Benny Morris is the picture of the contemporary Israeli intelligentsia. In Morris’ work, we find the disappointed politics of the old Labor Party, once dominant in Israeli politics, now consigned to barely 10% of the Knesset.

In Morris one can also see the frustrated idealism of the Meretz party, once the conscience of the mainstream left and progressive activists to balance Labor’s mainstream pragmatism.

Morris, like his country, was born in 1948. He was a paratrooper in the army, and in 1969 was wounded during Israel’s war of attrition with Egypt. He worked for twelve years as a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, which was at the time a major left-leaning newspaper in Israel.

The historian again saw action as a reservist in Lebanon in 1982, but refused to serve just six years later in the West Bank, and was jailed for his stance. That same year, he gained national fame with his groundbreaking study, The Birth of the Palestinians Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.

Through the early 90s, Morris was regarded as an ultra-leftist and an icon of Post-Zionism. But as the Oslo years wore on and hopes for peace dimmed from the pinnacle they reached with the Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn in 1993, like so many Israelis , Morris grew more pessimistic and disillusioned.

With the Al-Aksa Intifada’s violence leaving hopes shattered during the early years of this decade, Morris started speaking much more about “Arab mendacity” and the desire of Palestinians and all Arabs to sacrifice everything for the sake of destroying Israel. This was most evident in a 2004 interview in Ha’aretz, where Morris criticized David Ben-Gurion for not expelling all the Arabs from the nascent state of Israel, among other things.

His newest book, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict illustrates the scope of Benny Morris’ work.

Benny MorrisMorris is an outstanding researcher. He digs down and assembles facts in minute detail. But as a polemicist, and in general as a thinker, he is not particularly adept. When he sticks to the facts, he has shown himself to be remarkably skilled at presenting them in an even-handed and thorough fashion, even when they do not support a view he holds. But when drawing conclusions or taking leaps of deductive reasoning, he tends to fall very short, with enormous, even prejudiced, bias coming through very sharply.

This too is well illustrated in his latest book. One State has three sections. The middle one which, though also flawed, is by far the best, details the history of both one- and two-state ideologies and strategies, from early bi-nationalism through to present-day diplomacy on the Oslo/Annapolis track.  

That history is not encouraging, with one solution after another being obstructed or rejected by one side or the other, sometimes both. But for Morris, the history is really two histories: one of pragmatic acceptance of partition of the land of Palestine/Eretz Yisrael on the part of the Jews, and the other the constant rejection of coexistence by Arabs.

Morris sets the tone in his first chapter, a review of the current rise of one-state thinking, largely among Palestinians and their supporters. He quotes, at some length, from Rashid Khalidi’s very worthy book The Iron Cage, accompanied by a flat statement that, despite Khalidi’s assertion to the contrary, Khalidi supports a single-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Morris offers no evidence for this assertion. He simply states it, based only on Khalidi’s exposition of the one-state position—an exposition that is clearly critical of the stance. And, one might add, an exposition that Morris himself would almost immediately imitate in this same book.

As Morris moves into his history of bi-nationalist ideas, notions of federated states and the various plans to partition Palestine, he works to trace a line from the earliest Palestinian and Arab opposition to Zionism directly and consistently through to today’s Palestinian proposals for full statehood and an end to the conflict. Morris, in his attempt to draw that direct line, makes no attempt to adjust his reading for circumstances. Thus, he sees the absolute rejectionism of Zionism by the Arab world before 1948 in the same light as he does the PLO’s gradual acceptance of a two-state settlement through the 1970s and 80s. For him, it cannot be possible that the Palestinians have come to accept the two-state solution as the only option, despite still believing that this is an unjust solution.

It seems that for Morris, Palestinian acceptance of a two-state solution can only be sincere if they recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist movement. That hardly seems a realistic standard. No Palestinian I have ever encountered, including the many who completely acknowledge that Jews have a historic, cultural and religious connection to the land, endorses a two-state solution on that basis. They do so because they recognize it is the only feasible solution.

This shouldn’t be such a leap. Morris himself has documented the fact that the acceptance by the Yishuv leadership, under David Ben-Gurion, of the Peel partition plan of 1937 was a tactic, and that Ben-Gurion never intended to settle for that small patch of land. It was a pragmatic decision. This is true today as well, for a great many Israelis—they don’t want to give up the West Bank, and certainly not any part of Jerusalem, but most remain willing to do so in order to end the conflict.

It is very telling that Morris’ analysis of the decline of the Oslo process makes no mention of the massive expansion of settlements. He pays a great deal of attention to the issue of expunging parts of the PLO charter (the amendments made have never been deemed sufficient by Israel) and the ongoing terrorism in the 90s. But he sees no role in the failure of the peace process for the massive explosion in the number of settlements and settlers in those years or the sharp decline in the Palestinian standard of living. This was due, in part, to the Palestinian Authority’s own corruption. However, the most direct factors were the increasing restrictions placed on Palestinian freedom of movement due to the settlements and their accompanying bypass roads, combined with the elimination of most of the jobs in Israel for Palestinians, as Israelis shifted to employing foreign guest workers from the Philippines, and Thailand, among other places, for menial labor.

Morris offers no alternative to the one-state or two-state solutions. He only suggests the revival of an old idea of subsuming, either by confederation or annexation, a Palestinian entity under Jordanian rule. The notion is far from the table, as it is an option that no one but a few Israelis desire. Beyond that, and not surprisingly, there is no constructive thought here.

In the final chapter, Morris does make some very important points about the problems with a two-state solution. The geography of partition has always been a major issue, one that has generally been understated. From the Peel Commission partition plan in 1937 to the Clinton Parameters in 2000, when one actually looks at the proposals on a map, they certainly don’t look like very practical alternatives. Also, the process of building an independent Palestinian economy is going to take a very long time, and even if successful, that economy is not likely to be on a par with Israel’s. And that will always be the comparison.

There are other problems with a two-state solution, and they’re getting worse every day.  Morris demonstrates one of the biggest: the anger and bigotry that decades of conflict have spawned. One example: “Israeli Jewish society remains largely secular, with Western, democratic values predominating. This can hardly dovetail with the authoritarian and religious values of Palestinian Arab society…”

Morris includes in his division Israel’s Palestinian citizens, pointing out the greater crime rates among Arabs than Jews within Israel’s borders. He conveniently ignores the universally accepted correlation between wealth and social status with crime rates and instead attributes the difference to the distinction between the Jewish culture and the Arab.

There are real reasons on the ground that a two-state solution is a lot more difficult than many people believe it to be. And I certainly agree that any one-state formulation is a non-starter. But Morris demonstrates what might be the greatest obstacle to any resolution: the irrational, bigoted hatred of the other. For him, there is no such thing as a trustworthy Arab.

Too many Israelis and Palestinians, as well as their supporters throughout the world, hold views of this type. Morris typifies the Israeli version. We’ve all heard a great deal about the Palestinian one, in places like the Hamas charter, or the Muslim one that Mahmoud Ahmedinejad displayed again so well in Geneva a few weeks ago. Until that mindset is overcome, hope is, indeed, in very short supply.

Last week there was this conference in Jerusalem that would allow me to scam the university for the cost of an airplane ticket (this was arranged just before the current crisis.)  I decided to make it interesting by including a visit to Jordan.  So I set out to explore with my trusty traveling companion, The Nerd of the Desert.  (I tried on "Irving of Arabia" for myself but it didn't stick - I guess I'm just not the type to carry a nickname.)  What follows is a description of a few of our many adventures, in no particular order.

Amman --  Back in Amman. Dinner with an unnamed figure in the American diplomatic corps.  I'll call him Bob.  One can easily see the effects of a lifetime in diplomatic service:  he knows a ton of rude jokes that Syrians tell about Egyptians and vice versa.  Learning that we planned to be in Jerusalem for Christmas Eve, one of the other dinner guests tried to persuade the Nerd that it would be amusing to start a fight in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre ("that guy over there says this belongs to his group"). 

As part of the trip I gave lectures at a couple of Jordanian universities.  First stop, Al Bayt.  Location:  the middle of nowhere.  40 kilometers North (I think) from Amman in the middle of the desert there is this compound of sand-colored concrete buildings.  We're driving in an embassy vehicle; I try to open a window and am informed that's impossible because the vehicle is armored.  The driver's jacket also does not fit terribly well -- a bit tight across the chest.  I will be spending the day in this vehicle with three women from the Embassy: a translator, an escort, and . . . I'm still not sure.  A keeper?  Someone trained to jump in at a moment's notice with "I'm sorry, the American guest is suffering from jet lag and sunstroke and appears to have temporarily lost control of his faculties"?  On the way I am informed that Al Bayt is a public university, that the student body is almost entirely Jordanian (as opposed to the private schools, which are full of Gulfies -- I did not make up that word), and -- oh, yes! -- religious and highly conservative.  None of the embassy types have ever been there, and they seem to feel that it is something like a visit to the moon.
No problem, it sounds like the perfect audience for my talk on "Religion and Law," an extended argument in favor of complete secularization of civil legal codes in a democratic state; sure to be a hit.  We arrive and are ushered into a meeting with the Dean of the Law School. . . who is also the Dean of Shari'a Studies.  That's my first warning.  He scowls a lot and is clearly suspicious.  I begin to think there might be a problem when he asks me whether I am aware of the theory that French law is inspired by the writings of the Imam Malik. 

Walking from the meeting to the lecture room I do some very fast improvised re-writing in my head; made sure to include the words "ijtahad," "hadith," and "Hanafi."  Favorite question:  "if there was Shari'a in the West, would the current crisis in the financial system have been avoided?"  (Answer:  "yes, because there would have been no financial system."  I have got to work on my diplomatic skills.)  The translator was brilliant, although we had to discuss the translation of terms like "precommitment."  For that matter, I have absolutely no actual proof that what she said in Arabic had any particular relation to what I was saying in English, but it all seemed to go fine.  Afterwards over juice and cookies the Dean is much nicer, although he asks me an odd question:  "in what ways are you authorized to cooperate with us?"  I suspect a translation issue.  As we are leaving we notice a huge brightly colored statue of a dinosaur in the courtyard.  No one can explain it.

Second lecture at Philadelphia University.  This one is private and expensive, meaning that the audience is mostly from the Gulf -- I am starting to be able to distinguish the styles of keffiyahs.  Much less interesting than Al-Bayt, but noteworthy for the expensive cars with Saudi plates in the parking lots. Also, the whole thing is vertical.  Amman is like that, too; the whole city is built on the sides of steep hills that must do a number of brakes and transmissions.  Nablus is the only city I have seen in Israel with the same kind of topography..

Wadi Rum. This is among the most magnificent place I have ever seen.  In the summer the heat is brutal, but in mid-winter there is a constant cold wind.  The sky is more shades of blue than I knew existed and the rock formations are breathtaking.  But the really cool part was that we experienced all this on camels.  A three-day camel trek with our Bedouin guide Saleh - a retired veteran of the Jordanian Desert Police Camel Corps who made his living chasing smugglers on the Saudi and Syrian borders.  A heck of a nice guy, but not given to excessive concern for comfort.  Sleeping at night in a tourist encampment maintained by local Bedouins; charred chicken, infinite supplies of sweet tea, oud music around the fire.  And wildly inadequate blankets - I have been colder, but not at altitudes below 6,000 feet.

Okay, here's the thing about camel trekking; for those unaccustomed to the practice it can be hard on the, um, "lower back" (This was more a problem for me than the Nerd, who took to it right away.)  Lawrence's famous feat of crossing 120 kilometers in three days is even more impressive to me now. But once you get the hang of it, there is no substitute - the alternative was being driven around in SUV's, which misses the whole point.  First lesson:  the desert has to be experience up close (this was not my first desert trip by any means, but it was all new to the NotD.  Many other valuable lessons, as well.  For example, sometimes the fact that you can climb up something does not guarantee your ability to get back down.

Petra. We were set up with a female Bedouin guide named Chanan. As she proudly explained, she is the only woman in the business in Petra.  I don't know about the other guides, but this one was the real thing; she showed us the village where her family lived, but said she preferred to live outside.  Except when it gets cold in the winter; then she moves into a cave. 

Never mind walking through the siq for the famous view of the Treasury; we did that the first day, but for the second day, Chanan's idea of a good time was to take us up the old Nabotean road over the mountains.  I think she was trying to prove something, actually, but we sure showed her!  Tough Americans that we are, by the end of the day we had pushed her so hard that at one point she actually removed the heavy wool coat she was wearing over her oversized sweatshirt along with her headdress.  I should probably mention that by that point we were panting and sweating like sea lions.  I should probably also mention that Chanan is about 4 feet tall and did the whole day's hike wearing pink plastic bedroom slippers.   But still, I think we made some kind of a statement here.  The place was crawling with Israeli tourists.

Crossing to Israel. The famous Allenby Bridge.  Not like it used to be; the trucks still have to pass through the part with the Russian teenagers manning machine guns and the surly reservists ("the worst reserve duty in the world" as a friend of mine describes it), but the tourists and other foot traffic are diverted to a separate building that looks like  a small airport terminal.  All very unthreatening and clean.  The desks are manned - er, personned - by young women, presumably to increase the unthreatening quality of the experience, but there are plenty of young men with rifles hanging around.  Sailed right through on the strength of my Hebrew.  Well, we sailed through at first, anyway.  We reached the very last step and they decided to send us back.  Then they told us to sit on a bench.  It all felt very Alice's Restaurant, there was me, the NotD, and a couple of very agitated looking Israeli Arabs.  After a while they sent us back to go through the security lines again.  We ended up spending more than three hours in that station.  The reasons are not entirely clear, but reconstructing events later with Israeli friends in Jerusalem gave us some hints: 

Let's see.  After we got sent back into line the first time, I decided to help out the nice Tunisian family ahead of us by translating from French to Hebrew.  Israelis' reaction:  "You spoke French??  Are you insane?"  It didn't help when I mentioned that I also had used the occasion to try out my minimal Arabic.  Then there was the fact that we were visiting for only two days.  I actually had a good reason for that one -- the aforementioned conference -- but I had misplaced the conference brochure.  And the fact that the conference was scheduled for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (so much for cultural sensitivity and inclusiveness in the Israeli academy) seemed to make the whole story less rather than more persuasive. 

Anyway, somewhere at this point we got transferred to the "V.I.P. line" -- which doesn't mean what it sounds like.  It's the line for Israeli Arabs seeking to confirm their citizenship papers.  Also, it turns out that I have a bad attitude -- at one point I got an entire desk of three IDF soldier girls to break into a chorus of "Heveinu  Shalom Aleichem" in a truly inspired moment of sarcasm, followed immediately by "why are you so nervous?" (mitazbein -- doesn't translate quite right, more like "why are you irritated?")  I think that was the point at which the Nerd started looking around with a "who is this guy?  I've never seen him before" expression, but he was trapped. 

Eventually they let us go, I think on the theory that no one that stupid could actually be a terrorist or "innocent" (what they call people who helpfully carry packages to someone's aged grandmother who lives in the basement of the Knesset building).  Crossing the othe way was painless, but the Israelis charged us $50 each to get out of the country.  Worth it.

Jerusalem. Driving up to the Hebrew U. campus for the first time in several years was a little startling.  The Nerd took one look and proclaimed it the greatest example of Brutalist Architecture he had ever seen.  The campus is a giant underground compound covering the entire hilltop from which buildings stick up like chimneys. (An Israeli from Tel Aviv insisted that the design showed the bunker mentality of Jerusalemites.)  The whole thing looks exactly like a giant version of an Israeli air raid shelter with air vents.  The inside is almost as charming as the exterior. 

Met Natan Sharansky, whom I think of as a walking argument for the proposition that Something Went Wrong.  At the end of the panel I raised a question about the rule of law in response to which he dismissed me as "just a lawyer."  I insisted that was not true -- "I also play the piano."  (I was tired -- this was the evening of the day we crossed the bridge.)  On the way out he stopped to shake my hand and tell me that he approves of my playing the piano.  Once again I am confirmed in my belief that in Jerusalem surrealism is the norm.  Wanna drive a Dadaist crasy?  Stick him in Jerusalem and tell him to do something absurd.  It would be like watching a panicked turkey looking for a corner to hide in. 

Also on the panel was Nazmi Al-Jubeh from Bir Zeit.  He makes an interesting point.  Israel has never defined its national borders (the claim has been that Arab states must recognize Israel's right to exist, but Israel does not have to define the boundaries of its existence).  Al-Jubeh makes the point that the same is true of "Jerusalem"; when the Israeli representatives at Annapolis said that "Jerusalem is non-negotiable" they never defined the boundaries of the city.  It's not a trivial question:  at this point my impression is that the Israeli definition of the city includes the string of settlements stretching most of the way across the Jordan River Valley.  Al-Jubeh also points out that after 40 years, the Israelis governments of Jerusalem have never gotten around to zoning the Arab parts of the city.

Visited the Old City and East Jerusalem.  The Israelis have constructed enormous 4- and 6-lane roads -- with huge pedestrian sidewalks and terraces and10-foot high retaining walls cut into the hillsides -- that are squeezing East Jerusalem out of existence where they haven't involved the outright destruction of blocks of houses and shops and the outdoor market by the Jaffa Gate.  Getting from anywhere to anywhere on foot is nearly impossible, and as for the herds of goats that used to traverse the olive groves on the side of Mt. Scopus, forget about it.  Meanwhile main streets are torn up for a new light rail project.  Hummus at Lina's - is it better than Abu Shukri's?  I reluctantly concede the possibility, but it appears that Abu's has gone downhill.  By this point the Nerd is mumbling things like "where the hell am I going to find this olive oil in  Chicago?"  Dinner provided by the university is kosher and halavi, and hence inedible.

Our last night in Amman is New Year's Eve.  Let me tell you something about secular Jordanians:  they know how to party.  The celebration in the hotel restaurant went until 5:00 a.m.

Home again.  I miss my camel.

Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers arrived in Jerusalem representing the only two Arab governments that have signed peace deals with Israel. They spoke today about the peace initiative and specifically avoided referencing the Arab League, which has never recognized Israel. Yet, without mentioning the League, the two foreign ministers are pushing the Arab League’s peace plan for the region which stipulates three main conditions for normal relations with Israel: 1. full withdrawal from land occupied in the 1967 war, including Jerusalem, 2. the creation of a Palestinian state, and 3. a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. [Debka] [The Washington Times]

 

Beijing’s Xinhua news service reported today that Taliban rebels have demanded that eight Taliban prisoners be released in exchange for eight South Korean hostages. The hostages are primarily female members of a Christian group who were abducted last Thursday in Ghazni, southwest of Kabul. [Xinhua]

The deadline for releasing the Taliban prisoners was set for Tuesday evening and then extended indefinitely. Debka reported this afternoon that the Taliban has killed one of the hostages. [Debka]

 

Shvitz editor Michael Weiss, posted yesterday on Libya’s release of six medical workers—five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor—who were held for eight years under the dubious and unsubstantiated charge of deliberately infecting children with the virus that causes AIDS. [Jewcy]

Susannah Sirkin, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights, said, “The charges were fabricated; the nurses were tortured into confessing; there was no due process.” [The New York Times]

In the aftermath of the prisoners’ release, the EU has no problem normalizing relations with Libya’s leaders: French President Nicolas Sarkozy will travel to Tripoli to boost the EU-Libya ties. [BBC]

 

President Bush’s lynchpin: personal diplomacy via frequent video conferences with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq. They chat on troops and leadership and God, which is all well and good, but where are the results? [The New York Times]

 

David Remnick writes the Letter from Jerusalem in this week’s New Yorker profiling Avraham Burg, a former Speaker of the Knesset, and a “Zionist politician who has lost his faith in the future” (of Israel).

“People are not willing to admit it,” Burg said, “but Israel has reached the wall […] We are already dead. We haven’t received the news yet, but we are dead. It doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t work. . . . There is no one to talk to here. The religious community of which I was a part—I feel no sense of belonging to it. The secular community—I am not part of it, either. I have no one to talk to. I am sitting with you and you don’t understand me, either.”

“After some fifteen, twenty years in political life I had a feeling all of a sudden that, to use the Biblical term, Israel was the kingdom without prophesy. I realized that the three founding narratives of the national idea of Israeliness were over: the mass immigration to the land, aliyah; the security of the land; and the settling of the land. All three had served their purpose and were no longer the core of the nation’s narratives.”

On the Holocaust as a reference point for Israeli statehood, Burg told Remnick,

"We confiscated, we monopolized, world suffering. We did not allow anybody else to call whatever suffering they have ‘holocaust’ or ‘genocide,’ be it Armenians, be it Kosovo, be it Darfur. In the last years, Israeliness has confined itself for itself only and lost interest almost for what happens in the world. For me, Israel is shrinking into its own shell rather than struggling for a better world."

Otniel Schneller, a Knesset member from Ehud Olmert’s centrist Kadima Party, has said that when Burg dies he should be denied burial in the special section of Mt. Herzl National Cemetery reserved for national leaders.

 

Today, more than 600 French Jews made aliyah. [JTA]

To maintain ongoing peace with their neighbors, Israel is insisting on "deodorizing" a cow quarantine facility located on the border with Jordan.

Jordanian King Abdullah II has complained of bovine odors coming from the Israeli side of the frontier along the countries' shared southern border, Israel's environment minister said Monday.

Speaking to Israel Radio, Gideon Ezra said the smells, from a livestock quarantine facility, were blown across the frontier toward the king's palace in the town of Aqaba, on the Red Sea next to the Israeli town of Eilat. Jordanian officials contacted Israel last week and requested the odors be neutralized, Ezra said.

Jordan and Israel, enemies for decades, signed a peace agreement in 1994 and now enjoy close ties.

In response to the Jordanian complaint, Israel has ordered the owners of the facility _ where imported livestock is held in quarantine before being released to farmers _ to clean up large amounts of animal waste that had built up at the site, Environment Ministry spokesman Sharon Achdut said.

In other bovine news, Israel just released a new electronic product that once ingested by cows, helps locate them and monitor their health status. Hopefully this device will keep cows healthier and create less of a need for them to be housed in quarantine facilities that border with potentially volatile nations.