DAVID TWERSKY
453
fuJI of Palestinian refugees and exiles for the Israeli port of Haifa–
was not a begrudging acceptance of the legitimacy of the Jewish "Ex–
odus" carrying with it an implicit recognition of the legitimacy of the
Jewish return to the land of Israel. It was a mocking and cynical
dismissal of Jewish claims to victimization. (In its rush to embrace
the slightest indication of Palestinian moderation, which it defines as
anything less fatal than a bomb,
The Nation,
in a front-page editorial,
thus misinterpreted the subterranean meaning of the P.L.O. public–
ity stunt.)
If
the occupation and the exile are
the
issues, then Pales–
tinians are the victims in this tragedy, Jews the victimizers.
Chaim Weizmann, a great scientist, Zionist leader, and Israel's
first president, once said that the Arab- Israel problem was a case of
"two rights and two wrongs" - both sides playing the victims and the
victimizers. But even thirty-five years later this is not recognized. In–
ternational observers have been prisoners of the myth that the Israeli
presence in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and Palestinian op–
position to it can best be understood as part of the unfinished story of
decolonization. Much of the American (and, it almost goes without
saying , West European) reaction was based on superimposing the
colony-rising image on a political reality which resists such comfor–
table comparisons. For one thing , in their struggle for indepen–
dence, the Algerians (to use one example) did not threaten or have
designs on France as such. Algerian (or Congolese) goals could be
met by a simple act of withdrawal by the metropolitan power and the
"granting" of independence.
In the case of the Israel- Palestine problem, it has become sud–
denly , terrifyingly clear that the preferred solution (as far as much of
the liberal-left is concerned) - an independent Palestinian state in
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip- may not solve the problem,
because the problem is not only the Israeli occupation but also Arab
hostility to Israel. Even seasoned veterans of the scene on the Israeli
left were shocked by the recent publication of hard-line Palestinian
views in the newsweekly
Koteret Rashit
(the magazine which commis–
sioned and first published David Grossman's
Yellow Wind)
and of the
poem by a "moderate" Palestinian that called for the Jews to leave
Palestine - altogether. And the voice of Palestinian moderation, ex–
cept in certain cases, like that of Hanna Seniora in Jerusalem and
Rashid Khalidi in Chicago, remains purposefully ambiguous on the
central points. In an interview with Anthony Lewis of
The New York
Times,
Yasir Arafat said that "the P.L.O.'s policy is land-for-peace."
Even in this attempt at clarifying his stand, the P.L.O. chairman
