Between the River and the Sea there will exist either exclusive Jewish sovereignty or exclusive Arab sovereignty. This is not right-wing extremism or religious fanaticism, merely sound political science.
Following my participation in The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York last month, I received an invitation from Russell Robinson, the CEO of the Jewish National Fund, to make a telephone address to major JNF donors across the United States, assessing the status of the peace process.
I shall devote this week’s and next week’s Into the Fray columns to sharing with Jerusalem Post readers the topics I raised and the analysis I made during that address, which took place as the solemn Remembrance Day drew to a close and the festivities of Independence Day began. (Some minor modifications and editorial tweaks have been made to accommodate the transition from oral to written form):
Shakespeare on the futility of self-deception.
I believe that to adequately comprehend the situation we are in, we must understand the process that brought it about.
At the risk of being flamboyant, I should like to begin my explanation of the foretold futility of the “peace-process” with a quote from Shakespeare’s Richard II, Act I, Scene 3.
Although some might find the connection between the citation and the Arab-Israeli conflict e abstruse, I will explain the relevance shortly, and hope that, like myself, the Post readership will find it instructive in elucidating the defective rationale on which the entire peace process was founded.
The quotation relates to an incident in which Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) is exiled by Richard II (ruled 1377-1399) and is distraught at being banished from his beloved England.
His father, John O’ Gaunt, attempts to assuage his distress by advising him to fend off the hardships of exile by imagining that they do not exist: