At the moment, the temptation is to look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a zoom lens that shows the battles in Gaza up-close, in detail. But a zoom lens flattens the picture you see, and entirely leaves out the panoramic view.
In the panoramic view, Israel’s strategic problem remains ending its rule over the Palestinians safely, in order to avoid the alternative of an unstable binational state. That means leaving the West Bank, and giving up settlements. Indeed, the reason that Ariel Sharon insisted on leaving Gaza unilaterally three years ago is that any negotiated agreement with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas would have meant taking down most settlements. But the unilateral withdrawal empowered Hamas, and is at the root of the current crisis.
The longer the challenge of removing West Bank settlements is evaded, as I explain in an article in the new issue of Foreign Policy, the more overwhelming it becomes:
Each time I drive out of Jerusalem into the West Bank, it strikes me: The hills are changing. Israeli settlements are redrawing the landscape-daily, insistently. While governments change, while diplomatic conversations murmur on and stop and begin again, the bulldozers and cranes continue their work.
From my home in West Jerusalem, the road that Israelis use to head south toward Hebron runs through two tunnels in the mountains. Known simply as the Tunnel Road, it was built in the mid-1990s during the Oslo peace process, when Bethlehem was turned over to Palestinian rule and Israelis wanted a way to bypass the town on their way to settlements that remained in Israeli hands.
A turn from the Tunnel Road takes you past the Palestinian village of Hussan to Beitar Illit, a settlement covering two hills. The streets are lined with apartment buildings, faced in rough-cut, yellowish-white stone, all with red-tile roofs, so alike they could have been turned out by the same factory. In 1993, when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat shook hands and peace seemed close enough to touch, about 4,000 people lived in Beitar Illit. Now, 34,000 live here, and more will soon move in.
The message written on the landscape is simple: Every day, the settlements expand. Every day, Israel grows more entangled in the West Bank. To a large degree, the Israeli and Palestinian publics have accepted the need for a two-state solution. But time, and the construction crews, are working against it. No one knows exactly where the point of no return is-when so many Israelis will have moved into so many homes beyond the pre-1967 border that there is no going back. But each passing day brings that tipping point nearer. If a solution is not achieved quickly, it might soon be out of reach.
Continue reading the full article here, and come back to South Jerusalem to comment.
I completely agree. My own belief is that until the US takes more dramatic steps to penalize Israel for its settlement expansions (beyond calling them “not conducive to peace talks”) by reducing their foreign aid, a ticking time bomb is being created. In taking a look at a report to the US congress titled “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel” by the Congressional Research Service (see http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf), the US appears to reduce aid in an amount estimated to be what Israel has spent on settlements, but it clearly has not deterred the Israeli government. It’s also unclear how well such restrictions are enforced. I think that you are correct that the political will to confront does not exist. The Palestinian side appears to have had its civil unrest with the West Bank/Gaza (Fatah/Hamas) split, which is very disappointing. And they have two discontinuous territories in which to make this a more lasting reality. Whereas the Israeli split between the hard-line settler movement and the peace movement has not yet had its day of reckoning. The Palestinians (and Hezzbollah) have manged to give them a common enemy against which they can unite from time to time.
Keep up your good work.
It’s remarkable to me how people will do things without thinking beyond their immediate desire. I’ve seen interviews with settlers who are far from fanatics, who simply say they moved because the price of the house they bought was good compared to what was available in Israel proper.
I’ve asked Americans how they can continue to fly to distant destinations on a lark (sightseeing) when they also know about global warming and the great effect of air travel in burning fossil fuels. The answer is, “but I want to go see (Greece, Africa, South America, etc.)” as if wanting something trumps any other factor.
This short-sightedness gives little reason to be optimistic about difficult problems we face.
Gershom provides a sage analysis. However I would argue that the ‘tipping point’ he refers to was reached a number of years ago. We are already past the point of no return regarding two viable and secure states between the Mediterranean and the Jordan.
Israel’s insistence on retaining the settlement ‘fingers’ running deep into the West Bank, and the E1/Route 1 corridor that slices the West Bank in half, will nix any deal with a responsible Palestinian government. Route 5 is also currently being extended past Ariel which will bring the four-lane east/west highway all the way from Tel Aviv to the Jordan valley in 5-8 years. This will cut the northern West Bank in two with a strip of sovereign Israeli territory.
Gershom writes “To a large degree, the Israeli and Palestinian publics have accepted the need for a two-state solution.” This may be true, but what he fails to mention is that over the past two years Palestinian politicians, intellectuals, and the street, are increasingly discussing a shift in strategy towards a single state or confederation.
I believe we are heading towards a political earthquake that will feed into Israelis worst nightmare, not another intifada but a shift in demands from Palestinians. As the hope for two states recedes into a lost dream, there are not many choices left – Apartheid or Democracy for all of us in the Land. Each of us will have to make a choice.
I agree w/ Mr. Schlomka: the tipping point is past.
But, beyond that, I think the history of encounters between ‘advanced’ (ie, better-armed) and less-advanced societies makes it look pretty hopeless for the Palestinians. In this, Israel is (IMO) not particularly worse than other countries, though hardly a ‘light to the nations’.
I have come – bitterly – to believe that the best outcome for the Palestinians would be to be driven off the land, and dispersed to the world. It would get the suffering over with. In another place (eg: Kurdistan), they might have persisted, never winning, but never fully losing. But, their land is just too small, too exposed, and Israel too powerful.
When will it be too late? Given that Israel is in the business of encouraging Jews from all over the world to consider new lives in the Holyland, the idea that it will be too late to ask Jews in the West Bank to start new lives within Israeli proper strikes me as bizarre.
The question is whether or not it will be done when it is too late for Israel to reap the diplomatic/psychological benefits of doing the right thing. Or whether or not it will be too late to prevent a civil war.
As you said, both the Labor and Kadima parties have stated that they support a two state solution. They must start evacuating the West Bank now. I have family living in relatively new settlements in the West Bank, and at least part of the reason they settled there was the question of affordability. They don’t hate Arabs, but they apparently also don’t see their communities as a roadblock to living in peace. And they understand the difference between what Israeli leaders may say about the settlements and what they do about them.
Israel must start planning now for these settlers to relocate.
Chaim, you are right, if only because the cost of relocating settlements like Beitar would make it prohibitive (I don’t see the US footing the bill). On the other hand, the only way enough Israelis will support such an evacuation (not taking into account dreadful events) is if they are absolutely convinced that this will be the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that there will not be further demands (i.e. right of return) which will then be used to justify use of force.
How can we imagine such a conviction, given the present condition of the Palestinians?