A Friendly Debate over Settlements

[A break from philosophical theology, to respond to current events.]

The Obama speech caught us all like deer in the headlights. Our instinctive reactions to it revealed where we stood on the whole large complex of issues of Israel, the Palestinians and the Middle East.

My own reaction, reflected in my Facebook status, revealed me for who I have been for most of my life—the child of suburban Jewish liberals, with a Socialist-Zionist grandfather, who got my first intellectual imprint in maturity from Maurice Samuel, who in his Zionist books combined romantic attachment to the millennial Jewish dream of Zion with a social-democratic egalitarianism reflecting the ethos of A.D. Gordon and the middle-of-the-road kibbutzim. Maurice Samuel exposed the feudal-fascistic roots of the Arab anti-Zionist crusade as early as the 1920s and 1930s, while holding out hope that Israel would hold true to her social and internationalist ideals and come to a just, peaceable reconciliation with the mainstream of the Arab populace. I am sure he would have expressed sentiments similar to those in the Ha-aretz editorial endorsement of Obama’s speech that I posted approvingly on my Facebook page.

I also have a cousin who was raised in an American Conservadox family and settled in Gush Etzion with the first returnees after the Six Day War in the late 1960s. I know from my discussions with him the perceptions on the other side of this debate—that a two-state solution is an invitation to disaster, that Israeli rule of the Palestinians is as humane as can be expected given their underlying hostility and frequent outbreaks of violence, and that the best we can hope for is to consolidate our grip on all of our ancestral homeland and maintain stability through judicious, humane and consistent exercise of strength.

It is with these credentials that I address the issue, as focused by the Charles Krauthammer article that a Facebook friend posted on her wall.

I will respond to two assertions in the Krauthammer article:

(1) That Obama makes a pretense of “not dictating” to any outside nations—except Israel.

(2) That the United States call to Israel to freeze settlements is unjust, and means “strangling [them] to death.” (Really? Then Manhattan must be strangling to death, and not allowing babies to be born in it, because it is incapable of territorial expansion due to certain facts of geography!)

The first assertion is defensible only if Krauthammer excludes from “dicatating” the remarks that Obama made addressed to the Palestinians: that “it is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus”; that “Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist. He would also have to exclude Obama’s remarks directed at Ahmadinejab: that “denying [the Holocaust] is baseless, ignorant, and hateful; threatening Israel with destruction—or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews—is deeply wrong…while preventing…peace.”

So a more balanced assessment would be: Obama calls on Palestinians to end rocket-shooting, bus-bombing, and violence generally, and he calls on Israel to freeze settlements. Still, one is entitled to ask: what do these two have in common?

It depends on one’s larger perspective and assumptions. We have to factor in the fact that the growth of the settlements on the West Bank has grown steadily over four decades, from zero in 1967 to 275,000 settlers by recent count, and has doubled since the Oslo accords—in number of settlements, as well as population. We recall that throughout the growth of the Yishuv, land-settlement was correctly considered a crucial part of staking claims to territory; that from 1933 to 1948 the “tower-and-wall” method was used dramatically and effectively to expand the Jewish area of Palestine from the meager strips that one sees in the 1936 Peel Commission partition recommendation to the “green line” that was fixed in the Armistice of 1949. The viability of Israel today is possible because of the effectiveness of that strategy in the past.

The settlers of today rightly see a continuity of historical pattern between their actions and those of the Zionists of the 1930s—only the context has changed dramatically. If one extends the pattern of proliferation-by-settlement beyond the three blocs discussed in Camp David and Taba, one strikes at the territorial integrity—such as it is—of a projected Palestinian state, whether unwittingly or by design. Even a minor adjustment—addition of a neighborhood or a street to an existing settlement—revises the extent of current Jewish settlement, and therefore has bearing on where a borderline might be drawn in final-status negotiations, if these were ever to take place.

Picture two adjoining houses—the Bernsteins and the Abduls living side-by-side. The Abdul teenager shoots a rocket onto the Bernsteins’ front lawn. Mr. Bernstein builds an addition to his house, extending over the boundary into the Abduls’ side yard, to accommodate a nursery for the Bernsteins’ newborn child. The one action is violent, the other is not. Yet they have something in common. Each is a boundary-violation, and (given a context analogous to the current Israeli-Palestinian state of relations) may correctly be perceived by the other as an act of aggression.

The majority of Israelis do not build or live in settlements. And the majority of Palestinians do not shoot rockets or blow up buses or commit other acts of violence against Israelis. In the best of times, over 50% of Israelis desire peace with Palestinians and are willing to entertain a 2-state solution, and over 50% of Palestinians reciprocate. When things fall apart, these numbers must be revised downward on both sides. Extremists in each camp know how to push the buttons of those in the opposite camp, to be sure that things fall apart and that peace is never realized. We only have to recall the actions of Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir to remind us that the button-pushers are not exclusively to be found on the Palestinian side.

The uncomfortable fact that those of us on the Jewish side often do not wish to realize is that the incessant growth of settlements, encroaching into the heartland of the West Bank, is pushing the buttons of the moderate Palestinians, eroding their belief in our good faith and their will to negotiate a genuine peace.

Mr. Obama is right to call (in my view, even-handedly) for a moratorium on button-pushing on both sides, in the hope of advancing negotiations to the point where agreement is possible. Though rocket-launching and settlement-expansion are not morally equivalent in general, they serve similar functions in this diplomatic context, in impeding the chances of progress toward rapprochement.

Mishnah Bava Metzia begins: “If two persons are holding onto a garment, each one saying ‘it is all mine,’ they must divide it.” Not necessarily equally —but in proportion to the strength and circumstances of each one’s claim, as determined by the court.

The land in the West Bank is similarly on the table for negotiation, for a final settlement of the “partition” that was proposed throughout the history of the Yishuv and finally effected in its first take in the events of 1947–49. The process is not complete. Therefore, if one believes in principle in a 2-state solution based on partition, the land is not (right now) ours to do with what we want. It is, if you will, in escrow, awaiting the outcome of judicial process. It is therefore legitimate to call on us to refrain from taking more of the disputed land, to demonstrate our good faith as a condition of negotiations.

Granted, negotiations cannot proceed unless the other side shows good faith, too, by refraining from acts of violence and provocation. It is not in our power to accomplish that. We can only accomplish what is in our own power.

Of course, all this becomes irrelevant if (like my cousin in Gush Etzion) one does not believe in a 2-state solution to begin with; or if one is positive in advance that the other side will never control their provocateurs enough to demonstrate good faith (or are purposely using their provocateurs to sabotage the process at every step). This is possible. But those who reject the Obama initiative for these reasons should be forthright in stating their principles. Protestation of unfairness or unreasonableness is insufficient ground for rejecting Obama’s request.

In peace to my Jewish brethren (and to all readers—Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, atheists, etc.),

Lenny Levin