A Two-State Solution for the Spanish-Catalonian Conflict?

The Spanish region of Catalonia declared its independence last month, after its citizens overwhelmingly voted to do so. In response, Madrid dissolved the regional government, imposed direct rule, and issued an arrest warrant for the former Catalonian president. Jeff Jacoby comments:

In the ensuing [post-referendum] violence, voters were beaten with clubs, dragged by their hair, and shot with rubber bullets [by Spanish police]. Nearly 900 civilians were treated for injuries. . . . A senior cabinet minister warned [subsequently] that Spain will use force, if necessary, to compel Catalonia to submit. . . .

[Nonetheless], the Spanish government unhesitatingly proclaims support for Palestinian sovereignty. . . . How can Spain, so ready to endorse a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, aggressively oppose one for its conflict with Catalonia?

The phenomenon isn’t limited to Spain. Iraq also backs statehood and full UN membership for the Palestinians—but not for the Iraqi Kurds who decisively voted for independence last month. . . . As recently as July, the Chinese president Xi Jinping hosted Mahmoud Abbas in Beijing and endorsed a “settlement of the Palestinian issue on the basis of the two-state solution.” But under no circumstances will China contemplate a “two-state solution” for Tibetans, an ancient people with a unique linguistic, cultural, and religious identity. . . .

Only when it comes to Palestinians is the international community obsessed with a “two-state solution.” That isn’t because Palestinians are uniquely qualified for sovereignty. The dysfunctional, violent, and corrupt Palestinian Authority is about as ill-suited to statehood as any entity can be. Rather, the unending agitation to create a Palestinian state is a reflection of the world’s restless preoccupation with Jews—and, since 1948, with the Jewish state.

Read more at Jeff Jacoby

More about: Catalonia, China, Israel & Zionism, Spain, Two-State Solution

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society