Time for the imposed settlement
By Robert Rosenberg
May 2, 2002

For the last 35 years, and more specifically, since the 1977 election of the first Likud government in Israel, the U.S. mantra about Israel has been that since the country is a democracy, the U.S. will not use its influence, whether alone or in conjunction with the international community, to impose a solution in the Israel-Arab conflict.

Going all the way back to the Golda Meir government, but more intensively after the election of Menachem Begin, whose government dramatically increased the number of settlers in the biblical homelands known as Judea and Samaria, the U.S. has referred to any Jewish settlment activity in the areas occupied since the 1967 war, as "an obstacle to peace."

But those "obstacles" have grown and proliferated. In 1977, on the eve of Begin's election, there were 2,000 Israelis living in the "occupied territories" that Begin always referred to as liberated. Now, 25 years later, there are 200,000 not counting another 150,000 living in various parts of east Jerusalem. Except for a brief period during the first President Bush's administration, no U.S. administration has ever discounted from the aid it provides to Israel, the Israeli expenditures for building, maintaining, and expanding that settlement enterprise. The argument has always been that Israel is a democracy, and the "obstacles to peace" will be dealt with in a final, negotiated, agreement between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which has meant the Palestinians since the 1993 handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat.

But the settlements have become more than obstacles to peace. By virtue of Israeli government policies aimed at making sure the settlers enjoy all the benefits that any Israeli citizen enjoys, the settlements have become not only obstacles to peace but signposts to the withering of Israeli democracy.

Israel is a democracy for its Jewish citizens. It is a semi-democracy for its Arab citizens; yes, they can vote for the Knesset, but as the latest State Comptroller's report so belatedly shows, there has been malevolent neglect of the Arab sector's infrastructure, from roads to sewage to education. And for the Palestinain residents of the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli effort to guarantee the welfare of the Jewish residents of the territories has meant that Israel is not only not a democracy, but appears to the Palestinians peculiar form of an apartheid regime, whether that is Israel's intentions or not. Indeed, formally, it has not been any Israeli government's formally stated policy, but for many of the settlers -- and some of their supporters inj the current government -- "transfer" is the way to "solve" the problem, so seperate and very unequal is a way to encourage it.

The U.S. has a long history of supporting regimes around the world that were far from democratic. In the days of the Cold War, dictators around the world grew rich on their claims of anti-communism. It took years for America to wean itself from that kind of support both given and received. And Israel is not run by a dictator, but is, indeed, enough of a democracy for its Jews, and even for its Arab citizens, to not be comparabale to many, indeed all of its neighbors in the Arab world at least when it comes to free speech, if not administrative egalitarianism for all its citizens.

However, the time has come to recognize that Israeli democracy has fallen into the same trap as Serbian democracy in the days of Milosevic. Confounded by the world's inability to understand its positions, distressed by the belief that the Palestinians betrayed them with violence, a year and some months ago Israelis rallied around an isolationist flag carried by Ariel Sharon, the midwife of the settlements. Sharon is no Milosevic. He did not send troops into the West Bank to ethnically cleanse the territory of Palestinians. But he is a long-time believer in Jordan becoming a Palestinian state. In 1970, as an IDF general, he proposed Israel back the Palestinians in the Jordanian civil war that eventually became known as Black September, and in 1982, his plan for the Lebanon War was not only to crown Bashir Gemayel as Lebanon's president, but to force the PLO in Lebanon to move to Jordan. Sharon would be satisfied if the Palestinians on their own account pick up and move to the neighbor on the other side of the Jordan River. But that apparently will not happen.

As for the Palestinians, they have long confused "resistance" -- meaning indiscriminate violent terror of Israelis to prove Palestinian rage -- with nation building, equating national pride with teenagers sacrificing themselves to a Moloch of mass murder.

Thus, neither Israel's semi-democracy nor pre-statehood Palestine is capable of making a unilateral gesture of goodwill toward the other side. An Israel that maintains an occupation of the territories, providing benefits for 200,000 while 3.5 million non-Jews are denied basic civil rights, is not a democracy that deserves to be left to make its own decisions. It is time for the U.S., with the international community, to impose the solution that is evident to everyone: a two-state solution that will enable Israel to resume building its vibrant democratic tradition, and allow the Palestinians to build their nation and state. The Saudi Arabian initiative and the Clinton framework are one and the same -- a two-state solution, and even the details are obvious: Jerusalem to be divided demographically, not physically, refugees to return to Palestine not Israel, settlers to return to Israel, and, if necessary, an internationally supervised cohabitation arrangement for the Temple Mount. Israeli public opinion polls say the public will accept it -- and so do Palestinian polls. It's time for the politicians on both sides to be told by more rational politicians in the U.S. and the Arab world what to do.

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Jewish lovers ... JewishCafe.com


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