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Is It Time for Israel to Annex Some West Bank Territory? — Judith Levy
As you’ve probably read, John Kerry has stated outright that it’s Israel’s fault that the so-called peace process ran aground, though State is frantically backpedalling. (See John Podhoretz’s column in the New York Post for a pithy response to the “deceitful, pompous, self-righteous and vindictive fool”.) Rather than rehash the failure of the talks, let’s take a look at a proposed new way forward.
Member of Knesset Naftali Bennett is the leader of Bayit Hayehudi (The Jewish Home), a right-wing party that secured 12 seats in the last election. Bennett has taken the occasion of the most recent failure of negotiations to reassert one of the platforms on which he ran his campaign: that Israel should unilaterally annex a sizeable chunk of the West Bank:
All 350,000 of the Jews in Judea and Samaria live in Area C, some 60% of the area. Of the Palestinians in the West Bank, 97% live in Area A, which is under full Palestinian control, and Area B, which is under Palestinian civil control and Israeli military control.
“It is clear that the diplomatic process has run its course and that we are entering a new era,” Bennett wrote Netanyahu. “We have been hitting our heads against the wall of negotiations over and over again for years and we kept getting surprised when the wall did not break. The time has come for new thinking.”
Bennett launched a public relations initiative Wednesday for his “Settlement Blocs First” plan, which calls for annexing blocs such as Ariel, Gush Etzion, Ma’aleh Adumim, Beit El-Ofra and communities that overlook Ben-Gurion Airport. He explained his plan on CNN Wednesday night and intends to push it to the international community.
Bennett is controversial — he has been criticized for saying, among other things, that Arab terrorists should be shot — but his stance on annexation, which was once a fringe position, now resonates for more Israelis than it used to. One does not need to live in the settlements, or even to sympathize particularly with those who do, to have lost patience with a Palestinian leadership that no longer even troubles to conceal its bad faith, and which seems to have as much contempt for its American cheerleaders and the sympathetic Israeli left as it does for Israelis like Bennett.
Annexation would be a bold move, to say the least, but there is a certain bravura appeal in the disregard it displays for world opinion. And Bennett’s timing makes sense: Kerry’s “the Israelis blew it” position demonstrates yet again the inevitability that Israel will be blamed for the failure of peace negotiations, no matter what shticklach the other side pulls:
A Hebrew video with subtitles in multiple languages that the Jerusalem and Diaspora affairs minister released explained why the plan could be practical. It says that the international community does not recognize Israel’s annexation of eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, so annexing part of the West Bank would just add another thing for the world to complain about.
The three-staged plan starts with annexing Area C and offering citizenship to its Palestinians.
It calls for giving the Palestinians upgraded autonomy in Areas A and B. The third stage is massive investment in Palestinian areas to improve their quality of life and improve their lives.
“We should be taking a bottom- up strategy rather than creating an artificial state in the heart of Israel,” a source close to Bennett said.
Now this might, of course, prove hopeless: for all the plan’s bracing practicality and neat handling of the demographic problem, it’s not necessarily in Israel’s best interest to entrench her position as pariah state even more solidly than it is already. We’ll see how far this goes.
Still, the landscape is not quite the same as it was before the most recent collapse of the talks. Abbas’s position in particular grows ever more tenuous. Israel is said to be turning her attention away from him and toward his bitter rival Mohammad Dahlan, and to be “seeking rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt in its attempts to make Dahlan the point person for any future dialogue with the Palestinian Authority.” According to the Jerusalem Post, this prospect makes the Americans very uncomfortable, because “the aforementioned Arab states are currently in conflict with the Muslim Brotherhood – and involving these parties in negotiations would incorporate Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, into the greater regional conflict.”
It would likely come as a surprise to Hamas to learn that it is not already incorporated into the greater regional conflict. One would have thought greater leverage against the Gazan thugocracy was a good thing, not a bad thing, when permanent status negotiations are in process. That’s not how they see it at State, but anxious sound bytes emanating from Foggy Bottom don’t emanate quite as far as they used to. Of course, that might have been President Obama’s goal all along, in which case, mission accomplished.
Never a dull moment. Stay tuned.
Image of sign marking entrance to Area A — “Entrance to Israeli Citizens Is Forbidden” — via Huffington Post.
Published in General
It is the Muslim world that uses the Palestinians as an excuse to be against Israel. The real problem is that they hate Jews.
The fault lies with the enemies of Israel.
I am not advocating mass murder. I am advocating mass deportation to secure the state of Israel.
We did it to the Tories. It was right to do then, and right to do now.
Or do you think we should give that land back?
It seems our main quarrel is over your insistence that Palestinians can be lumped into one category that of terrorist or at least uncontainable threat to Israel. Until you can convince me of this, I’m afraid we will have different opinions. I would like to hear your argument for your category rather than just an assertion of its truth. After that groundwork is laid then you’d have a chance to convince me that deportation is the best way to deal with the problem rather than containment or slow integration.
Bryan G. Stephens:
We did it to the Tories. It was right to do then, and right to do now. Or do you think we should give that land back?
I generally like historical parallels, but this one doesn’t fit.
Sure it does. You don’t let people that worked against you stay in your borders to become insurgents.
The Palestinians support terror against Israel and the PLA as much as Germans supported Hitler.
There you go. It is that simple. In war, the civilians are part of the enemy population.
Bryan, that’s as good a justification for Itamar or Ma’alot or Deir Yassin as I’ve ever read. Unless you only mean it when talking about Palestinian civilians but not Jewish civilians.
And total war might sound good theoretically (and when you’re sure you have an advantage), but to civilians who suffer (whether Jewish or Arab) I suspect the Geneva Conventions start to make more sense – just my feeling. They also make it easier to make peace eventually, even if you lack the ability to utterly destroy your enemy.
Bryan, they say that the fault lies with Israel. And looking at it historically (since that’s where you’re coming from) anti-semitism in the Arab world was magnitudes lower than anti-semitisim in Europe – until after WWII and the creation of Israel by displacing Palestinian Arabs.
Anti-semitisim (or prejudice or hatred against any group, including *cough* Muslims or Arabs) is appalling – but in this case I think you’re putting the cart before the horse. They aren’t attacking Israel because they hate Jews, they hate Jews because Israel displaced the Palestinians.
Either way – we’re in a right mess now. But ignoring reality in favour of ideology does nobody (not even Israel) any favours. jmho.
I don’t hate Muslims. I just think Islam has demonstrated itself to be a backwards faith as it refused to accept such little things as separation of Church and State and Women having rights. Get back to me when it has its reformation.
I am not the one ignoring reality. Anyone that thinks peace can be negotiated with someone that calls for your destruction is the one not living in reality. Israel can end the problem of people shelling their cities, digging tunnels to send in bombers etc. by removing the population that is there. They can be resettled elsewhere.
While the other nations in the Middle East are controlled by Islamists, there will not be peace regardless of what Israel does.
If you cannot accept that fact, you are the one not facing reality. Islamism is the greatest threat to the existence of Israel.
I didn’t say you did! And I agree with some of what you say above, especially about the separation of Church and State and the Reformation. But none of these addresses the why of this conflict – both Palestinians and Jewish Israelis feel they have prior claim to the same land.
Yes – of course the conflict could be more easily resolved if one of the groups agreed to be settled elsewhere and elsewhere agreed to take them. But which group? Each of them thinks it should be the other. Which elsewhere? Are you willing to offer all the Palestinians green cards? If you aren’t why should anybody else?
Islamism is a threat – to Israel but also to many other things. Islamism thrives in an atmosphere of oppression and injustice. It’s no surprise that (in Palestine) Islamists first dominated in Gaza, where conditions were worse than they were on the West Bank. And that Salafist groups are now starting to emerge in the South West Bank, around Hebron, again where oppression and land theft has a sharper tooth than, say, Ramallah.
Tories had prior claim to their land, too. Jews has prior claim to lots of land they lost. That is not what matters at this stage in the game.
Nation’s pool their power to stop other nations from trampling their rights. The basis of international laws and standards are the same as those within a nation. Treaties have consequences and are enforced by participants. Norms of behavior are established and enforced. Same as with national governments. Granted the international frame work is far weaker and more disorganized, but it exists and it has done us and the world much good. If a nation chooses to step out side the norms it invites justified censure from the community. Russia is stepping outside the norm with Crimea, and I think Israel would too if it chose to annex large swaths of the West Bank.
And please stop peddling that “they won a war” crap. Winning a war isn’t any more justification for theft than wining a fist fight.