In his weekly Canadian Jewish News media analysis column “According to Reports,” Paul Michaels, CIC Director of Communications, praises the influential Economist magazine for a balanced take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This column has recently criticized major elements of the mainstream media for failing to deal adequately with the complexity of the Middle East "peace process" by, foremost, placing all or nearly all of the onus for progress on Israel while ignoring the responsibilities of the Palestinian side.
Some exceptions to this pattern, however, have come from unusual quarters. Take, for instance, the influential Economist magazine. In an editorial in its May 11 issue, while asserting the well-known expectations of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu concerning (then) pending indirect or “proximity” negotiations, the publication also turned its attention to certain, rarely heard, expectations of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Referring to an interview Abbas gave on Israeli TV (Ch. 2 on Apr. 25), the Economist noted that he spoke directly to the Israeli public and "conceded" that, with respect to borders, one of the final status issues, he is willing to consider land swaps instead of insisting on what is a deal-breaker for Israel – a return precisely to the Green Line, the 1949 armistice line with Jordan (which, in any event, was never an official border, although it is often incorrectly described as such).
Regarding a land swap, the Economist wrote that in the highly charged issue of Jerusalem, for instance, "some of the [Jewish] suburbs in what is occupied Palestinian territory could go to Israel, along with three or four of the main settlement blocks…If this were agreed to early on, it would draw much of the poison out of the recent row over [the city]."
Such swaps were reportedly on the table long ago at Camp David in 2000 – the deal that then-PA president Yasser Arafat rejected. So this is not a new idea. Yet Abbas's apparent willingness to be flexible on this matter is not insignificant. (Also not insignificant is the British magazine's willingness to term Jewish housing in east Jerusalem "suburbs" instead of, as is often the case in its pages, "settlements.")
The Economist was forthright on another deal-breaker for Israel – the longstanding insistence by the Palestinians that the refugees among them have an inherent "right of return" to Israel. Without any equivocation, the editorial argued the following: "The logic of having two states requires that Israel can be sure of keeping its large Jewish majority. Hence Mr. Abbas will have to accept that the Palestinians can have no actual right to return to the homes they lost after Israel was created in 1948."
(While the Economist wrote pointedly about what Abbas "will have to accept," it did go on to write that Israel "could acknowledge" what it called "the theoretical right of Palestinians to return" and then "accept a small symbolic number who would not alter [Israel's] demographic balance." However, as a great many Israeli and other international law experts have noted, contrary to popular misconception this "right of return" does not exist. What is feasible, and what Israeli leaders have spoken about, is accepting a small number of Palestinians on an individual, not group basis, as part of its long-standing humanitarian "family reunification" policy. But what would also have to be discussed is the wholly overlooked matter of compensating the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees who were evicted or had to flee from Arab countries around the time of Israel's establishment.)
While Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad recently signalled, in an interview in Ha'aretz on April 2, that the Palestinians would have to confine a return of refugees to a Palestinian state (a position for which he encountered stinging rebukes from various PLO factions such as the PFLP and from Hamas), Abbas avoided making any similar statement when asked about the "right of return" during his Channel 2 interview. Unless Abbas and the main body of Palestinians are prepared to yield on this, their rejection of Israel as a Jewish state will remain the main impediment to a two-state solution.
At the moment, many Israeli and foreign analysts are pessimistic about the prospects for substantial progress in “proximity” talks, to say nothing of getting back to direct negotiations over final status issues discussed above. Nonetheless, in addressing tough issues pertaining to the Palestinians as well as to the Israelis, the Economist editorial represents a more even-handed approach that is generally all too lacking in media coverage of the Middle East.
/cijainfo
@CIJAinfo