I was among a handful of reporters to meet with MK Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to the U.S. this week at the foreign ministry’s offices in Jerusalem. In our interview, Ayalon made it clear that the recent gruesome terrorist attack in the Jewish village of Itamar and the uprisings around the Arab world–but especially in Egypt–underscore the necessity of the Palestinians recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.
Last month, Mohamed ElBaradei, a candidate for Egypt’s next presidency and a political ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, told Der Spiegel last month that the Israelis “have a peace treaty with Mubarak, but not one with the Egyptian people.” Thus, Ayalon said, it is more important than ever for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state as part of a peace treaty with the Palestinian leadership in order to ensure the agreement holds legitimacy among the Palestinian people.
“We also see the winds of change in the surroundings and we also know that with the uncertainties and instabilities we want to make sure that what we sign is not just a piece of paper, but a true peace which will be stable–which will supply first and foremost security to everyone,” Ayalon said.
Ayalon said the brutal stabbing of a Jewish family in Itamar in their sleep cannot be looked at in a vacuum, but is more evidence that without true recognition, the delegitimization of Israel and the ubiquitous incitement in Palestinian media reinforces an environment of violence that will only continue if this atmosphere of hatred isn’t reformed:
“So of course when we talk about the fact that we would like the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or the homeland of the Jews, it’s something which is more than symbolic. It’s not just something that is verbally pronounced. It’s something which is very deep. Because if we sign a peace treaty between the Israeli people and the Palestinians, it also must reflect the end of the conflict, and the end of the claims. And so long as they claim the entire land, and we see it through a systematic incitement through a systematic culture which talks about the Israelis, the Jews as colonialists that do not deserve a state, that came here from… Europe, deny 3,500 years of Jewish history and presence here. And of course glorification of terrorists. But so long as they do not accept in the fullest meaning that we are here by our own right–they are not doing any favor to us by recognizing this–then we have a problem.”
Ayalon offered the group of journalists, here as part of a weeklong media fellowship with Act for Israel, a sharp reminder that “without Zionism there wouldn’t be a Palestinian people, in the Arab sense,” and that it is hypocritical for Palestinian President Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) to deny the very Israeli identity that will offer the Palestinians the chance for self-determination–something no Arab leader would have done for them.
And Ayalon was adamant that the traditional two-faced media approach practiced so efficiently by the Arab leadership would be unacceptable this time:
“The most important thing that I say to Abu Mazen is that I don’t need you, Abu Mazen, to recognize [Israel] as a Jewish state in Hebrew, not even in English. Say it in Arabic to your own children and to your own people. … This is the crux of the matter. So long as the Palestinians do not change in a very systematic way their entire culture, for peace and reconciliation and acceptance and cooperation and coexistence, there will not be peace.”
Ayalon dismissed the common excuse used by Abbas that Israel as a Jewish state would force non-Jews to choose between their religion and their state. Nonsense, Ayalon said–Jews have lived in Christian countries and Muslim countries throughout history and never had any difficulty being loyal to the state, so why should Israel’s Muslims be any different?
And from the Israeli perspective, Abbas is the temporary leader (as all leaders are) of the Palestinian people. The overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt shows just how evanescent is the power of such dictators. That’s why the cultural change is so integral to the survival of any peace agreement the two sides may reach. Such an agreement must be durable, and it must carry the legitimacy of the people in whose name it is signed.
“So if we’re a country that is supposed to be nine miles wide with the Palestinians right here and we’re trying to create a new reality between the two people, this whole idea of a culture of peace is even more critical than it was before,” Ayalon said. “We see that these regimes are shifting sands–they’ll be gone. We need a peace here that will be secure for generations, for hundreds of years, not just until Abbas goes home.”
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