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Israel and Palestine in the Year 2000
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14621 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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5 / 1988 |
1,660 Words |
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Seymour Martin Lipset
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The land of prophecy calls out for a prophet. It needs one in the ancient tradition, a prophet who does not predict the future with certainty or access to divine revelation, but who warns his people that unless they reform, dire portents await them, including their destruction as a nation and their expulsion from the Holy Land.
The problems that confront Israel 40 years after its creation and 12 years before the new Julian millennium are immense. Most frightening are Israel's relations with the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. These threaten to produce a repeated dose of what the Palestinians call the "uprising": riots and demonstrations, rock-throwing and Molotov cocktails, and, in the long run, the possibility of another war.
Israel also faces what some have called "the war of the Jews" between the Orthodox and the less religious or totally secularized. This conflict has already upset the peace of Jerusalem with stone-throwing and riots. Another internal battle, between the doves and the hawks, pits those who would like to trade the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza for peace against those who would retain the territories that they refer to as Judea and Samaria. The latter would either expel the Arabs to the neighboring countries or allow them to stay with limited political rights.
Beyond these political tensions are "normal" problems that affect Israel more than many other countries, particularly that of economic viability. As of 1988, the country has a high standard of living compared with Third World countries, but still runs a continuing massive deficit in its foreign trade that is covered by governmental and private contributions from the United States.
An optimistic scenario
What will Israel be like in the year 2000? An optimistic scenario posits peace with its Arab neighbors. The peace exists as a result of negotiations between Israel and an Arab delegation that was composed of Jordanians and representatives of a Palestinian provincial (autonomous) government that was set up in 1988-89 under Israeli auspices as laid out in the Camp David agreements. Representatives from Egypt and Syria, which took part in response to pressure from the Soviet Union, participated in the peace process to facilitate good economic relationships with the United States.
Although the peace conference threatened to break down on a number of occasions, representatives finally agreed to a treaty that returned most of the West Bank and Gaza to Arab sovereignty. The new government became a federation between Palestine and Jordan. East Jerusalem, inhabited overwhelmingly by Arabs, remains part of the larger city of Jerusalem, with a borough system that allows most of the Arabs to live under a submunicipal government elected by them. The peace treaty allowed Arabs to choose between Palestinian-Jordanian or Israeli citizenship. Almost all of them opted for the former. Especially attractive to the Israelis are the provisions specifying that only Israel can maintain troops in the repatriated territories along the Jordan. Israel has the right to reoccupy if it finds any evidence of remilitarization by the Arabs. All inhabitants of Jewish settlements remain Israeli citizens, with the right to elect their own local governments in those towns or villages with a Jewish majority. The treaty also established human rights and
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