Unholy Fire on the Temple Mount
October 15, 2015 § 5 Comments
As terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians proliferate across Jerusalem and other Israeli cities, everyone seems to be hoping that a combination of a greater Israeli military and police presence on the streets and the Palestinian Authority holding the line on larger organized attacks will prevent further violence. While everyone recognizes that there are no perfect solutions, the nature of this nascent uprising is more dangerous than those that have come before because of the fusion of political nationalism and religious nationalism. The Temple Mount has always been in the background imagery of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but now it is front and center and it does not bode well for what is to come.
The PA is largely impotent here because the attacks are being carried out by Palestinians from East Jerusalem, who are not under the PA’s jurisdiction, and the primary motivation is the most dangerous one of all, which is a perceived threat to Muslim dominance of the Temple Mount. Palestinians (and Jordanians, and the Arab League, and the Turkish government) accuse Israel of altering the status quo on the Temple Mount, and Abbas, the PA, Hamas, the Islamic Movement in Israel, Joint List Arab MKs, and nearly every other actor on the Palestinian side are whipping the Palestinian public into a frenzy over the issue. Because the status quo is an unwritten agreement and because the margins of what precisely it means have shifted over time, there is no consensus as to what precisely it entails, but the basic parameters are solely Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount and some form of access to the Mount for non-Muslims so long as prayer is not involved. From a technical standpoint, and in line with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s constant claims on the subject, the Israeli government has not altered the status quo, as it maintains an official policy of prohibiting Jews from praying on the Temple Mount. Indeed, Netanyahu has gone so far as to ban MKs from the site entirely so as not to risk a potentially explosive incident.
Nevertheless, Palestinians and Muslims worldwide refuse to believe that Israel is not in the midst of violating and attempting to alter the arrangement that has held since 1967. The reasons for this suspicion are that in the past half decade, and even more markedly this year, there have been increased Jewish visits and in larger numbers, along with visits from rightwing government ministers – Uri Ariel most prominent among them – who have prayed on the Mount and publicly demanded that the status quo be changed. This is part of a trend within religious Zionism to embrace the Temple Mount – as opposed to solely the Western Wall – as a site for prayer and a way of asserting Jewish nationalism in contrast to what was once a nearly universal religious prohibition from ascending to the Temple Mount plaza.
Given the involvement of government ministers in this changed dynamic and new restrictions on Muslim access to the Temple Mount during the High Holidays this year for security reasons, it is easy to understand why Palestinians are literally up in arms when their leaders demagogue about a mortal threat to Al-Aqsa. The fact that what Israel has given up in agreeing to this status quo – creating a blatantly discriminatory religious double standard against Jews at the holiest site in all of Judaism – or that by all objective accounts Netanyahu desperately does want to maintain the status quo seems not to matter. Also overlooked is that weapons and explosives were seized from Al-Aqsa by the Israeli police last month after having been stockpiled right under the noses of the Waqf in charge of administering the site, which seems to be quite the violation of the status quo given that weapons stockpiled atop the Temple Mount would almost certainly be used as part of a campaign to deny access to non-Muslims.
Despite the fact that the incitement taking place on social media is centered around the Temple Mount, that Abbas and other Palestinian leaders keep on raging about the Temple Mount, and that attackers who have been apprehended have given defending the Temple Mount as their primary motivation, some refuse to accept the reality of what is taking place. In a widely shared column in the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens characterized the wave of terrorist attacks as a Palestinian communal psychosis with no motivation behind it other than to kill Jews. Stephens is absolutely and unreservedly correct that knifing Israelis on the streets is indeed a psychotic and evil act and that there is no rational justification for it. But his dismissal of the Temple Mount status quo motivation wholesale because “Benjamin Netanyahu denies it and has barred Israeli politicians from visiting the site” rings a bit hollow, and not only because in the very next paragraph he quotes Abbas saying, “Al Aqsa Mosque is ours. They [Jews] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet.” It ignores the fact that irrespective of what Netanyahu has actually done to preserve the status quo – something that State Department spokesman John Kirby yesterday confirmed – the perception among Palestinians, including those killing and maiming Israelis, is very different.
Which brings me to the final point, which is the wider context beyond the Temple Mount. To deny the role of the occupation of the West Bank and the second class status of Palestinians in Jerusalem in all of this is to be willfully blind, just as blaming the occupation for this completely is to be dangerously naïve and enables more and uglier violence. There is a middle ground between “the occupation causes terrorism” and “terrorism isn’t related to the occupation at all” and it is vital to keep this in mind, as there are no easy answers or parsimonious narratives that can entirely account for the terrible events happening in Israel. Humans are complex animals and we are capable of processing complex thoughts. Incitement from Palestinian leaders and false claims about the Temple Mount and even outright murderous hatred of Jews may be the spark for the current violence, but it can also simultaneously be true that a nearly half-century long military occupation of the West Bank and blatant mistreatment of Arabs living in a supposedly undivided Jerusalem is the propane supply for the current explosion. To deny the lessons of history on the awesome and destructive power of nationalism and to not see it on display among Palestinians as their nationalist dreams go unrealized is to defy logic, even when there are other factors at play as well.
If there is one lesson to take away from all of this, it is that separation for Israel from the Palestinians is more important than ever, as this is only a taste of things to come. The current violence is being driven by Palestinian women, teenagers, and children who could not care less about the PA leadership, the Oslo Accords, or the PA’s desire to maintain some sense of quiet in order to preserve its own hold on the West Bank. While the PA security forces may be able to keep the lid on organized terror attacks planned by cells in the West Bank, the lone wolf and unorganized attacks taking place on Israeli streets are beyond its control. The disappearance of a sense of safety and security for Israelis during their daily routines illuminates the chimerical fantasy of a one-state solution and provides a glimpse into what ethnic strife in a bi-national state might look like. Terror cannot and should not be rewarded, but there also needs to be a greater sense of urgency to come up with a solution that will ameliorate this situation for good.
A Glimmer of Light Through the Clouds
October 8, 2015 § 7 Comments
This piece can also be found on IPF’s website here.
These are not auspicious times for supporters of two states. The generally despondent mood was captured by Chemi Shalev this week in a column where he declared the death of whatever remaining optimism to which he had been clinging, and resigned himself to Israelis and Palestinians never resolving their differences and continuously battling – a “war of the cowards” in his formulation. This comes on the heels of Mahmoud Abbas’s UNGA declaration that the Palestinian Authority no longer feels bound by the Oslo Accords and will pick and choose which elements it cooperates with; the mounting terrorist attacks targeting Israelis of all stripes and ages; the unrest wracking Jerusalem and its immediate environs; and the rumbling conflict and potential wider conflagration over the Temple Mount.
The most immediately pressing problem is the intifada that is taking place in Jerusalem, despite the reluctance of most politicians and other observers to call it what it is. There are multiple attacks and arrests taking place every day, too many incidents of rock throwing to catalogue, seizures of caches of weapons and firebombs, and entire neighborhoods in Jerusalem that are rapidly becoming battle zones. This does not even take into account what is going on in the West Bank, where attacks and arrests are both up as well, or the riot in Jaffa on Tuesday night. The intelligence and security forces have assured Prime Minister Netanyahu that there is no intifada yet, only a wave of increased violence, but this is a distinction without a difference that is based on an outdated fallacy. The fallacy is that an intifada can only erupt with the complicity of the Palestinian leadership, and since Abbas and the Palestinian Authority have been cracking down and trying to prevent the violence from spinning out of control, ipso facto there must not be an intifada.
This ignores a very basic lesson in political science, which is that just because something has always happened in one particular manner does not mean it is fated to always unfold the same way. Civil uprisings have a logic of their own, which is what makes them so difficult to predict. One of the main lessons of the inaptly termed Arab Spring is that Middle Eastern authoritarian governments –which the PA most certainly is – do not have absolute control over their subjects, and this is particularly the case for regimes that are already hampered by questions of legitimacy. Just because the first and second intifadas were encouraged and planned by the Palestinian leadership does not mean that the next one must take the same path. The PA does not have a monopoly on violence in the territory under its control, and nationalist entrepreneurs seeking to foment civil unrest for their own political goals will not necessarily heed the PA’s preferences or follow its lead. In addition, Palestinian politics is more fragmented than it was fifteen years ago, and Hamas and other even more extreme groups do not have the same incentive structure as the PA. Finally, given what we have seen from seemingly leaderless social movements around the globe over the course of this decade, expecting the PA to turn the intifada switch on or off at its discretion may be foolhardy.
Adding to the tension is that the current unrest is centered around Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. While the second intifada was set off following Ariel Sharon’s Temple Mount visit but was not driven by the Mount itself, the recent increase in violence is centered almost entirely around the Temple Mount and the allegation that Israel is attempting to alter the status quo that establishes the plaza as a site exclusively for Muslim prayer. Anything having to do with the Temple Mount is inevitably explosive given that it is a symbol simultaneously religious and nationalist for both sides, and the fact that actors who should know better – such as Abbas and King Abdullah of Jordan – are fanning the flames by making grossly exaggerated accusations about Israeli actions only furthers the prospects of violence spreading out of control.
It is not only the Palestinians or the Jordanians who are using attacks on Israelis to further their own political ends, but members of the Israeli government as well. The more hardline rightwingers in Netanyahu’s coalition, including ministers from Likud such as Haim Katz and Yariv Levin and Habayit Hayehudi ministers Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, have been agitating that Netanyahu needs to adopt harsher responses to terrorist attacks on Israelis, and some went so far as to demonstrate outside his house in protest of policies that the government in which they serve has adopted. Netanyahu batted them down earlier this week by implicitly threatening to disband the government should the friendly fire continue, but adding a dose of political unrest to the soaring civil unrest makes for a poisonous mix.
So what is the silver lining, if any, to be found in this doom and gloom? It is that Netanyahu is actually behaving like the reasonable adult in the room and doing his best to prevent the situation from spiraling further downward. Aside from appearing to finally understand the threat that expanded settlement activity poses to Israel internationally and continuing to enforce an unpublicized settlement freeze, Netanyahu is doing his best to actually maintain the status quo on the Temple Mount despite the enormous political pressure on him to establish new facts on the ground (and despite the inherent injustice of preventing Jewish prayer at Judaism’s holiest site). Furthermore, Netanyahu has ordered the police to ban all government ministers and MKs from the Temple Mount, an extraordinary step that speaks to how seriously he understands that there will be no capping the eruption should tensions over the site escalate.
Folks on the left and the center tend to come down hard on Netanyahu – and rightly so – when he does and says things for his own political gain that deepen Israel’s isolation or contribute to illiberal trends in Israeli politics and society, yet Abbas is often given a free pass due to the uncomfortable political situation in which he must operate. While the estimation of the Israeli security establishment is that Abbas is doing his best to tamp down the violence erupting throughout Jerusalem and the West Bank and that Israel is going to miss him enormously when he is gone, this is not the whole story. He certainly deserves credit for all positive steps, but the fact that he has his own political survival at stake should not inoculate him from criticism over fanning the flames on the Temple Mount, or refusing to condemn terrorist activity that can in no way be chalked up as legitimate political protest or civil disobedience or resistance against an occupying power. The Israeli occupation is not a trump card when it comes to irresponsible rhetoric that will inevitably lead to incitement or the murder of civilians, and holding Netanyahu to an exceedingly higher standard than Abbas is the soft bigotry of low expectations.
A rightwing Israeli prime minister who presides over the narrowest possible coalition in the Knesset and is under constant assault from those to his right, whose commitment to two states is in question, and who has spent decades caving to the most irredentist elements of his party and coalition, has now halted new settlement growth, banned elected officials from the Temple Mount in an effort to protect exclusive Muslim rights on the site, and has so far refrained from a large and public show of force in the West Bank in response to multiple firebomb attacks, shootings, and stonings, all in recognition of the fact that the volume must be turned down in a major way. While some of these actions may be less just than others (and the Temple Mount issue in particular is one that I will write about in depth next week), they all point to a prime minister putting pragmatism over politics for the moment. Shalev opens his otherwise depressing column by noting how anyone watching Anwar Sadat emerge from his plane at Ben Gurion Airport in November 1977 could not help but believe that miracles do happen, and that it showed how calamity could transform into opportunity. Let’s hope that Netanyahu’s new leaf demonstrates that history always holds open the possibility of new beginnings.
Why Palestinian Reconciliation Would Be Bad
November 20, 2012 § 4 Comments
At some point Israel and Hamas are going to negotiate a ceasefire, and the question then becomes how to ensure that it holds and, more importantly, that Israel and Hamas move away from fighting a war every few years and toward a viable long term political solution. One of the sacred cows of the Israel-Palestinian conflict is that in order for there to be a lasting peace there needs to be Palestinian unity so that Palestinians can speak with one voice. Israel has used the rift between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority as an excuse in the past not to negotiate because it viewed negotiations under those circumstances as a pointless exercise, and certainly having Hamas and the PA as separate and adversarial entities has complicated matters. Writing in the New Republic, Nathan Brown examines the ways in which Hamas might eventually moderate and lands on the issue of reconciliation as paramount:
The most promising way to force Hamas to become more moderate is to force it to be more responsive to its own public. (As a leading Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarian in neighboring Egypt told me when I asked him whether Hamas would ever accept a two-state solution: “They will have to. Their people will make them.”) And the most promising way to ensure such responsiveness is to speed up the reconciliation between the governments in the West Bank and Gaza, so that those governments can agree to hold elections rather than jealously hold on to their own fiefdoms in a fit of paranoia. But that, in turn, will require that Israel and the international community show a greater willingness to countenance Palestinian reconciliation.
The thing is, it seems increasingly clear to me that Hamas moderation belongs in the same category as the yeti and the Loch Ness monster; its existence has long been rumored and many have claimed to have spotted it but no proof of it actually exists. Brown himself grants that the reconciliation gambit is a long shot but that it is the only option left as all the others have been exhausted, as he catalogs how the lack of Palestinian elections, the Hamas-Fatah civil war in 2007, and Hamas’s desire to keep an iron grip on Gaza have combined to destroy any hopes for Hamas moderation. If the fact that Hamas for much of this year was not itself shooting rockets at Israel but was allowing other more extreme groups to do so is touted as a sign of moderate pragmatism, then the term has lost all semblance of real meaning. The challenges from Palestinian Islamic Jihad and smaller Salafi groups in Gaza mean that Hamas must remain an intransigent foe of Israel in order not to lose credibility, as has happened to the PA in the West Bank, and outside of Hamas mounting a large scale military campaign to destroy these groups and risking a civil war in Gaza, this domestic political environment is not going to be altered. Everyone can hope that having to govern Gaza is eventually going to turn Hamas into a more moderate group, but it seems to be foolish to have any remaining reasonable expectation that this will occur.
So this being the case, what happens if Hamas and the PA reconcile? Rather than Hamas moderating, the likely scenario is that it transforms the PA rather than the PA transforms it. The PA’s credibility is gone, it is viewed as inept and incompetent, and as violent protests break out across the West Bank despite Mahmoud Abbas calling for peaceful demonstrations, it is difficult to conclude anything other than that the PA is out of touch and on the brink of collapse. While Hamas shoots rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and generally terrorizes southern Israel, Abbas spends his time trying to eliminate domestic opponents, feuds with his own prime minister Salam Fayyad, and mounts ineffective and symbolic Palestinian statehood bids at the United Nations. While the PA has basically delivered nothing but deferred promises, Hamas is seen as the hero of the Palestinian resistance standing up to Israel, and its popularity in the West Bank is naturally growing as a result. This is, of course, partially Israel’s doing as it has done little to prop up Abbas and has not made much of an effort to give West Bank Palestinians hope that the peace process is still alive. If these two groups reconcile, is there really much doubt which one is going to have the upper hand and swallow the other? I think that this is a recipe for a stronger non-pragmatic Hamas rather than a more pragmatic and conciliatory Hamas. This is compounded by the support Hamas receives from Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt, who have yet to demonstrate that they have actual sway over the group, or that even if they do that they want it to moderate its stance toward Israel.
Given all of the above, I think rather than encourage a rapprochement and then hope to deal with a newly pragmatic Hamas, Israel’s best bet is to actually discourage reconciliation at all and officially recognize the reality on the ground, which is that we are dealing with two separate and independent Palestinian entities, each with their own territory and set of political institutions. Up until now, Israel has essentially taken the position that Hamas is an illegitimate entity and that it hopes the PA eventually returns to power in Gaza, but it’s time to drop this fantasy. Hamas is here to stay, and acknowledging that and then coming up with long term strategies to deal with the West Bank and Gaza separately is the next step. This then leads to a two-fold strategy that only works if both parts are carried out. First, rather than threaten to collapse the PA if it goes to the UN again and treat Abbas and Fayyad as if they are mere inconveniences to be ignored, actually work to establish a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority so that the PA can claim to have accomplished something by working with Israel. Second, treat Gaza as a completely separate entity and have the U.S. lean on Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar – all of whom are ostensibly U.S. allies in the region – to keep Hamas in line, but this time with the added force of arguing that Israel actually is willing to truly work with a peaceful Palestinian partner. This second part only works if the first part is there too, since otherwise the argument to keep Hamas isolated falls apart. If the Turks and the Egyptians can actually work to change Hamas’s behavior, great. If not, hopefully an actual Palestinian state in the West Bank will lead Palestinians in Gaza to reject the Hamas approach on their own once they see that there is a genuine alternative.
Is this actually viable? I honestly don’t know. It requires Abbas to come to the negotiating table without a list of preconditions and demands, requires Israel to actually do something about the settlements in the West Bank, and requires Hamas’s Sunni patrons to exert what sway they have and actually be more convincing and forceful than the prospect of amassing more Iranian Fajr-5 missiles. That’s a lot of big ifs, but if the Palestinians living in Gaza can actually see that there are tangible benefits to the more pragmatic PA approach, then maybe Hamas actually will be forced to be more responsive to its own public and Israel can finally stop pretending that there is a permanent military solution to dealing with Hamas.
Dani Dayan’s Terrifyingly Transparent Op-Ed
July 26, 2012 § 2 Comments
I had planned to write about something else today, but Yesha chairman Dani Dayan’s op-ed in the New York Times requires a comment or a thousand (be forewarned, this post is on the longer side). Dayan has written a good summation of the settler leadership’s views, and it is instructive in that it does not attempt in any way to hide the ball but also rests on a series of false assumptions and logical inconsistencies. I thought I’d go through it paragraph by paragraph, since there is a lot in here to unpack.
Whatever word you use to describe Israel’s 1967 acquisition of Judea and Samaria — commonly referred to as the West Bank in these pages — will not change the historical facts. Arabs called for Israel’s annihilation in 1967, and Israel legitimately seized the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria in self-defense. Israel’s moral claim to these territories, and the right of Israelis to call them home today, is therefore unassailable. Giving up this land in the name of a hallowed two-state solution would mean rewarding those who’ve historically sought to destroy Israel, a manifestly immoral outcome.
To begin with, you almost have to admire the fealty to terminology. You will never catch Dayan referring to the West Bank as anything but Judea and Samaria (Yehuda and Shomron in Hebrew), and much like Peter Beinart with his call to rename the West Bank “non-democratic Israel” Dayan seems to think that the term West Bank is somehow an ideologically loaded one. I disagree, but it is a good peek into Dayan and the settler leadership’s mindset that they think calling the West Bank by its biblical name is somehow going to change people’s minds, as if it is simply a matter of psychological trickery. The other interesting thing to note is the bait and switch between the Arab armies seeking to destroy Israel in 1967 and the Palestinians to whom the West Bank would be given. There is no question that Hamas has “historically sought to destroy Israel” but the implication is that yielding the West Bank would reward the losers of the Six Day War, which is not the case.
Of course, just because a policy is morally justified doesn’t mean it’s wise. However, our four-decade-long settlement endeavor is both. The insertion of an independent Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan would be a recipe for disaster.
The influx of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere would convert the new state into a hotbed of extremism. And any peace agreement would collapse the moment Hamas inevitably took power by ballot or by gun. Israel would then be forced to recapture the area, only to find a much larger Arab population living there.
Moreover, the Palestinians have repeatedly refused to implement a negotiated two-state solution. The American government and its European allies should abandon this failed formula once and for all and accept that the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria are not going anywhere.
This is where Dayan begins his strategy of appealing to security and political reasons not to give up the West Bank rather than making arguments about moral and historical justifications. I suspect he is doing this because he knows the latter arguments will not be winning ones with this particular audience, but his case is built on some contentious assumptions. First, the notion that Palestinian refugees are universally extremist is not a given, and the idea that Hamas will “inevitably” take power is also not assured. A Palestinian state in the West Bank that emerges following negotiations with Israel will be accompanied with massive international financial and security assistance to the Palestinian Authority, and a Hamas takeover is not a fait accompli, as Dayan would have it. Furthermore, Hamas already does control Gaza, and Israel has not been forced to recapture the area despite the problems that Hamas rule in Gaza has presented, so again we have a logical leap here that is presented as fact. Finally, it is true that the Palestinians have repeatedly turned down Israeli offers for a two-state solution, but Israel has not been entirely blameless in this process and Dayan rejects the very premise of a Palestinian state on the West Bank anyway, so this point is not at all relevant to his argument.
On the contrary, we aim to expand the existing Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, and create new ones. This is not — as it is often portrayed — a theological adventure but is rather a combination of inalienable rights and realpolitik.
This is what I mean about not trying to hide the ball. Dayan is extremely forthright about what he and the settlers for whom he speaks want, and I think his honesty in talking to a non-Israel audience is a good thing for which he should be commended. There is way too much dissembling on all sides when it comes to settlements, the peace process, and accepting Israel’s right to exist, so clear and open statements are welcome. The more noteworthy point here is that Dayan is claiming that settlement growth is a matter of rights and practical considerations rather than theology, and this is where he is not being entirely honest, as we shall see below.
Even now, and despite the severe constraints imposed by international pressure, more than 350,000 Israelis live in Judea and Samaria. With an annual growth rate of 5 percent, we can expect to reach 400,000 by 2014 — and that excludes the almost 200,000 Israelis living in Jerusalem’s newer neighborhoods. Taking Jerusalem into account, about 1 in every 10 Israeli Jews resides beyond the 1967 border. Approximately 160,000 Jews live in communities outside the settlement blocs that proponents of the two-state solution believe could be easily incorporated into Israel. But uprooting them would be exponentially more difficult than the evacuation of the Gaza Strip’s 8,000 settlers in 2005.
The attempts by members of the Israeli left to induce Israelis to abandon their homes in Judea and Samaria by offering them monetary compensation are pathetic. This checkbook policy has failed in the past, as it will in the future. In the areas targeted for evacuation most of us are ideologically motivated and do not live here for economic reasons. Property prices in the area are steep and settlers who want to relocate could sell their property on the free market. But they do not.
So now I am confused – are settlers motivated by material self interest or are they motivated by ideology? The explosion in the settler population has largely been fueled by the rising cost of living in Israel’s cities and the economic incentives provided by the government t0 move to the settlements, but Dayan does not mention that here. He then says that the 160,000 settlers living in areas not envisioned to be incorporated into Israel following a peace deal are ideologically motivated – read: theologically motivated – so despite his claim in the previous paragraph about rights and realpolitik, it now appears is if the issue is something else entirely, which is a religious attachment to the land. I understand and empathize with this position, but let’s then drop the charade that this about Israel’s strategic interests.
Our presence in all of Judea and Samaria — not just in the so-called settlement blocs — is an irreversible fact. Trying to stop settlement expansion is futile, and neglecting this fact in diplomatic talks will not change the reality on the ground; it only makes the negotiations more likely to fail.
Given the irreversibility of the huge Israeli civilian presence in Judea and Samaria and continuing Palestinian rejectionism, Western governments must reassess their approach to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They should acknowledge that no final-status solution is imminent. And consequently, instead of lamenting that the status quo is not sustainable, the international community should work together with the parties to improve it where possible and make it more viable.
This is bound to infuriate those who have been warning for the past decade about Israel creating facts on the ground in order to impede the possibility of a Palestinian state, and it also demonstrates why the Palestinian insistence on preconditions to negotiating has been such an unmitigated disaster. It also gives a good window into the emerging support on the right for a one-state solution, and what is so fascinating here is that Dayan is writing as if he thinks that there an actual possibility that Western governments will simply back off and watch Israel turn the current status quo into a permanent annexation of the West Bank. If you want evidence of the horrible miscalculation and naivete of the settler right, led by Dayan and MKs like Danny Danon, look no further.
Today, security — the ultimate precondition for everything — prevails. Neither Jews nor Palestinians are threatened by en masse eviction; the economies are thriving; a new Palestinian city, Rawabi, is being built north of Ramallah; Jewish communities are growing; checkpoints are being removed; and tourists of all nationalities are again visiting Bethlehem and Shiloh.
While the status quo is not anyone’s ideal, it is immeasurably better than any other feasible alternative. And there is room for improvement. Checkpoints are a necessity only if terror exists; otherwise, there should be full freedom of movement. And the fact that the great-grandchildren of the original Palestinian refugees still live in squalid camps after 64 years is a disgrace that should be corrected by improving their living conditions.
Yossi Beilin, a left-wing former Israeli minister, wrote a telling article a few months ago. A veteran American diplomat touring the area had told Mr. Beilin he’d left frightened because he found everyone — Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and Saudi Arabia — content with the current situation. Mr. Beilin finds this widespread satisfaction disturbing, too.
I think it is wonderful news. If the international community relinquished its vain attempts to attain the unattainable two-state solution, and replaced them with intense efforts to improve and maintain the current reality on the ground, it would be even better. The settlements of Judea and Samaria are not the problem — they are part of the solution.
There are many problems with this type of thinking, but one of the biggest is that the world is not static. Just because the West Bank is quiet now does not mean that it will be so forever. The first intifada took Israel by surprise, and then the second one was even more challenging and violent than the first. There is little doubt that the third one – and make no mistake, a third intifada is going to happen at some point – will be even worse than the previous two, at which point Dayan’s conclusion goes up in smoke.
The emergence of real support for a rightwing one-state solution is terrifying to me, and Dayan’s op-ed crystallizes in concise form why it is happening. The settlement movement is busy convincing itself that settlements have become permanent and immovable, and nothing that the Netanyahu government has done, from commissioning the Levy Report to the continuing efforts to push off the High Court’s order to evacuate Migron, have disabused them of that notion. More dangerously, the settler leadership is also convincing itself that Israel will be able to get away with a binational state. The Israeli public desperately needs to be convinced that this is a problem that cannot be ignored, because most Israelis are not going to like what happens if this outcome actually emerges, and unfortunately the far right seems to be the best motivated party at the moment. Dayan’s piece needs to be a wakeup call, since it is nakedly transparent on what the settlers want to accomplish while also being dangerously naive and shortsighted about what will happen if they are successful.
