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It's About the
Settlements, Stupid
by David P. Goldman
PJ Media
December 17, 2013
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friends to like this.
Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, the misnamed occupied
territories, are not the obstacle to peace between Israelis and
Palestinians. They are the acid test of peace. To argue that peace is
conceivable unless the bulk of the settlements remain in place constitutes
stupidity or hypocrisy. Leave aside the issue of whether Jews have the
right to live in the historic homeland of the Jewish people. Ignore the
fact that the settlers live overwhelmingly on what was waste land and
turned into gardens, vineyards,
and industries which have uplifted the lives of Palestinian Arabs more than
all the aid that has passed through (or rather stuck to) the fingers of the
kleptocrats of the PA. Leave aside also Israel's requirement for defensible
borders: that is a critical issue but not identical to the continued
presence of settlements.
Accepting the settlements is the sine qua non of any viable peace
agreement. It does Israel no good to defend Israel's right to exist but to
condemn the settlers, as does Alan Dershowitz, not to mention the leaders
of liberal Jewish denominations.
I believe in land for peace. That is a tautology: In territorial
disputes the two main variables always are land and peace. But that implies
more land for more peace and less land for less peace. The Palestinian
Arabs had an opportunity to accept an Israeli state on just 5,500 square
miles of land in 1947, and refused to do so. The armistice lines of 1948
left Israel with 8,550 square miles, and the Arab side refused to accept
that. In 1967 Israel took an additional 5,628 square miles of land in
dispute under international law; Jordan does not claim it, and no legal
Arab authority exists to claim it. It is not "illegally
occupied." It has never been adjudicated by a competent authority.
To demand the 1948 armistice lines (the so-called 1967 borders) is to
refuse any penalty for refusing to make peace in the past. That is the same
as refusing any peace at all. Wars end when one side accepts defeat, and
abandons the hope of restoring the status quo ante by force of arms. 1947
was a catastrophe ("Nakba") for the Palestinian Arabs, to be
sure, but it was a catastrophe of their own making; until they accept at
least some degree of responsibility for the catastrophe, they will not be
reconciled to any peace agreement. That is precisely what Palestine's
negotiator Saeb
Erekat meant when he eschewed any recognition of Israel as a Jewish
nation-state because "I cannot change my narrative." The
"narrative" is that the Jews are an alien intrusion into the
Muslim Middle East and eventually must be eliminated by one means or another.
The Palestinian Arabs are a people in decline, and the vehemence of
their leaders reflects the dimness of their future. It is noteworthy that
Secretary of State John Kerry continues to talk of a "demographic time
bomb" threatening Israel, even though the data show that the Jewish
population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is increasing
faster than the Arab population, as former Israeli diplomat Yoram
Ettinger observes. That's based on undisputed data; in fact,
Palestinian population data are inflated by an enormous margin, as a 2006 study by the
Begin-Sadat Center at Bar-Ilan University demonstrated:
[The Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics] projected that the number
of births in the Territories would total almost 908,000 for the seven-year
period from 1997 to 2003. Yet, the actual number of births documented by
the PA Ministry of Health for the same period was significantly lower at
699,000, or 238,000 fewer births than had been forecast by the PCBS. … The
size of the discrepancy accelerated over time. Whereas the PCBS predicted
there would be over 143,000 births in 2003, the PA Ministry of Health
reported only 102,000 births, which pointed to a PCBS forecast 40% beyond
actual results.
The hold of traditional Muslim society on young Palestinian Arabs,
especially young women, is deteriorating: as they gain access to secondary
and tertiary education, young Arabs have fewer children and more careers.
And the most effective agency for the emancipation of young Arab women is
the settler movement. Ariel University across the so-called Green Line is
full of young Muslim women in headscarves studying computer science, and
the leaders of the Ariel community–Haredi Jews–work with local Arab leaders
to recruit talented students.
There is a parallel to what I called the "peace of the
aging" in Ireland. The Irish got older. The drunken IRA killers I
met in Belfast in 1970 as a student journalist had no intention of making
peace. They were having too much fun at war. By 1996, when former Sen.
George Mitchell presided over the Good Friday Agreement that formally ended
the low-intensity civil war in Northern Ireland, those who were left had
families and mortgages.
Distribution of Irish Population by Age (UN)
By 2040 the Palestinian Arab population will have far fewer young people
and far more middle-aged people.
Distribution of West Bank Arab Population by Age (UN)
The Irish no longer care. They are neither Catholic nor nationalistic.
The IRA thugs of 1970 came from four-child families. Today the Irish have
fewer than two children on average. Let the matter simmer for another
twenty years, and the Palestinian Arabs will look more like the Irish of
1996 than the Irish of 1970. At that point, the "narrative" will
change, because no one will care about the old "narrative."
In the meantime the Israeli settlers have built a garden and a workshop
where before there were bare rocks, and thriving communities that are
integral parts of Israeli society. It takes longer to get crosstown in
Manhattan in traffic than it does to drive from the center of Tel Aviv to
Ariel, the largest town in Samaria. This is yet another accomplishment of
Jewish ingenuity and industriousness, and it is (or should be) an inspiring
example to all who hope for a better life for the peoples of the Middle
East. We will know that the Palestinians want peace when they admire rather
than abhor this effort.
The utopian delusions of the Obama administration, the hypocrisy of the
world, and the betrayal–yes, I think that is the right word–of Israeli
interests by the liberal American Jewish denominations have put Israel in a
painful situation. The threat of economic sanctions from Europe or reduced
American military support if Israel refuses to swallow the poisoned bait
are not a trivial threat. As Caroline
Glick writes today:
With Kerry poised to shove his lethal parameters down our throats,
parameters that will require Israel to irrevocably accept terms of peace
that will destroy the country, it is obvious that Netanyahu needs to adopt
a longer-term strategy. Our goal cannot be limited to waiting out Obama.
Our goal must be to extricate Israel from the two-state trap.
Yes, Israel will pay a huge price for jumping ship. For 20 years,
non-leftist Israeli leaders have been trying to go along to get along with
the Left, and the Americans and their ever-escalating demands. But Kerry's
obsessive harping, and his insistence on pushing forward with his
disastrous framework deal forces our hand.
Either we pay a huge price now, or accept our destruction within five to
15 years.
Ms. Glick is Israeli, and has a right to urge a particular course of
action for her country. I am American, and direct my comments instead to my
liberal Jewish co-religionists: Your support for the Obama administration
and your betrayal of Jews on our front line in Judea and Samaria is a
wicked and disgraceful thing. We must summon all of our strength to prevent
this administration from punishing Israel for refusing to commit suicide.
As a religious Jew, I believe that Jews are obligated to settle our
historic homeland, but I also believe that the preservation of Jewish life
takes precedence. If it were possible to achieve a durable and robust peace
by abandoning the settlements I would support it. But that is a delusion:
we will make ourselves immeasurably less secure by abandoning the
settlements than by holding fast to them.
David P. Goldman is Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy
Research and Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Related
Topics: Arab-Israel conflict &
diplomacy | David P. Goldman This
text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral
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