Jerome M. Segal, Shlomit Levy, Nader Izzat Sa Id, Elihu Katz
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Total reviews: 1
Average rating: 2.0 of 5
Great facts, lousy interpretation 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.
There are oodles of facts here. All sorts of results from polls that tell us what Jews and Arabs think. Distributed by where they live, age group, and all kinds of other factors. I didn't check to see how good the polling was, but for the sake of argument, let's say that it may be reasonable. The reason I won't simply accept it out of hand is that it comes up with a few results that seem unusual. But that is not my problem with the book.
My problem is with the interpretation of the results. We see all sorts of stuff about how strongly Arabs and Jews feel about Jeruasalem, the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, the Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, having Jerusalem as a capital, and all sorts of other topics. As well as what folks on each side think of the chances (at about the time of Camp David) for peace.
But strength of feelings is no determiner of truth or justice.
If Paris were a French city, both in terms of truth and justice, Germans might well feel much more strongly about it than French.
As a matter of fact, I think if we were to try to measure which side of an argument about facts were true, I suspect that there might well tend to be a anticorrelation between strength of feelings and truth. Why lie if you don't care about it? Similarly, I think many Jews might reason that Jerusalem is their capital; if it gets stolen, they'll just get a new one. Arabs might well feel the same way about Mecca (which is, of course, a religious capital, not a secular one). On the other hand, Jerusalem may be more important to Arabs than it is to Jews. Unless Arabs can swipe Jerusalem, they'll never be able to swipe the Jewish capital! There isn't any alternative location! You can't humiliate someone by pretending to swipe their capital. You need to do it for real.
So I would expect Jerusalem to be more important to the Arabs than to the Jews if indeed everyone realizes that it is the Jewish capital. But only if plenty of Arabs feel a need to reduce or eliminate Jewish rights.
Now, some of the polls show that 39% of the Jews "realize" that Arabs may have legitimate rights in Jerusalem, while 20% of Arabs "realize" that Jews may have legitmate rights in Jerusalem. Um, I wonder just what rights those might be? Rights to exclude others? Rights to determine the national language there? I think this topic is a little bit vague.
Had the book stopped after giving all the facts, I would have given it three or four stars. But it went to the trouble of trying to draw conclusions about peace. As we now know, 2000 was a deceptive year, in which many of us thought that peace might be forthcoming. Well, this book made good use of its chance to draw some conclusions which soon became dubious.
It showed that both sides would have plenty of popular support if they refused to compromise on Jerusalem. But it made no serious effort to address what a good solution would be if everyone agreed to it! If 100 engineers agree that a bad design for a bridge is fine, that bridge will still collapse! Why try to agree on something which is doomed to fail?
Instead, the book said that the best chance for peace appeared to be to try to increase the number of Jews who thought that compromise on Jerusalem would lead to peace. Now, let's think about that. Does that mean putting pressure on Israelis to say that ceding land to an aggressor will lead to peace? And if it does, will that truly lead to peace, or just increase the chances that both sides will move towards war?
The book explains that 88% of Israeli Jews felt that appeasement of Arab demands on Jerusalem would simply lead to open-ended Arab demands in the future. I think the proper conclusion is not to pressure Israel into making such concessions anyway, or into changing their minds about such concessions being counterproductive. I think some people think the right answer is to make sure that concessions are final, not open-ended. But saying that they are final is just words. I think the authors all ought to have asked themselves if the 88% were right, not how they could change the minds of the 88%.
My conclusions would have been the following:
1) Insist on truth, not agreement on lies, as a prerequisite to peace.
2) If concessions need to be made, let them be ones that are productive, not destructive. The side that receives something must actually value it more than the side that gives it up.
3) Since concessions will have real value, make sure all of them are paid for. Pay for land with money or land. Accept money for land only if it is from the actual future owners and is more than you yourself would be willing to pay for it.
4) Actually enforce agreements. If either side feels that the agreements will not be enforced (or worse, are not desired by any of the parties), the agreements will accomplish nothing.
