Israel Matzav: Ari Shavit throws in the towel

Ari Shavit throws in the towel

Haaretz runs an open letter from one of its normally saner writers, Ari Shavit, to Prime Minister Netanyahu. In the letter, Shavit gets all emotional about Israel's horrible predicament and urges Netanyahu to just 'end the occupation now' to save our standing in the World.

Mr. Prime Minister, something very bad has happened since that evening [of Netanyahu's Bar Ilan speech, June 14, 2009. CiJ]. Perhaps the blame lies with U.S. President Barack Obama: His ceaseless, unbalanced and unfair pressure on you caused you to freeze in place. Perhaps the blame lies with the international community: Its outrageous attitude toward Israel caused you to feel besieged. Perhaps the blame lies with opposition leader Tzipi Livni: Her cynical behavior shackled you with iron chains to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who are hobbling you.

Yet even if others are to blame, the responsibility is yours. You are the one sitting at that wooden desk in that wood-paneled room where our fate is decided. Therefore, you are the one responsible for the fact that a year after your election, Israel is still mired in the toxic swamp of the occupation into which it sank 43 years ago. You are responsible for the fact that we are sinking even deeper into the mud.

Granted, you suspended construction in the settlements. Granted, you made every effort to persuade Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to enter negotiations. At a time when the Palestinians did not lift a finger, you made one concession after another. But the political game you played was lost from the outset. What is now clear to everyone was clear from the start: There is no Palestinian partner for true peace. There isn't even a reliable Palestinian partner for partitioning the land.

Yet the fact that the Palestinians are not acting like a mature nation does not give us the right to act like them. Since we are the ones sinking in the mud, we are the ones who must do something. It is Israel that must break through the noose tightening around its neck.

Mr. Prime Minister, here are the basic facts: The grace period granted the Jewish state by Auschwitz and Treblinka is ending. The generation that knew the Holocaust has left the stage. The generation that remembers the Holocaust is disappearing. What shapes the world's perception of Israel today is not the crematoria, but the checkpoints. Not the trains, but the settlements. As a result, even when we are right, they do not listen to us. Even when we are persecuted, they pay us no heed. The wind is blowing against us.

The zeitgeist of the 21st century threatens to put an end to Zionism. No one knows better than you that even superpowers cannot resist the spirit of the times. And certainly not small, fragile states like Israel.

Therefore, the question now is not who brought us to this pass - the right or the left. The question is not who brought the greater disaster down upon us - the right or the left. The question is what should be done to bring about an immediate change in Israel's position in the world. What should be done so that the storm of history does not topple the Zionist project.

The possibilities are known: Offer the Syrians the Golan Heights in exchange for ending its alliance with Iran. Offer Abbas a state in provisional borders. Initiate a second limited disengagement. Transfer territory into the hands of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, to enable him to build a sane Palestinian state. Reach an agreement with the international community on an outline for partitioning the land into two nation-states.

Each of these five options entails high risks. Each of these options will exact a high political price. You are liable to be booted out of office. But if you do not adopt at least one of these five proposals, there is no point to your tenure in office. Your government will be remembered as the government under which Israel became a leper state, poised on the brink of destruction.

None of Shavit's five options is viable, and were Netanyahu to suggest them, they would just become the first step in a bargaining process. Let's see why none of the ideas works.

Offer the Syrians the Golan Heights in exchange for ending its alliance with Iran.

Syria has already said that it will not end its alliance with Iran. Giving the Syrians the Golan Heights is a disaster from a security standpoint. Obama is more interested in the 'Palestinians' than he is in Syria anyway, so offering the Syrians the Golan Heights won't solve anything. Where are you going to house all the Jews you would have to expel?

Offer Abbas a state in provisional borders.

Abu Mazen has already turned down a state in provisional borders. He doesn't want it because he's afraid it will become permanent. What borders are you going to offer him? Why would a man who has already turned down 95+% of Judea and Samaria and a one-for-one trade for the rest accept a provisional state? Where are you going to house all the Jews you would have to expel?

Initiate a second limited disengagement.

Possibly the biggest disaster of the bunch. Where are you going to carry out this 'limited disengagement'? Who will maintain security control? What will you do the first time rockets are fired from the territory you vacate? (And please don't tell me we will fire back or send in the IDF because we all saw how long it took until that happened in Gaza, and ANY territory in Judea and Samaria is much closer to the country's heartland). Where are you going to house all the Jews you would have to expel?

Transfer territory into the hands of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, to enable him to build a sane Palestinian state.

In addition to the issues I raised with 'limited disengagement,' Fayyad has no base of support among the 'Palestinians.' How would he maintain control?

Reach an agreement with the international community on an outline for partitioning the land into two nation-states.

Why would we want to negotiate with the 'international community'? What would happen if the 'Palestinians' just said "no" to what sounded like a reasonable offer? After all, they have said "no" to three overly generous offers in the past without suffering any consequences.

Shavit argues that Netanyahu has 'frozen in place' since his June 14, 2009 speech at Bar Ilan. But Shavit is wrong. Since June, Netanyahu has made several important concessions to the 'Palestinians' - most notably the 'settlement freeze.' None of those concessions have helped. Hopefully, Netanyahu now understands that more concessions are not the answer. But Shavit has panicked because he is starting to see that nothing we offer the 'Palestinians' short of our own destruction will be enough, and as a Haaretz writer, Shavit cannot acknowledge that.

Read the whole thing.

Israel Matzav: Ari Shavit throws in the towel