By Steven Jonas
From the Israeli Declaration of Independence, May 14, 1948
“The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
It is most unfortunate that, from the beginning (see the Nakba, 1948), the State of Israel has never honored this clause of its Declaration.
I have been reading the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, whose beat is the Middle East with an emphasis on Israel, for quite some time. In earlier years, I did not agree with him much. But more recently, I find myself very much in agreement with him, especially over the past couple of years when he has been writing about Arab/Palestinian-Israeli relationships, and how Israel is eventually going to have to bite the bullet and accept some sort of “two state solution.”
(As it happened, in a recent speech President Biden himself came out clearly and forcefully for the establishment of the “two-state” solution as a major factor in ending the long-time Israeli-Palestine-and-allies conflict, that goes back to the original UN resolution of 1947 that divided the then Palestinian Mandate administered by Great Britain into Jewish and Palestinian Arab sectors. I cannot recall any U.S. President doing that for quite some time now.)
If one looks at a map of the land that was originally granted to the Jewish interests by that 1947 resolution it is obvious, to this observer at least, that a country defined by it could not long survive. However, through a series of wars, the major ones of 1947, 1967 and 1973 having been initiated by one or more Arab nations, Israel grew to its present size and shape. And without going into the details here, the refusal of successive Israeli right-wing governments to carry out the provisions of the “Oslo Accords” of 1993 has led to the present horrific situation. (Horrific that is for the Israelis who were slaughtered in the Oct. 7 attack by the Shiite Arab organization, Hamas, for the hostages of several nationalities who are being held by Hamas, and for the primarily Sunni residents of Gaza who are being bombed daily by the Israeli air force and are running perilously short of food, medicine, fuel, the electrical power that is dependent on fuel, and, most recently, the means of communication with the outside world.)
I have written previously that the primary objective of both sides in the current war, being run predominately by Israel, is the prevention of the establishment of the “Two-State Solution” the framework for which was set forth in the aforementioned Oslo Accords, and now strongly endorsed by President Biden. Establishing a two-state solution, as mentioned, in recent years has been slow-walked (really slow-crawled) by successive Israeli center-right coalitions.
This one, with the prominent role being played in it by the far-Right Religious Zionism Party, has formally established as a goal the annexation of the West Bank to Israel. (Note that in the news item linked in the last sentence that goal is spelled out in detail.) This fact has not gotten much publicity, at least in the United States. But further, without any formal agreements with anyone, The Religious Zionism Party, presumably aided by other right-wing organizations in Israel, has slowly and surely been carrying out this policy, by creating what for decades Israeli politicians have liked to call “facts on the ground.”
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Steven Jonas, MD, MPH, MS is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at StonyBrookMedicine (NY). As well as having been a regular political columnist for over 20 years, he is the author/co-author/editor/co-editor of 37 books. In addition to his position on OpEdNews as a trusted author, he is a regular contributor to From The G-Man.
Source: OpEdNews.com