There is another solution

By Uzzi Oman

Other than the war-loving zealots on their side and ours, it's clear to all of us that in the future we will be living near our neighbors and alongside them. Therefore, our behavior now has to be based on a vision of the future. Shouting about an iron fist or vaguely promising an agreement is preferable to war won't help. There is no guarantee the terror won't return, and there's no doubt that our enemies' aspirations, like the right of return, will not be fulfilled in their entirety. Therefore no agreemen will quieten them - the idea of a united Arab nation negates any permanent existence of a non-Arab entity on Arab land. So, we'll never be able to lay down the sword.

The war-lovers among them prefer to live without us. When one side believes there is a chance the enemy will break, they will continue striking, and so it is clear that we have to prove there's no chance they will break us. But an old adage remains true - in addition to a stick, one must offer a carrot. To change the picture to our benefit, we have to show the Palestinian masses that there is another solution that will relieve them of their distress, and it is a path preferable to blood and fire. There is no need for negotiations with their current leaders for the solution being proposed here.

The war is over ideology. A precondition for dissolving their ideology is to create trust among Palestinians that the Jewish state truly wants peace and can live in peace, with real equality for non-Jews. We've often said that Israeli Arabs are a bridge to peace, but Israel only takes care of its Jews. It expropriates land from Arabs, demolishes their homes, and befouls their harvests. Expropriation for public purposes is usually nothing more than a legal cover tor dispossessing Arabs - public land mostly goes to Jews. Announcements about public service jobs or public housing are for veterans - a euphemism for Jews. Even the yeshiva students who register for the draft but don't acrually serve, are considered veterans for these purposes, but Arabs aren't even called to register, so they aren't veterans.

Israel's image as egotistically Jewish is clear inside the Green Line. Seemingly all citizens are equal but the building permits don't go to Arabs, and the budgets for Arab townships are only reluctantly provided. Jews who only arrived in the country recently have more rights than veteran citizens who are not Jewish. More than 5O years after the Declaration of Independence promised equality for all citizens, that equality is being denied over and over again. If these are the relations between Jews and Arabs inside Israel, who is going to believe that the Jews really want peace and cooperation?

From every side, people here say for peace we'll make painful concessions, but the only painful concessions that might prove the Israeli people wants peace would be conceding their privileges that are not enjoyed by non-Jews - or granting them the same privileges. No territorial withdrawal will help. To build trust, scandals like poisoning the harvests of the Bedouin in the Negev must not take place. House demolitions of citizens who have been deliberately denied building permits must be avoided: the racist restrictions on the distribution of public land must be ended, and there must be a halt to the prohibition against any Israeli citizen living in any city or village in the country. A statutory legal status of equality must be given to all citizens. Democracies around the world do not include two types of citizens in their laws. Only in Israeli democracy is there a citizen by virtue of return, meaning a Jew, and a citizen by virtue of residence, meaning a non-Jew. The law defining citizenship according to the law of rerum must be canceled. Israeli citizenship must be the result of birth or residence only. Our new image would cancel all the charges of apartheid against us. It may be a long road, but it will surely be shorter than the incessant spilling of blood that will only go on for generations.

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-           The writer is chairman of "Ani Yisraeli" (I'm Israeli), an NPO devoted to Israeli nationhood.

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Published in Haaretz, April, 2002.