...With all due understanding and empathy to the Palestinians' suffering, the way the Nakba, the 'catastrophe,' is presented in the Palestinian and pan-Arab narrative raises several questions. It is portrayed as something terrible and evil that happened to the Palestinians. There is not even an iota of introspection, self-criticism and readiness to deal with the Palestinians' own contribution to their catastrophe.
We can understand - without justifying it - the Palestinians' rejection of the partition plan, just as we can understand - without justifying it - the Revisionist Zionist position negating the partition. But most of the Jewish community accepted the idea. And if most of the Palestinians had accepted it, then an independent Palestinian state would have risen on part of Mandatory Palestine in 1948, without war and without refugees.
The Palestinians are not prepared to deal with this complex reality. After 1948 quite a few books were written in Arabic about the Arabs' defeat in their war against Israel. To this day no book has raised the question of whether, perhaps, the Arabs erred in rejecting the compromise - painful as it may be - of the partition? Perhaps they would have done better if, like the Zionists, they had gritted their teeth and accepted the half-full glass?...
Shlomo Avineri is a professor of political science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Avineri is, in my view, one of the most acute and seasoned realist Israeli thinkers on "ha-Metsav"--the situation. With all the Israeli reflection and self-criticism (the best of which I try to reference here)--it would be nice to see some self-criticism emanating from "the other side." Today's NYT op-ed by Lebanon's prime minister does not make much of a contribution in that direction.
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