Why the Dangers of American Peacemaking May Outweigh the Merits

To Robert Satloff, the detailed plan put forth by the Trump administration to bring an end to the Israel-Palestinian deserves praise, above all, for rejecting the failed assumptions of previous attempts. Specifically, it includes:

A recognition that the Jordan Valley, not some arbitrary “Green Line” boundary left over from the fluke of battlefield deployments in 1949, should be recognized as Israel’s natural security border; a reflection of the demographic reality that peace cannot be premised on the forced repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers from communities in the West Bank back inside pre-1967 Israel; a clear statement that the solution to the Palestinian refugee problem lies in return of refugees to the new state of Palestine, not in keeping alive fantasies about the refugees’ alleged “right of return” to Israel.

Yet Satloff also harbors serious concerns, which he elaborates in detail. Above and beyond the specifics, he argues that the proposal, which Palestinian leaders have already rejected—as they have every other proposal for Palestinian statehood—can do more harm than good:

Predictably enough, it took less than a week for Arab and Muslim states—including the Trump administration’s closest partners in the Middle East—to reject the plan in the clearest and most vociferous terms. In so doing, the White House actually succeeded in retarding a positive trend—growing regional indifference to the Palestinian cause—and replacing it with across-the-board Arab and Muslim support for the most rejectionist sentiments of a tired, increasingly illegitimate Palestinian leadership.

[Moreover], there should be no doubt what is going to happen when a future president of a different party inherits the more unabashedly “pro-Israel” positions proposed by the Trump peace plan. He or she will almost surely renounce what Trump proposed and face a decision as to whether to issue his or her own peace plan. [If the latter, it] is likely to be . . . based on principles less rational and reasoned than the . . . Trump plan.

[Finally], after a century of conflict, one must admit the possibility that the Venn diagram of Israel-Palestinian peace may not exist. That is, there may be no overlap between what Palestinians will accept and what Israelis will offer. Traditionally, the main reason for the absence of peace has been Palestinian rejectionism, their refusal of every partition plan since 1937. That has not changed.

Until [it does], the goal of U.S. policy should be clear—to continue the historic march of shrinking the conflict from a meta-contest between Arabs and Israelis to a managed dispute between two peoples uneasily sharing the same tiny sliver of land on the eastern Mediterranean.

Read more at American Interest

More about: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Peace Process, Trump Peace Plan

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