestine into their own country--that is, because they will not aid the Israelis in the expulsion of these people from the land the Israelis want. Indeed, a recent poll revealed that 47% of the Israeli public would be in favor of the wholesale transfer of all Arabs out of Palestine into other Middle Eastern countries, although it is unclear how much of this is simply despair at the seemingly unbreakable cycle of violence.
The Palestinians will not even admit Israel's right to exist.
This was true for a long time. In the 1990s, however, when it looked like a just peace was possible, the PLO formally declared Israel's right to exist. The recent Saudi plan, which has had a cold reception in Israel, offers diplomatic recognition from all the Arab countries.
But let's look at the other side of the coin. What has Israel had to say about Palestine's right to exist? It has actively prevented it since 1967. Even during the 1990s while it was promising a just peace, Israel was continuing to build settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, and especially in East Jerusalem, together with an infrastructure that isolated the Palestinians into separate pockets of land, undermining the very possibility of a viable Palestinian state. Very recently Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's own Likud Party voted against ever allowing a Palestinian state to be formed.
Israel and Palestine can achieve peace only when each recognizes the right of the other to exist, and both sides can be faulted for their actions so far.
Israel needs the West Bank in order to be secure.
Israel won three wars from within its 1967 borders, and won them handily. It is immensely more powerful now than it was then. Israel does not face any serious threat of annihilation from the Arab countries in the foreseeable future.
Israel is a very narrow country. It will always be vulnerable to attack from its neighbors, regardless of whether it takes all of Palestine or returns to its 1967 borders. Arab countries already have rockets that can reach Tel Aviv. Keeping the West Bank won't change that.
Israel can only be secure when it is at peace with its neighbors.