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Amos Oz [1993]: Doves Should Be Hawkish On Palestinian Compliance
[The following is an excerpt from an Op Ed column, "From Battles To
Bridges", which was written by Amos Oz and published by The
Jerusalem Post on September 3, 1993, before the DOP was signed in
Washington.Amos Oz [1993]: Doves Should Be Hawkish On Palestinian Compliance
[IMRA: The following is an excerpt from an Op Ed column, "From Battles To
Bridges", which was written by Amos Oz and published by The Jerusalem Post
on September 3, 1993, before the DOP was signed in Washington.]
"... WHAT if they cheat? What if they take whatever we give them
and demand even more, still exercising violence and terror? Within
the proposed settlement, Israel will be in a position to close in
on Palestine and undo the deal. If the worse comes to the worst,
if it turns out that the peace is no peace, it will always be
militarily easier for Israel to break the backbone of a tiny,
demilitarized Palestinian entity than to go on and on breaking the
backbones of eight-year-old stone-throwing Palestinians.
Once peace comes, Israeli doves, more than other Israelis,
must assume a clear-cut "hawkish" attitude concerning the duty of
the future Palestinian regime to live by the letter and the spirit
of its obligations. The plan now being negotiated, Gaza and
Jericho first, is a sober and reasonable option. If the
Palestinians want to hold onto Gaza and Jericho, eventually
assuming power in other parts of the occupied territories, they
will have to prove to us, to themselves and to the whole world,
that they have abandoned violence and terror, that they are
capable of suppressing their fanatics, that they are renouncing the
destructive Palestinian Charter and withdrawing from what they used
to call "the right of return." They will also have to show that
they are willing to tolerate in their midst a minority of Israelis
who may choose to live where there is no Israeli government."
Amos Oz
(The Jerusalem Post, September 3, 1993) |
