The state we're in

By D.L. | JERUSALEM

PERHAPS because herring was a respected staple in the Eastern European Jewish shtetl, there is no literal translation in Yiddish of the English phrase, "red herring". Instead, Yiddish-speaking Jews use the expression "climbing up the smooth walls" to accuse someone of coming up with superfluous and irrelevant arguments in order to cloud the issue.

That expression, which has made its way into Hebrew, comes to mind whenever you hear—as you frequently do—Binyamin Netanyahu demanding that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a "Jewish state". Israel was defined by the United Nations at its inception as the Jewish state. Its declaration of independence promised its non-Jewish citizens equal rights. For the world at large, "Israel" and "the Jewish state" have always been synonymous.

What, then, lies behind Mr Netanyahu's insistent request? The Palestinians suspect that in demanding recognition, Mr Netanyahu is seeking an advantage in the still-to-be-settled question of Palestinian refugees and their "right of return". Others, including many Israelis, suspect that he is trying to obfuscate his reluctance to lead Israel out of the occupied Palestinian territories.

One of Israel's brightest diplomats-cum-academics has produced a paper that attempts, with dogged casuistry, to obfuscate the obfuscation. Tal Becker, who served as a close aide and peace negotiator under Tzipi Livni when she was foreign minister between 2005 and 2009, argues that the Israeli demand is justified, or at least understandable, but so are the Palestinian objections to it. He suggests ideas—mainly linguistic—for reconciling this conceptual confrontation. His deft course through the legal and political minefield suggests that Mr Becker's diplomatic unguents are far from exhausted.

Mr Becker wrote his paper as a fellow of the Washington Institute for Near-Eastern Policy, a think-tank with close ties to Israel. In it, he lays out the two sides of the argument starkly.

"Some interpret the insistence on recognition as a precondition designed to thwart or delay genuine negotiations. Others view it as an attempt to predetermine the outcome of the Palestinian refugee issue or to legitimize the denial of equal rights to Israel's Palestinian Arab minority. Still others consider the claim a manifestation of the unrealistic, if not arrogant, expectation that Palestinians repudiate their own historical narrative. Yet many Israeli leaders, most recently Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, have been equally adamant that such recognition is fundamental to any peace agreement. As Mr Netanyahu phrased it in his June 2009 speech at Bar-Ilan University, ‘The root of the conflict was and remains the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish People to a state of their own in their historic homeland.'"

But he goes on to soft-pedal the most awkward inconsistency in Mr Netanyahu's position, namely that the Palestinians have in fact already extended the recognition he wants. Mr Becker records Yasser Arafat himself (coincidentally in an interview with me and a colleague at Ha'aretz) "definitely” agreeing that Israel is the Jewish state. But he then adds, gymnastically, "These sentiments, though arguably expressed only for public consumption [why 'only'? That's the consumption we're interested in], nevertheless indicate a readiness on Arafat's part to publicly acknowledge the legitimacy of Israel's desire to maintain its Jewish character in a way the current Palestinian leadership has not, as yet, been willing to contemplate."

Perhaps they have not been willing to have their faces rubbed in Israel's Jewishness by Mr Netanyahu? Perhaps they read of Mr Netanyahu's pandering to his hard-right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, whose party, Yisrael Beitenu, has launched a slew of new bills discriminating against Israeli Arabs, and they recoil from this new, supremacist form of Israeli "Jewishness"?

Mr Becker makes the faintest references to these possibilities. He duly notes, with plenty of chapter-and-verse, that Israel's Jewishness was historically recognised in international documents, that it is not inconsistent with democratic tenets, and that it is upheld by the international community today, He somewhat contradicts his own assertion, moreover, about "the current Palestinian leadership", when he writes that the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas,

"has not always been averse to using the term 'two states for two peoples'. Indeed, contrary to comments by Netanyahu, US special envoy George Mitchell has asserted in repeated briefings that both leaders have at least agreed that the goal of the negotiations should be the establishment of 'two states for two peoples' rather than just 'two states'."

There is an expression in Jewish-Israeli lore, too, for this attitude. It was coined by the late Israeli statesman, Abba Eban: "Can't take yes for an answer."

Tzipi Livni claims that she was actually the one who first voiced the current Israeli demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel's Jewishness, while serving under Ariel Sharon. She raised it, she explains, specifically in the context of the negotiation over the Palestinian claim to a right of return for the 1948 refugees and their descendants. That negotiation moved close to closure under Mr Sharon's successor, Ehud Olmert, with the two sides agreeing to a limited return for some refugees, to an internationally-funded resettlement programme for others, and, most importantly in Ms Livni's view, to a solemn recognition of the Palestinian state as the place where the national aspiration of the Palestinian people would be realised. In parallel, the Palestinians would solemnly recognise Israel as the Jewish state where the Jewish national aspiration is realised.

Ms Livni, now leader of the opposition, accuses Mr Netanyahu of purloining and deliberately perverting this thinking for the precisely opposite end: to put a spoke in the wheels of peace talks and historic reconciliation.

Mr Becker, who knows all this perhaps better than anyone, has carefully wrapped its essence into his recommendations for "reconciling the claim and its objections". He writes: "the claim should be seen as seeking the Jewish people's right to self-determination in a sovereign state, rather than recognition of Israel as a Jewish state; recognition should be mutual… Recognition should be sought in the context of a conflict-ending agreement that includes agreement on a framework for resolving the refugee issue and on the establishment of a Palestinian nation-state alongside Israel."

Sensible stuff. Nevertheless, Mr Becker stands accused of exercising his valuable mind to deliver an elegant and learned paper which dignifies Mr Netanyahu's spurious and demagogic tactic with the undeserving deference of scholarship.