Well, with the possible vote proclaiming Palestine to be a state seemingly imminent (as opposed to its current status as non-voting observer in the UN), Israel seems to be increasing their long overdue PR campaign.
(Just to get this out of the way, I do believe that there should be a Palestinian state, but it must be done in a logical, legal way. This move is more of a middle finger to the U.S. More on this later.)
It’s been a mystery to many of us how bad Israel’s PR has been for the last few decades. I mean it’s pretty tough to find a NON-Jewish public relations professional and Jewish writers and filmmakers? We got a few of them too.
My favorite of the recent attempts to recapture the conversation deals primarily with the fact that the “Occupied Territories” are actually not occupied but “disputed” territories. Believe it or not, this is not a small distinction when you’re talking about world courts, etc. The other thing I like about it is that it deals with history, but not King-David history. Like 1960s history. I firmly believe that we have to deal with the situation as it exists now. If I hear one more fellow traveler tell me that Palestinians don’t exist, I don’t know what I’ll do. Okay, maybe once there was no Palestian people once (they were Jordanians, Egyptians, Bedouins, or just plain nomads. But they sure exist now.
The video also touches on my peace plan, which I might as well reveal here.
As the piece points out, the disputed territories were captured, not in an offensive action against Palestine – there was no such entity – but in a defensive war against Jordan. Same goes for Gaza and Egypt.
The Marans Peace Plan? Give the area won from Jordan in 1967 back to Jordan. Israel has already vacated Gaza, but maybe officially sign some papers saying that it now belongs to them. Unfortunately, the opportunity to deal with Egypt may have been squandered since the current governement is pretty hostile towards the Jewish homeland.
But in the case of the area between the Jordan River and previous Israeli border (the so-called West Bank), Israel would the be negotiating with a country WITH WHOM THEY ARE NOT AT WAR … an entity that doesn’t have their destruction written into their charter. At this point they can do some horse-trading: you take this village, we take that one. You want to keep that village. Okay, just make the Jews living their Jordanian citizens, with all the protections that go along with it.
Far fetched? Why is the concept of Jewish Jordanians any more strange Arab Israelis? Arabs citizens of Israel – I think there are a million of them – can vote, serve in parliament, etc. Of course, there are occassional problems, but can’t Jews have the same rights that Arab Israelis enjoy, but in Jordan or Egypt? The only answer to that hypothetical would be anti-Semitism and/or racism. That would be able to be dealt with at the UN, no?
Then, after a short interval, the Palestinians can work out their status with the Arab/Muslim countries, who are bound to give them a good deal, right? Would Palestine be an autonomous region of Jordan and/or Egypt? A sovereign nation? That would be for them to work out, but at each step of the way, Israel would have no official role in the matter, but its security would assured by a partner country with whom they’ve been at peace for decades.
Now that Israel is stepping up their PR efforts, why not run this up the flagpole and see what the international community thinks?
