JOIN USClean up the past and handle the present better, for equity in the Middle East and an end to anti-semitism.
Washington and Tel Aviv make a mistake: the conflict between Israel and Palestine is only a small part of a complex between US-Israel on one side against more or less all Arab and Muslim states, and against the clear majority of United Nations member states in the General Assembly vote recognising Palestine as a non-member state.
A serious approach to peace includes Israel-Palestine negotiations without US as "broker"; US-Israel with Israel's five Arab border states and the states bordering on them; and negotiations in United Nations regional and he General Assembly, in a Uniting for Peace setting. Peace calls on all levels. An image of a reasonable solution with secure-recognised borders:
nPalestine fully recognised according to international law, as a United Nations member state, and bilaterally by an ever increasing number.
n A two-states Israel-Palestine nucleus with 1967 borders and some swaps, two Israeli cantons in sacred areas on the West Bank and two Palestinian cantons in Northwest Israel, heavily Palestinian before naqba (catastrophe), capitals in both Jerusalems; defense for Palestine.
n A Middle East community modelled on the European Community of 1958 with Israel and the five Arab border countries, open borders for goods and people; a council of ministers and a commission for issues like water, return, joint patrolling; rule by consensus.
n A conference, becoming Organisation, for Security and Cooperation in the Middle East of the six, the countries bordering on them and some of the countries bordering on them again (including Turkey, Cyprus, Greece).
No one-state solution
Jews have a right to democracy with Jewish characteristics, but not to a state only for Jews. No modern state is only for one nation; and states are absorbed into regions anyhow. High acceptance might be possible, except for Israeli-USA. Peace does not come by forcing Palestine into a two-state setting with Israeli military-political-economic control and US intervention in the other neighbouring countries.
No true friend of Israel would argue this road; nor would they defend Israeli occupation, colonisation and expansion, impeding a Palestinian state. But some might have ulterior motives like the old Anglican-Protestant tradition of fomenting an Armageddon for the Second Coming of Christ.
No dramatic, highly visible, inner change is needed in the US for this outer change to happen. In Israel there will probably have to be a regime change from Benjamin Netanyahu-Avigdor Lieberman type extremism to moderation; but that can be brought about by elections. "They are all against us" feeds the autistic siege mentality backed by Chosen People complex.
Of course there are still moderates, anti-extremists, in Israel who could bring about a change,. Just as one way of coming to grips with the Syrian imbroglio is for good forces to join in the struggle against terrorism, state and non-state, good forces should also join in the struggle against the horrors of anti-Semitism, with prejudice and discrimination easily spilling over into hatred and violence.
There is a method: disconfirm the stereotypes against Jews in general. The basic stereotype is that Jews, few but well organised, aspire to world dominion by economic means. Goldman-Sachs investment bank should be up front denouncing speculation in derivatives in favour of old-fashioned banking based on the difference between rates of interest for loans and deposits. They are not.
Why should they differ from the other 4-5 of that Wall Street magnitude, is that not anti-Semitism, singling out Jews? For the sake of coming to grips with real anti-Semitism. Like whites in the US south, they had extreme prejudices against blacks as such, syphilis in the blood, hating all whites, communists, ugly. Blacks knew it, systematically disconfirmed all this ugliness--and it worked. Europe and shoa. Europeans, occupied by nazi-Germany but willingly did the unspeakable, the worst country in terms of percentage handed over and killed possibly being my own, Norway.
To atone for this some Europeans now commit a crime against Palestinians by acquiescing to Israeli extremism. Two wrongs do not make one right; separate them, try to understand both of them, what happened and how shoa could have been avoided.
Learn from the fourth prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohammed. Instead of getting at the Chinese minority with its strong economic-cultural dominance lift up the majority Malays through positive discrimination economically, and in education. It worked, as opposed to Indonesia. Clean up the past, handle the present better, for equity in the Middle East and an end to anti-Semitism in the near future.