ALAN DERSHOWITZ: It's a great honor for me to be participating in a debate with a man who has been called the world's top public intellectual. My connections to Noam Chomsky go back a long time. In the 1940s, I was a camper, and he a counselor in a Hebrew-speaking Zionist camp in the Pocono Mountains called Camp Massad. In the 1960s we both worked against the Vietnam War. In the 1970s, we had the first of our many debates about the Arab-Israeli conflict. I advocated ending the Israeli occupation in exchange for peace and recognition of Israel; he advocated a one-state solution, modeled on Lebanon and Yugoslavia. We debated again in the 1980s and the 1990s. I have the text. I hope that our once-a-decade encounter will continue for many decades to come, though I doubt we will agree with each other.
The debate today occurs at a time of real potential for peace. Shimon Peres, Israel's elder statesman in the peace camp, today quit the Labour Party and announced his support for Ariel Sharon in the upcoming election. Quote: “In my eyes, it is not a problem of parties, but a problem of peace, how to create a strong coalition for peace. The elements are now in place for a real peace.” As I wrote in The Case for Peace, when the Palestinian leadership wants a Palestinian state more than it wants to see the destruction of Israel, there will finally be a two-state solution.
The untimely death of Yasser Arafat makes the two-state solution a real possibility. I call Arafat’s death untimely, because if it had occurred five years earlier, we might now be celebrating the anniversary of Palestinian statehood. Arafat’s decision to turn down the Clinton-Barak plan for Palestinian statehood was characterized by Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia as, quote, “a crime against the Palestinians, in fact against the entire region.” The crime and the death that it needlessly caused can never be undone, but this is a time to move forward and to assure that the crime is not repeated.
The time has come for compromise. My friend, Amos Oz, the great novelist and leader of the Israeli peace movement, has said there are two possible resolutions to a conflict of this kind: the Shakespearian and the Chekhovian. In a Shakespearian drama, every right is wronged, every act is revenged, every injustice is made right, and perfect justice prevails, but at the end of the play, everybody lies dead on the stage. In a Chekhov play, everybody is disillusioned, embittered, heart-broken, disappointed, but they remain alive. We need a Chekhovian resolution for the Arab-Israeli tragedy. 
This will require the elevation of pragmatism over ideology. It will require that both sides give up rights. Rights. Giving up rights is a hard thing to do. It will require that each side recognizes and acknowledges the pain and the suffering of the other. And it will require an end to the hateful attitudes and speech that some on each side direct against the other.
Sometimes it's better to start at the end. The ultimate solution is not as much in dispute these days as is the means for getting there. I believe that even Professor Chomsky and I have the same basic agreement about a number of very important elements of what a pragmatic resolution might look like. Professor Chomsky now acknowledges that the two-state solution may be, quote, “the best of the rotten ideas around.” I'll settle for that. He also seems to acknowledge that those who advocate the so-called Palestinian right of return are pandering to their people and misleading them into believing that there is yet another weapon, a demographic weapon, that can destroy Israel. I think we both agree that Jerusalem should be divided essentially along demographic lines with the Palestinians controlling the Palestinian population and Israel controlling the Jewish population, that the borders between Israel and the Palestinian state should be based roughly on the U.N. Resolution 242, that Israel properly ended its occupation of the Gaza, and that it should end its occupation of all Palestinian cities and population centers on the West Bank, that terrorism must stop, and that the Palestinian state that results from this peace must be as contiguous as possible, and economically and politically viable.
There remain considerable differences between us and, more importantly, between the Israeli government and the Palestinian authority that must resolve these issues and actually sit down and make peace. Some of these differences are attitudinal. I believe that peace is a realistic possibility, whereas Professor Chomsky apparently believes there is no chance for peace, at least as reflected by the German title of his new book, Keine Chance für Frieden, which translates as No Chance for Peace: Why a Palestinian State is Not Possible to be Established with Israel and the United States. I hope you're wrong.
Other differences are quite specific, relating to precise boundaries and considerations that are quite important, the devil always being in the details. I strongly believe, however, that there is a genuine will for peace on both sides now and that the pragmatic differences can and will be resolved. And here, I think the academy can play a very important and positive role in fostering peace. At the moment, I'm sad to report that many academics around the world are contributing to an atmosphere that makes peace more difficult to achieve. They are encouraging those Palestinians who see the end of Israel as their ultimate goal to persist in their ideological and terrorist campaign. 
By demonizing and de-legitimating Israel in the international community and on university campuses throughout the world, they send a doubly destructive message to those who must make peace on the ground. To the Palestinians, the message is don't compromise. If you hold out long enough, the next generation of leaders will buy into your efforts to de-legitimate Israel and will give you the total victory you seek. To the Israelis, the message is: Whatever you do in the name of compromise, you will continue to be attacked, demonized, divested from, boycotted and de-legitimated, so why make the compromise efforts?
As I travel around college campuses in the United States, I notice a stark difference. Many of those who support the Palestinian cause tend to be virulently opposed to Israel, comparing the Jewish state to Nazism and apartheid, comparing Shimon Peres to Hitler and Idi Amin, calling Israel the world's worst human rights violators, and suggesting that Israel should be flattered by a comparison with the Gestapo. These are all quotes, the Amin/Hitler quote from Professor Chomsky, the comparison with Gestapo from Norman Finkelstein. Whereas most of those on the Israeli side tend to be supportive of a peaceful Palestinian state. Put another way, pro-Palestinians tend to be anti-Israel, whereas pro-Israelis are often pro-Palestinian, as well.
It was not the Israelis who scuttled the United Nations’ two-state solution in 1948 and themselves originally occupied Gaza and the West Bank with little or no objection from the international community. That was Egypt and Jordan. It was not the Israelis who turned down Resolution 242 in 1967 with the famous three no’s: no negotiation, no peace and no recognition. As Abba Eban put it, this is the first time in history that the side who won the war sued for peace, and the side that lost the war demanded unconditional surrender. It was not Israel that turned down the generous offer at Camp David in Taba. The Palestinian leadership has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, but it is not too late for peace now.
I wish to end my opening remarks today by making a specific proposal directed to my distinguished opponent. I propose here today a peace treaty among academics who purport to favor peace between Israel and the Palestinians. I believe that by agreeing to this peace treaty and by implementing it, academics can actually contribute to encouraging a pragmatic peace. I call today for those who have supported the Palestinian cause to stop demonizing Israel, to stop de-legitimating Israel, to stop defaming Israel, to stop applying a double standard to Israel, to stop divestiture and boycotts of Israel, and most importantly, to stop being more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves. 
I call on academics who support Israel not to call for a greater Israel, nor to call for a continuation of the occupation of Palestinian cities, to stop being more Israeli than the Israelis themselves, and to join the vast majority of Israeli and American supporters of Israel who favor the two-state solution. If the two elder statesmen of Israel, Sharon and Peres, can place pragmatism before ideology and peace before party and come together toward the center in the interest of a pragmatic peace, then surely two elder statesmen of the American academic debate over Israel, who share this platform tonight, can also make our contribution to the peace process by encouraging those who respect us and sometimes follow our guidance to move closer to the center and closer to accepting a pragmatic, non-ideological resolution of this bitter conflict. Ecclesiastes many years ago said, "To everything there is a season, a time to throw stones, a time to gather stones, a time for war and a time for peace.” This is the season of peace. Let us not let it pass us by. Thank you.
The topic is: Where do we go from here? The answer to that is largely up to us. Evidently, it requires some understanding of how we got here. The question of where we're going now has a clear answer. It's given accurately by the leading academic specialist on the occupation, Harvard's Sara Roy, as she writes that under the terms of disengagement, Gazans are virtually sealed within the Strip, while West Bankers, their lands dismembered by relentless Israeli settlement, will continue to be penned into fragmented geographic spaces, isolated behind and between walls and barriers.
Her judgment is affirmed by Israel's leading specialist on the West Bank, Meron Benvenisti, who writes that ‘the separation walls snaking through the West Bank will create three Bantustans’ (his words): north, central and south, all virtually separated from East Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian commercial, cultural and political life. And he adds that this, what he calls the soft transfer from Jerusalem, that is an unavoidable result of the separation wall, might achieve its goal. Quoting still, ‘the goal of disintegration of the Palestinian community, after many earlier attempts, have failed.’ ‘The human disaster being planned,’ he continues, ‘will turn hundreds of thousands of people into a sullen community, hostile, and nurturing a desire for revenge.’ So, another example of the sacrifice of security through expansion that's been going on for a long time.
A European Union report concludes that U.S.-backed Israeli programs will virtually end the prospects for a viable Palestinian state by the cantonization and by breaking the organic links between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Human Rights Watch, in a recent statement, concurs.
Commentary 
We bring you a debate between Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowtiz on the question, "Israel and Palestine After Disengagement: Where Do We Go From Here?" Dershowitz argued for a political solution based on an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian towns and a mobile security fence to protect Israel's borders, while Chomsky insisted that the main obstacle to peace in the region is U.S.-Israeli insistence on maintaining settlements and rejecting minimal Palestinian rights. They faced off at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government last month. [includes rush transcript - partial] 
