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PARTISAN REVIEW
satisfy Arabs living in Israel it elf? Wouldn't they want separation
and another partitioning?
Oz:
The first thing Israel has to do - you might be surprised to hear
this from an Israeli dove - the first thing is that Israel must be very
strong, militarily and otherwise. In order to convince even the
most militant Arabs that the dream of destroying Israel, or that
Israel is an episode which can be transferred elsewhere, is
unrealistic. Israel has to make a generous proposal which will no
doubt be rejected by the Palestinians right now. As for the Arabs
in the Galilee, the Arabs in Israel itself, the Palestinian citizens of
the state of Israel, they wi ll have a free choice - if you want I can
call it a Jewish choice- between making
aLiyah,
emigrating into
their own independent country when this materializes, or livin g in
the diaspora, or assimilating in Israel and becoming Israelis, not
necessarily Jews but Israelis. That is a fair option . So far there has
been a firm and consistent rejection by the Palestinians of any
such proposals from Israeli moderates and doves. While in
America four or five months ago, I had many chances to talk
about the Israeli Peace Now movement, of which I'm an activist. I
had to do a painful job of explain ing to those nice, progressive,
left-wing, dovish Americans that there is a basic and fundamental
difference between the antiwar movement in America in the late
sixties and early seventies on the one hand, and the Peace Now
movement in Israel now. While the American movement
maintained, if I read it correctly, that America was fighting the
wrong war against the wrong enemy and must pull out
immed iately at any cost, there is no such claim within the Israeli
Peace Now movement. No one of us maintains that this is a wrong
war or that the enemy is not real, there is no question of pulling
ou t and certainly no position of "at any cost."
Goodheart:
I suppose the upcoming elections* will not make any sig–
nificant political difference. The Palestinians have not accepted
any of the proposals of the moderates and there is no immediate
prospect of their doing so.
Oz:
The elections might make a significant political difference within
Israel. They would not have immediate impact on Israeli–
Palestinian confli ct. One of my most painful and bitter
disappointments in my political experience has to do with my
meetings with Palestinian intellectuals, writers, thinkers, political
activists . Some of those people talk sense when they talk to me
over coffee or over a glass of whiskey. The very same people,
'They took place in May 1981; though the Labor party was expected to win, Begin
was returned to power.
