In her article "The right and the return" (Haaretz, October 3), Ruth Gavison discusses what is again becoming the watershed in the interrupted dialogue between the Palestinians and Israel. At issue are historical rights, and in this case Israel's unwillingness to recognize the Palestinians' right of return. As in all the previous rounds, this watershed will end the diplomatic discussions aimed at an agreement. Gavison proposes an alternative definition for "the right of return": "the desire to return," which she says Israel would recognize. On the other hand, she says that remaining in the framework of the "right of return" is a recipe for disaster.
Missing in Gavison's approach is an overall concept recognizing that both sides in the conflict are in a crisis of self-definition stemming from their inability to realize that there is no direct connection between a cultural, historical and practical attachment and a future political right.
Not only the Palestinians suffer from a difficulty in bridging the gap between the attachment and the right. The motivating force of practical Zionism since 1967 has been the attempt to turn the historical attachment to all parts of the Land of Israel, which nobody disputes, into a political right. To translate the desire to return to Shiloh, Beit El, Anatot and Hebron - the cradle of the nation - into a diplomatic right over which there can be no compromise because it is impossible to compromise on a right granted thousands of years ago. By dint of that same right, claim those who hold it sacred, the Zionists came to the Jezreel Valley and Jerusalem, and afterward to Shiloh and Hebron.
It should be recalled that from the outset Zionism conceded the political right to all parts of the Land of Israel, and tried to achieve international political recognition of the Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel, within any possible physical border. At the same time, the national institutions of the Jewish people never conceded their attachment to parts of the Land of Israel that did not receive political recognition. This view - a bond that does not translate into a full right to the territory - was shared by national-religious Zionism, as opposed to the secular Revisionist camp, which did not give up the distinction between an attachment and a right.
Recognition of the fact that Israel would not be able to continue to define itself as a democratic nation state without a strong national majority prevented the annexation of the territories occupied in the Six-Day War. Although there are people who propose achieving this majority through ethnic cleansing, the Israelis and their various governments have rejected these ideas and still do.
In the talks between former prime minister Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, too, Israel demanded that the Palestinians concede the right of return, without distinguishing between the political right and what was understood as a demand to give up the bond, the desire to return (according to Gavison's definition). Justice will be achieved when both sides undergo this process in which they concede the political right without losing the bond. Israeli society must also learn to be satisfied with the desire to return to parts of the Land of Israel, with the attachment alone, without any intention of turning it into the political right to return.
In that context we should mention that even those who say we should be satisfied with a bond must have such a bond. The problem with the Israeli center, and mainly with the left, is that they no longer have any major leaders who can confront the camp of believers on this issue. But leaders from the past like David Ben-Gurion and Berl Katznelson did not hesitate to confront religious Zionism's spiritual leaders and present a diplomatic viewpoint that separates the attachment to the land from the political right to it.
One of the reasons why the left and center, which have given up on the attachment to the land (despite hollow declarations about "Jerusalem the city that was reunified") are having difficulty dealing with the Palestinian side is due to this absence of a bond. For this purpose there is no difference between Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, Yossi Beilin, Avigdor Lieberman or Zehava Gal-On.
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