Ahmadinejad
Accepts Israel's Right to Exist
The Iranian president has said he would accept a two-state
solution if the Palestinians agree. So where are the
headlines?
By Peter Tatchell
29/09/08 "The
Telegraph" - -- Iranian President, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, has made a remarkable announcement. He's
admitted that Iran might agree to the existence of the state
of Israel.
Ahmadinejad was asked: "If
the Palestinian leaders agree to a two-state solution, could
Iran live with an Israeli state?"
This was his astonishing
reply:
If they [the
Palestinians] want to keep the Zionists, they can stay
... Whatever the people decide, we will respect it. I
mean, it's very much in correspondence with our proposal
to allow Palestinian people to decide through free
referendums.
Since most Palestinians are
willing to accept a two-state solution, the Iranian
president is, in effect, agreeing to Israel's right to exist
and opening the door to a peace deal that Iran will endorse.
Ahmadinejad made this
apparently extraordinary shift in policy during an
interview last week when he was in New York to address
the UN general assembly.
He was interviewed on
September 24 by reporters Juan Gonzalez, writing for the New
York Daily News, and Amy Goodman for the current affairs TV
programme, Democracy Now.
You can watch the full
interview and read the full text on the
Democracy Now website.
Surprisingly, Ahmadinejad's
sensational softening of his long-standing, point-blank
anti-Israeli stance was not even headlined by the two
reporters. Perhaps this was a decision by their editors? Did
they not want to admit that Ahmadinejad may have, for once,
said something vaguely progressive?
Equally odd, the story
wasn't picked up by the world's media. For many years, the
Iranian president has been vilified, usually justifiably.
Now, when he says something positive and helpful, the media
ignores it. Is this because of some anti-Iran or pro-Israel
agenda?
Why ignore a statement that
is, from any political and journalistic perspective, a
radical departure from Ahmadinejad's previous unyielding
anti-Israel tirades? Only a week earlier in Tehran
he was saying that the Israeli state would not survive.
Confused? Aren't we all.
Will the real Mahmoud Ahmadinejad please stand up?
Is he a deceiver and an
unprincipled opportunist who will say anything to further
Iran's political agenda? Or could it be that beneath his
often demagogic public rhetoric against Israel he is, in
fact, open to options more moderate than his
reported remarks about wiping the Israeli state off the
map?
I am not defending or
endorsing Ahmadinejad in any way, shape or form. Indeed, I
am on record as being one of Ahmadinejad's harshest critics.
I've protested dozens of times outside the Iranian Embassy
in London and written scores of articles exposing his
regime's persecution of
trade unionists, students,
journalists, human rights defenders,
women's equality campaigners, gay people, Sunni Muslims
and
ethnic minorities such as the Arabs, Kurds, Azeris and
Balochis.
You can watch my Talking
with Tatchell online TV programmes on the Iranian regime's
anti-Arab racism
here,
and on the rising popular resistance to its police state
methods
here.
But I also hope I am
open-minded and fair. Even I can see that Ahmadinejad
appears to have moderated his position and is now apparently
willing, with Palestinian agreement, to accept the
co-existence of two states: Israel and Palestine.
Many Israelis and their
allies will no doubt say Ahmadinejad can't be trusted; that
his comments were part of a manipulative charm offensive
during his visit to the UN in New York. They may be right.
But even if he is being disingenuous, that fact that he's
made this public concession on Israel at all is a softening
of sorts.
News of what he said will
filter back to Tehran and he'll have to account for his
words to his government, including the hardline anti-Israel
ayatollahs and revolutionary guards. I wonder what they
think?
Call me naive, but in my
view Ahmadinejad's words were of major significance. He
ought be pressed by world leaders, and Israel, to repeat
them and to clarify them. His statement might, and I
emphasise might, be evidence that Iran is open to some
negotiation on the future of the Israeli state.
If Israel's leaders had any
sense, they would ignore past provocations by Iran and seize
this moment to have dialogue with the Palestinian and
Iranian leaders on a two-state solution. What Ahmadinejad
has said could be an opening to diffuse the stand-off
between Iran and Israel.
I am not relenting one inch
in my condemnation of Ahmadinejad's regime, with its grisly
torture chambers, execution of juvenile offenders and
neocolonial subjugation of national minorities. But I do
find myself in considerable agreement with the Iranian
president's analysis of why the Middle East peace process
has stalled. He told Gonzales and Goodman:
The first reason is that
none of the solutions have actually addressed the root
cause of the problem. The root cause is the presence of
an illegitimate government regime that has usurped and
imposed itself on, meaning they have brought people from
other parts of the world, replaced them with people who
had existed in the territory and then forced the exit of
the old people out, the people who lived there, out of
the country or the territories. So there have been two
simultaneous displacements. The indigenous people were
forced out and displaced, and a group of other people
scattered around the globe were gathered and placed in a
new place ... A second reason is that none of those
peace plans offered so far have given attention to the
right to self-determination of the Palestinians. If a
group of people are forced out of their country, that
doesn't mean their rights are gone, even with the
passage of 60 years. Can you ignore the rights of those
displaced? How is it possible for people to arrive from
far-off lands and have the right to self-determination,
whereas the indigenous people of the territory are
denied that right?
Much as I loathe his regime,
Ahmadinejad is basically right. The key to peace in the
Middle East is concessions from the occupying power. As the
stronger, wealthier and conquering partner, Israel should
take the initiative and help kick-start the peace process by
withdrawing unilaterally and totally from the territories it
has occupied illegally (according to international law)
since the 1967 war. This means pulling out from all of the
West Bank and dismantling all the illegal Israeli
settlements.
The West Bank, plus Gaza,
should become the independent, sovereign state of Palestine,
backed with international aid and investment to create the
infrastructure for economic development and for social
provision (new houses, schools, hospitals, transport links
and sports facilities).
Jobs and prosperity in
Palestine will undercut and isolate the men of violence.
They will lose support and become marginalised in a
self-governing state where ordinary Palestinians experience
the tangible benefits of peace.
This is so damn obvious.
When will Israel's leaders wake up and realise that peace
with justice is the only way to give their people lasting
security?
