FEATURED JOBS
In what might be seen as a stunning revelation, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has told Israel TV that the Arab rejection of a separate Palestinian Arab and Palestinian Jewish state (yes Jews there were Palestinians, too, until May 15, 1948) was wrong.
“It was our mistake. It was an Arab mistake as a whole,” the Palestinian Authority president told Israel’s Channel 2 TV in an interview translated by the Associated Press (according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency). “But do they punish us for this mistake for 64 years?”
It’s quite easy to scoff at the remark, and there is much to “punish” in those 64 years – chief among them never making a realistic counter-offer to Israeli concessions whose stated end result was an independent Palestinian state. Still, these words could be the start of Palestinian self-reversal of a self-righteousness that refuses responsibility for their own woes. Perhaps it is more hollow rhetoric designed to impress the West. Or perhaps it is a trial balloon to gauge Israeli reaction.
For certain, the words are meaningless without meaningful follow up action. This is where American pro-Israel centrist and left-leaning groups come in. Groups such as Americans for Peace Now, J-Street, the Israel Policy Forum and the like speak openly with Abbas and his emissaries regularly. Other American Jewish groups – Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Jewish Federations of North America, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation league and more – speak privately with Abbas and his representatives all the time.
Some steps they can to take, which will nudge a reluctant Israeli government into response:
• Now is the time for we American Jews who believe in a two-state solution to press Abbas to repeat in Arabic what he has said; it can be done as part of a joint statement with American Jewish and Muslim groups about the need for a two state-solution.
• It also speaks of the need to invite Abbas and his emissaries to address major American Jewish groups, forcing him to say what he is not naturally inclined to say.
• Likewise, American Jewish groups should push to address Palestinian legislators in the West Bank. (Simply forget about Gaza while Hamas embraces its viciously anti-Semitic characteristics. Rather, raise the standard of hope and living in the West Bank, showing Gazans what civil society nurtures.)
• It’s also time for Abbas to address the many issues surrounding Palestinian incitement of Israel and Jews in textbooks (of which there is much information and disinformation).
All of that (or even some of it) would be something indeed.
So rather than scoff at this as just another PR moment for Abbas, we cannot allow this to be yet another lost opportunity. We must continue to press Abbas in the right ways, not the ones that embarrass him, back him into a corner and force him to be “holier than Hamas” when it comes to armed struggle.
Will it pay off? For certain we know the result of no effort.
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