Politics and Policy

On Settlement Legality, With Thanks to Our Readers

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For those who have missed it, a impressive debate on the legality of West Bank settlements has been in progress for the past week between several of South Jerusalem’s readers. To find it, look in the comment section of my post, The Paper Trail: Settlement Land Theft. The dueling writers have remained civil – no small thing in blogland. Meanwhile, they’ve provided a thoughtful, articulate and footnoted overview for anyone interested in this issue.

That said, it’s an unequal battle. Beginning at comment No. 14, David (with some assists from Fiddler) lays out the basics of international law on occupation and the prohibition of settlement. On the other hand, commentator aliyah06 (with some assists by others) summarizes the arguments that have been used by defenders of settlement.

Sorry, aliyah06 et al. Outside of the pro-settlement echo chamber, these positions are considered quirky. While the Israeli government has used them for PR purposes abroad, it takes entirely different positions when arguing real legal cases before the Israeli Supreme Court. I’m sorry. The government has treated you, and others who quote its PR arguments, as useful idiots.

Here are some key points for understanding the illegality of settlement:

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Oh, For the Days of the Party Boss and the Back-Room Deal!

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Haim Watzman


There was a membership meeting at shul Saturday night to discuss plans to finish our building’s unfinished basement. A well-meaning, socially-concerned member (true, those labels apply to pretty much everyone in Kehilat Yedidya ) suggested that democratic procedures required that we poll the entire community, asking each and every member whether they favor or oppose the proposal.

If you’ve ever been involved in synagogue governance, or served on a PTA board, or tried to run any other organization, no matter how mundane, you’ll know why I started turning red. You work together with other concerned members and, through a process of study and deliberation, weigh various options, compromise between opposing views, and put together the best plan you can. Then you bring it before the membership and everyone becomes a partisan and wants to go back to square one. If the meeting isn’t well-managed, all your work is for naught.

How anti-democratic of me! I’ve been accused of precisely such dictatorial tendencies on several occasions during my life. But my socially-concerned, democratically-committed fellow-Yedidyan was wrong. In properly-functioning democracies, not everyone gets to decide everything. And an overdose of public involvement can in fact subvert true democratic process. It’s just such a surfeit of democratic politics that has turned Israel into a nearly non-functioning democracy in recent years, and led to a situation where Israelis will be presented in February with a choice of notably mediocre candidates for its legislature.

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The Sound of Silence

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So Hebron settlers have poured turpentine on a soldier, desecrated Palestinian graves, and sprayed graffiti saying “Muhammad the pig” on a mosque, all because of a court decision that they stop occupying a house until a ruling on who owns it. We should be shocked, but only in half the meaning of the word: such behavior is horrifying, but not surprising. This is what Hebron settlers do.

Also deeply disturbing is the continued silence of moderate rabbis and religious Jews in the face of such behavior by people who claim that Judaism guides them. As I wrote recently in Ha’aretz, there are reasons for this silence – but they aren’t good enough. The article appeared only in Hebrew. For those who don’t read from right to left, here’s part of my critique:

One reason is that [religious moderates] recoil from the right’s politicization of religion. The reflexive response of the moderates is: They – the right – pull politics into the synagogues and schools, so we must not. Their rabbis express offensive political views. So our rabbis shouldn’t discuss public affairs. Anything connected to Arabs or territory is defined as politics. So talking about racism is off-limits… A teacher who would devote three class hours to condemning a student’s theft of his classmate’s cellphone won’t touch the “political” topic of setting up an outpost on privately owned Palestinian land, even if his students spend time there.

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Left Behind: Why a New Party Won’t Save Social Democracy in Israel

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Haim Watzman Ha’aretz has been going ga-ga over the impending new left-wing party that will incorporate Meretz, a few old Labor hands, and some literary figures who have long acted as the collective conscience of the Israeli left. The newspaper also devoted several pages of its Friday opinion supplement to the age-old question of whither … Read more

I Swear It’s Not Too Late (But It Could Be Soon)

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When Pete Seeger rewrote chapter 3 of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) as a song, he changed just a few words at the end, making it, “A time for peace – I swear it’s not too late.”

I don’t think it’s too late for Israelis and Palestinians to make peace. But waiting will make it more difficult. On the other hand, strong American involvement – the kind that has been lacking for the last eight years – could move the process forward. So, since everyone else is offering advice to soon-to-be-President Obama, I’ve offered some as well in my new article in The American Prospect:

The main reason for moving quickly… is that every wasted day makes a two-state solution more difficult to reach. Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas has promised his people that diplomacy can bring independence. Delay eats away at his credibility. Meanwhile, Israeli settlements keep growing. Since the Annapolis conference, the number of settlers has risen from 275,000 to 290,000. (That doesn’t include Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, for which up-to-date figures aren’t available.) The more settlers, the greater the internal crisis that Israel would face in withdrawing.

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The Paper Trail: Settlement Land Theft

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The legal battle over settlement building on privately owned Palestinian land is heating up. Yesterday, the Supreme Court barred settlers from taking up residence in houses at Beit El. The court was responding to a petition by two Palestinians from the village of Dura a-Kara, who say the buildings are on land they own. (The Supreme Court order in Hebrew is here; an AP story on the decision is here.)

In honor of that decision, I’m adding a new document to my online archive of settlement history. The mimeographed Hebrew flier, from the flagship settlement of Ofrah in 1976, shows how aware settlers were at the outset that they were using land that belonged to someone else, how intentional the theft was.

First, some background on the latest legal case.

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Secular Revolt? Not Quite.

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The best analysis I’ve seen of Nir Barkat’s election victory in Jerusalem, and how the press has misreported it as a “secular upheaval,” is Amos Goldberg’s at Ynet. Unfortunately, it’s only up in Hebrew. If you read from right to left, click the link. If not, here’s a taste.

…In Jerusalem, this strict and destructive dichotomy between “religious” and “secular” as two options that exclude each other doesn’t exist.

Jerusalem is a city of daily interactions that allow countless possibility across a wide range of identities. The distinction between “religious” and “secular” in Jerusalem is a soft one, not polar and compartmentalized…

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Jerusalem Votes: Interim Report

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Haim Watzman

South Jerusalem is not a good place to draw conclusions about trends throughout the city. This morning I disconcerted a Channel 10 crew looking for typical voters to interview when I told them I’d voted for Barkat and Meretz.

“But you’re wearing a kipah!” said the puzzled, well-dressed newsman, a Tel Aviv yuppie who’d been sent to cover those quaint, benighted Jews up in the mountains.

“Yes, but this is South Jerusalem,” I said.

The streets were lively today and when I went with my daughter to vote at mid-morning, the polling place was busy, even though these were work hours. It was a sharp contrast to the previous two municipal elections, five and ten years ago respectively, when turnout in this area was woefully low. Despite the fact that many people feel, as I do, that both major candidates are far from ideal, the battle between them seems to have galvanized voters.

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Oy, Jerusalem

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Reading pre-election polls, I used to wonder how a person could intend firmly to vote yet be undecided. If you cared enough to vote, you had to have an opinion. If you didn’t like the candidates, you could still choose the lesser evil – and you were morally obligated to vote for the lesser evil, lest the greater evil win.

I have shed my patronizing attitude. Tomorrow I am supposed to vote for mayor of Jerusalem. I care deeply, and I’m undecided. Indeed, I’m more undecided than I was several weeks ago. I still believe in the obligation to vote for the lesser evil. But which of the major candidates – Nir Barkat or Meir Porush – qualifies for that dubious title?

Let me phrase the dilemma – as my wife did – in terms of risk: There’s an large chance that Porush will fulfill at least some of the the dark predictions of his critics. There’s a slighter lesser risk that Barkat will do what critics fear – but the damage he could cause is much greater. Electing Barkat mayor is akin to hoping that a pyromaniac keeps his matches buried in his pocket.

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Superbad: The Onion Explains the Election

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Haim Watzman . . . and gets it right: Although polls going into the final weeks of October showed Sen. Obama in the lead, it remained unclear whether the failing economy, dilapidated housing market, crumbling national infrastructure, health care crisis, energy crisis, and five-year-long disastrous war in Iraq had made the nation crappy enough to … Read more

Obama and Israel: The View From Home

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Haim Watzman Daneila London-Dekel, Ha’aretz‘s down-to-earth editorial cartoonist, injects a little realism into today’s paper, which consists almost entirely of a series of articles expressing amazement, wonder, and admiration at Barack Obama’s election. I’m also in a state of amazement, wonder, and admiration but I appreciate London-Dekel’s reminder that we’ve still got to get the … Read more

Keep the Faith: The Jews Vote Obama

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Oops. It didn’t work. Labeling him a Muslim, labeling him a crazy black man, saying he’ll be bad for Israel. Apparently, those scare tactics stirred up exactly that minority of American Jews who don’t vote Democratic anyway. Well, we all have relatives we don’t understand. The rest know how to translate “In every generation, a … Read more