Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was questioned this week as to whether she supported Murray McCully’s co-sponsorship of the ‘measure condemning Israeli settlements’ (UNSC Resolution 2334). Her response revealed that her only question was over the process. Ardern believes that McCully was correct to ‘use the voice we had within the UN… …to take a stand’.
Ms. Ardern would do well to take a leaf from the book of another highly successful, female, left-leaning politician -one who as an ‘up-and coming’ politician also had a simplistic view of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
Dr. Einat Wilf was member of the Israeli Parliament from 2010-2013 on behalf of the Labor and Independence parties. A leading intellectual and original thinker on matters of Israeli foreign policy, Einat’s impressive resume includes membership of the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the 18th Knesset and Foreign Policy Advisor to Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
Dr Wilf explains the process by which her ‘progressive’ views and idealism regarding the Israel/Palestinian conflict were shattered by the reality of her personal experience with ‘moderate’ up-and-coming Palestinian leaders – and the obstinate refusal of Palestinian leaders to accept the Israeli offers of statehood in the 2000 and 2008. She explains how she came to the realisation that ‘the conflict is much more serious and deeper that what I was lead to believe’ – that it’s not simply about “ending the occupation” or the question of settlements or a border of a Palestinian state.
I realised fundamentally that they don’t recognise the right of a Jewish state to exist and they will not say yes to any agreement and to any deal that gives a Palestinian state, if it means that they have to come to terms finally and for all times with the permanence of a Jewish state next door.
Einat Wilf was interviewed in Auckland. Here’s her story, ‘Why I Left the Left’.
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