FAIR Christians for Fair
Witness on the Middle East
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Rev. Naim
Ateek Falsely Accuses Israel of Having
Expansionist Goals in
“A Palestinian
Christian Cry for Reconciliation”
In
his most recent book, “A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation,” Rev.
Naim Ateek repeatedly distorts history
and the facts on the ground in Israel/Palestine in a manner that seems
deliberately calculated to support his
accusations against the state of Israel, including his charges of
Israeli “expansionist policies.”
Rev. Ateek tries to set the stage for his
accusations of Israeli “expansionism” by claiming that by the “mid-1940s, the
situation had become intolerable in Palestine as Zionist Jews swelled to almost
33 percent of the population.” (p. 33)
• His
language alone is revelatory of Rev. Ateek’s mindset. What exactly is “intolerable” about Jews moving into an
area? Would American Christians think
to refer to the immigration of, for example, people from Latin America into the
United States as :intolerable” or would that strike us as unacceptably racist?
• In
1880 when Jewish re- settlement began in earnest, Israel/Palestine was not a country, it was an administrative
province within the Ottoman Empire. The
entire population at that time was very sparse -- less than 500,000 total
(compared to approximately ten million today), with the majority non-Jewish.
There was also significant Arab and
non-Arabic (Turkish, Kurdish, Bosnian and others) immigration into
Palestine.
• Why
does Rev. Ateek only find the Jewish immigration into Israel/Palestine
“intolerable”?
Rev. Ateek then proceeds to confuse
historical facts when he reports that “When the war of 1948 ended . . . .[d]ue
to the support of the Western powers to
the Zionists, the United Nations failed to force Israel to go back to its
allotted area. (p. 33)
• The
“allotted area” he refers to was the contours of what would have been the
modern Jewish state under U.N. Resolution 181.
Rev. Ateek fails to inform his readers that the Nov. 29, 1947 Resolution
created a Jewish state and an Arab State in Palestine by partitioning the
region. The partition plan was based
on demographics -- majority Arab areas would have become part of the new
(Palestinian) state and majority Jewish areas would have become part of the new
Jewish state. The Jewish agency
accepted the partition plan. On
December 17, 1947, however, the Council of the Arab League announced that it
would prevent the proposed partition by force. After starting a year-long war
against Israel, the Arabs had no right
or expectation that the U.N. would “force” Israel back to the very borders that
the Arab nations had rejected.
Rev.
Ateek claims that the 1967 war “showed the expansionist policies of the Israeli
government.” (p. 7) But as we assume Rev. Ateek knows -- Israel
did not start the ‘67 war, and acquired the Palestinian Territories in
self-defense.
• In
May, 1967 Egypt announced that its goal is to wipe Israel off of the map. Pres. Nasser blocked the Straits of Tiran
cutting off Israel’s only supply of oil (Iran). Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian
Arab armies begin building up along Israel’s borders, with assistance from
Iraqi, Saudi, Algerian and Kuwaiti troops.
• Israel
acquired the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and Golan Heights defending itself.
• Days
after the 1967 war ended, Israel tried to open back door negotiations (no Arab
country had diplomatic relations with them) for land in return for peace
treaties. On June 19, 1967, Israel’s
National Unity Government voted unanimously to return the Sinai to Egypt and
the Golan Heights to Syria in return for peace agreements. The Israeli government also resolved to open
negotiations with King Hussein of Jordan regarding the West Bank.
• But
the League of Arab States (eight Arab heads of state) held a summit conference
in Khartoum, Sudan from August 29 - September 1, 1967 and officially adopted a
policy at that time of no peace, no
recognition, and no negotiations with Israel.
Rev.
Ateek argues that in the beginning of the Oslo Peace Process “Palestinians were moving forward in building their region
and showing mature signs of bearing a responsibility for the nation” which made Israel “uneasy since it had not
reached its expansionist goals [so] Israel created conditions to halt and even
reverse that trend.” (pp. 25-26)
• Actually,
the Palestinian leadership required no help from Israel in preventing it from
“showing mature signs” towards nation building during the Oslo years.
• To
be sure, there were missteps and mistakes on both sides when it came to
implementation of Oslo. On the Israeli
side, there was a continuation of the politically foolish and humanly
disastrous settlement policy.
• But
the Palestinian leadership made no serious attempt to dismantle the terrorist
infrastructure, organize effective security forces or to educate their people
for peace as they were obligated to under the Oslo Accords. Yasser Arafat set
up fourteen rival security forces in the Territories – a certain prescription
for failure. The 6.5 billion dollars
the P.A. was given in aid to start the process of state building was all
squandered. And Oslo was followed a
wave of Palestinian suicide bombing inside Israel.
• As
President Clinton’s Chief negotiator and Special Envoy to the Middle East,
Dennis Ross wrote:
To be sure, I would not now be writing about the failings of Oslos if it had not been for Yasir
Arafat. . . . . “We needed Ben Gurion,
and we got Yasir Arafat . . . .” Oslo might not have failed if Arafat had been
prepared to be a leader and not just a symbol.
As a symbol, he could not give up Palestinian myths. As a symbol, he could not compromise or
concede in order to end the conflict.
The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the
Fight for Middle East Peace (Farrar Straus Giroux 2004) p. 767.