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May 7, 2010
Time to master art of living
Israel must take the lead in pressing for a two-state solution.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
In order to survive, Israel must start pushing for a Palestinian state. This was the main message of Arnon Perlman, who was in Canada last week as a guest of the Jewish National Fund.
Perlman, owner of Perlman Strategic Consulting, is also a radio and television commentator. He has extensive political and media experience, including, from 2001-2004, being a media adviser to Ariel Sharon, when Sharon was prime minister. Among his engagements, Perlman spoke to the Okanagan Jewish community and to several Vancouver Jewish organizations. The Independent heard his remarks at Congregation Beth Israel on April 28, where Perlman was introduced by BI Rabbi Jonathan Infeld and JNF shaliach Micky Goldwein.
Perlman shared some of his experiences working with Sharon, as well as his own personal views of the threats facing Israel and how Israel should proceed.
In Israel, in 2001/2002, explained Perlman, “We woke up in the morning, every morning, not thinking if there’s going to be a terror attack. We just thought, where, when and what time today are we going to have a terror attack. We had buses exploded, we had terrorists going into groups of soldiers, we had shootings. Every day, we had people murdered by terrorists. These were the times, in 2001/2002 – [and] not only terror, we had bad times in terms of economy, there was no investment, there were no tourists, nobody was coming to Israel. This was the time that Ariel Sharon accepted power in Israel.”
Perlman related the story of when both he and Sharon visited the aftermath of a terror attack. About Sharon’s reaction, Perlman said, “There is some sort of a heroism in dying as a soldier because this is what you’re supposed to do, you’re supposed to fight and, hopefully not, but if that’s what God wants, you will get killed. There is sort of a disgrace in dying in a terror attack, and this is something that he kept in his head throughout this time. This is something that I think guided him throughout his post as prime minister ... everything he did, whether it was fighting or trying to make peace, whether he was trying to negotiate or unilateral[ly] withdrawal from Gaza, everything that he did was because he wanted to prevent that kind of thing.”
To contextualize the challenges that faced Sharon, Perlman said that Israel is not only hard to govern because it’s in a “rough neighborhood,” but because of its system of government. “Proportional democracy,” he said, “means that, if the prime minister wants to survive, he needs to cultivate and take care of one thing and one thing alone: his coalition.”
The system needs to be changed, stressed Perlman, “because Israel does not have the privilege to wait for a person that, with the power of his personality, can lead our country, and that was Sharon.... We need to build the system in a way that allows anybody who is elected prime minister to govern and, today, a prime minister cannot govern. Sharon governed only because of what he was, not because the system allowed him to govern. And Sharon also had to fight politics every day, but he was old enough, mature enough, experienced enough and strong enough in order to have the authority by the power of his personality. Again, we don’t have the luxury to wait for the other Sharon, or the other Ben-Gurion or the other Menachem Begin and, you know what, I’ll tell you a secret: there are none coming up. We don’t see them, not in Israel.”
Perlman would like to see direct elections that would allow a prime minister to serve four years, to appoint ministers he thinks are professional (versus focusing on coalition building), and perhaps divide the house in two, for checks and balances.
In addition to internal issues, Perlman told those gathered at BI that there are two main threats to Israel’s existence: one is military, the other, demographic.
“The military one, of course, is Iran,” he said. “Iran having a nuclear weapon is a strategic threat on Israel ... not necessarily because Iran, once having this weapon, is going to shoot at us. It’s changing the balance of power in the Middle East and the balance of power in the Middle East is, and always was, Israel should be stronger than all its enemies together.”
The worse existential problem, in Perlman’s view, is the demographic one. “It is in our interest to have a Palestinian state,” he said, because, “in today’s situation, if our small piece of land is not divided into two states, there will be one state. If there will be one state, there will not be a Jewish state, because, within 50 to 100 years, there is no Jewish majority in the land of Israel, if we continue the path we’re at today, because the Palestinians are going to outnumber us, it’s very simple.”
Time is not on Israel’s side, said Perlman, noting that he’s the 11th generation of his family in Israel, “so I can call myself a true Palestinian but, for me, it is crucial to have a Jewish state, not because I’m religious – you can see, I’m secular – but still, I’m Jewish, that is what I am, that is what my kids will be, that is what my family has been throughout the generations. For me, a Jewish state is the most important thing and I’ll tell you one more thing, for you, living in the Diaspora, it is crucial to have a strong Jewish state ... without a strong Israel, your life here will be different. So, for everybody, it is crucial to have a Jewish state and the way we’re moving today, and the things we do not do, I think, jeopardize the future of the Jewish state.”
For these reasons, said Perlman, “I think it is in our strategic benefit that we should be the one jumpstarting and pushing forward the declaration of a Palestinian state and have a border between us and them.”
Israel’s support for a Palestinian state will help with the Iranian situation, in Perlman’s opinion, because, once Israel becomes part of the solution to the conflict, it will be easier to isolate Iran.
“I think that we should reconcile with the Syrians, too,” he said. “And once you reconcile with the Syrians, you take Lebanon and the Hezbollah out of the equation, because you detach them from Iran. Once you detach them from Iran, you put Iran in the place where it’s isolated not just by the world but by the region.”
For him, the isolation of Iran is paramount, and he lamented that Israel is the one becoming isolated, being called an apartheid state, for example. “Whether it’s true or not, it doesn’t matter,” he said, “this is how we are portrayed, and we need to change that, because, if we don’t change that, we will be the one who will be isolated in the end.”
In the question period that followed his talk, Perlman gave an update on Sharon’s health status, explaining that, while Sharon is not in a vegetative state – he has motor functions and is able to sit, open his eyes and shake a person’s hand – there is little cognitive function. Perlman then returned to the issues of Israel’s future without Sharon at the helm.
Perlman said he believes that not enough has been done to negotiate peace, but, “if we’ll get to a point where we understand that there is really no one to talk to, I think we should do this unilaterally.” He doesn’t prefer this path, but thinks that Israel must be prepared to do it, in order to save the Jewish state.
About reconciling with Syria, he said, negotiations must take place and creative solutions considered, such as Israel agreeing to give back the Golan Heights, but then leasing it from Syria for 100 years, for example. “There are ways to solve this problem that will not become a threat for Israel tomorrow,” he said. It will take time to determine all the technicalities of the agreement, but we must start now, he stressed.
About Israel-American relations, he said that every U.S. president wants two things from Israel: “The first thing he wants is, don’t bother me. The second thing he wants is a prime minister that will walk with him.... And these two points, as per today, we’re failing. We’re failing because we’re considered to be the nay-sayers for peace, and we’re failing because we’re not cooperating.”
Perlman added, “If we don’t correct it, I think, what we’ll get in the end is a blow on the head, in two ways. One, the Americans will try and force us to do something which we might not want [to do] and they have the power to do that. And second is, you know, they might try, like [they have before to] ... cut back on the guarantees, worsen the relationship. There are many ways that they can create for us not an easy time. I think that for us, it is in our interest to go with, it is against our interest to go against.”
Perlman said he is optimistic about the West Bank because there are people with whom to talk there. “If you go to Ramallah or Nablus or Shechem or Jenin today, you will see there is a vibrant economy. GDP is growing there, they have more jobs and more money and more stores and more markets and more of everything in the West Bank, and I truly believe that someone who has a job, that his kids have food, he’s got somewhere to go to, his kids have school, he will be busy and living rather than busy dying. I think it is in our interest, in the world’s interest to boost the Palestinian economy in the West Bank because, once you have a vibrant economy, which leads to a vibrant state, you are busy living.... The ordinary, average Palestinian, this is what he wants, so I think and hope we will not have to do it unilaterally from the West Bank, but whether we’ll do it unilaterally or with an agreement in the West Bank, it will be a problem. It will be a problem because we have ... [hundreds of thousands of] settlers there, bringing them back will not be easy, but this is something Israel, at a certain point, will have to do. We won’t have any option but that.”
He concluded, “I truly believe that the solution between us and the Palestinians, at the end of the day, will be, give or take, the ’67 borders.... The only question is how much blood is going to be shed on the way, from their side and from our side. I think that, in our small, fakakta piece of land, we have mastered the art of dying together. I think we should start learning the art of living together, and I think we should do it as soon as possible.”
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