1967: Four digits make all the difference
Op-ed: For the Israelis, a withdrawal to the 1967 lines means uprooting tens of thousands of settlers. For the Palestinians, it's a complete obliteration of the Israeli accomplishments in the Six-Day War.
Four digits, only four digits, separate between many people's dream – peace with the Palestinians – and, perhaps, turning it into reality. Only four digits: 1967. The Israelis can’t do with it. The Palestinians can’t do without it. That's the whole story. Of course that's not exactly accurate.
1967 is the watershed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the Palestinians, along with the Americans and the entire world, 1967 is the foundation for solving the conflict. For a large part of the Israelis it is a recipe for disaster, to the point of losing the State. For the Palestinians, what will be written may be important: "Based on the 1967 lines," "the '67 borders," "the '67 outline," even shoe size 67, as long as these four digits are agreed between the sides and are of course executed.
If that were the case, I would already be writing this article in a café in the Nablus casbah or in the office of a friend, if I'll have one, in Ramallah. At the moment, there is a huge gap between the 1967 which the Palestinian Saeb Erekat enjoys saying in sly Hebrew – one-nine-six-seven – and those same digits pronounced by Tzipi Livni. Erekat usually has a mischievous, almost demonic, smile on his face when he utters those digits in Hebrew. Tzipi Livni smiles differently. Bibi Netanyahu doesn’t smile at all. For him, 1967 is the essence of the State of Israel's existence.
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As I said, the story does not concern these digits of course but what they hide: A withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 lines, a moment before the IDF embarked on the war following which it conquered the Sinai Peninsula from the Egyptians, Judea and Samaria till the Jordan River from the Jordanians, and the Syrian height from the Syrians.
For the State of Israel, the current meaning is 360,000 people who have settled in Judea and Samaria and in the greater Jerusalem. For the Palestinians, it means establishing a state on those territories and places where the tens of thousands of Israel currently reside.
For some of the Israelis this is a real return to Zion. For the Palestinians, a withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 lines is a complete obliteration of the Israeli accomplishments in the Six-Day War. Like, for example, in our Mifal Hapayis lottery, 1967 is the Palestinians' additional number. But the Palestinian argument, of course, is not as innocent as it sounds and looks.
In November 1967, the Israeli government took upon itself to execute Security Council Resolution 242, which discussed an Israeli withdrawal to the June 4 1967 lines, to safe and familiar borders with slight amendments. The Palestinians say: Well, 47 years have already passed since then. Today the Israelis realize that accepting such a withdrawal means uprooting tens of thousands of settlers from their homes, an intolerable trauma for an entire state which will present the State of Israel as a state with temporary and changeable borders. From here on, as far as the Palestinians are concerned, trying to push the State of Israel to the UN's partition lines from 1947 is not far off.
This may be the main reason for the Israeli demand in the current negotiations to recognize Israel as the Jewish nation state and recognize the agreement, if one is achieved, as the end of the conflict and the end of all claims. Such recognition may burden the Palestinian dream to present Israel as a temporary and interim state, and international recognition of such an arrangement will make things even more difficult for them. The way things look now, there are slim to zero chances that the Palestinians will accept it.
They say Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is convinced that the Palestinians cannot take it upon themselves to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and if this happens to take place he will succeed in proving to the State's residents that he removed the great dream from the Palestinians' heads. Once again it turns out that the State of Israel's foreign policy is domestic policy, as US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said.
