The West Bank – some clear thinking required
How can we imagine a genuine peace process in which people will not be forced to evacuate their homes? How could real peace exist if we are unable to live in the places we deeply identify with and view as part of our history and heritage? How can we imagine a genuine process of reconciliation without enabling all Jews and all Palestinians who desire to live in their homeland to be able to do so? Can there ever be peace with one side having control over the other?
Most of the 109 Israelis and Palestinians that I have held 30-minute consultations with over the past three weeks in my search for the road to a new Israeli-Palestinian vision have spoken about their true desire to live in peace. They weren’t just telling me what I wanted to hear; there was a high level of sincerity in their words. I have been deeply involved in the pursuit of peace for the past 40 years; there is little that I have not heard, and it is not easy to pull the wool over my eyes.
Living in peace has different meanings to different people, and the emphases that Israelis and Palestinians place on what peace looks like are different. Israelis, of course, speak first and foremost about security and then secondly about legitimacy. Palestinians speak first and foremost about freedom and equality, which includes being treated with dignity, and then legitimacy.
The view that each side has of itself is extremely different from the view that the other side has of it. Our life experience in this conflict shapes, to a large degree, how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive “the other.” Most Palestinians believe that they really want peace, but the Israelis do not. Most Israelis believe that they really want peace, but that the Palestinians do not.
I would like to share some of the real-life stories that I have heard and seen with my own eyes. I will begin with a Palestinian story.
H. IS a good friend. He is Palestinian, born and raised in a village that is adjacent to Efrat. In fact, he owns land that is today within Efrat’s expanding municipal boundaries.
H. believes deeply in peace and has always had Israeli friends and colleagues. He even spent a semester several years ago studying and living in Kibbutz Ketura at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies.
In full disclosure, H. and I have registered a joint Israeli-Palestinian company in Israel in the field of medical innovations and supplies.
H. is married to a Palestinian from east Jerusalem who has a blue Israeli ID card. They have an apartment in Shuafat. They have three young girls, their eldest with Down syndrome.
For more than five years, H. has tried to receive permission to live with his wife and daughters in Jerusalem. The education framework for his Down syndrome daughter is in Jerusalem, there is no such excellent facility in Ramallah, where he works and has an apartment which he has slept in for much of the last years. Until recently, the permit he received from the Israeli authorities allowed him to stay in Jerusalem until 10 p.m. Until recently, living together with his wife and daughters in Jerusalem was a crime. During the past months, in the post-corona world, he was once again forced to live in the West Bank and not with his family, because the permit that he held could not be used for much of the past months.
Last week, he took me to visit his family’s village,
Wad Rahhal, known in Hebrew as Wadi Rachel. On the way there he told me a story that I have heard before, and H. said every Palestinian knows the story. It is called the story of the donkey. It goes like this:
One day a Jewish farmer asked his Palestinian neighbor if he could borrow his neighbor’s donkey. The Palestinian farmer responded graciously and brought the donkey to his neighbor. The following week the Jewish farmer asked his Palestinian neighbor once again “Can I borrow our donkey?” Once again, the Palestinian farmer graciously brought his donkey to his neighbor. Following one more week the Jewish farmer approached his Palestinian neighbor and asked him: “Would you like to use donkey?”
He finished the story as we approached a large sign at the beginning of a dirt road on the outskirts of his village which leads to a plot of land that he owns. The sign in Hebrew says “Havat Eitam.”
H. told me that several years ago some nice people,
Israelis, showed up hiking in the hills around Wad Rahhal. After a short period of time, H. saw on the top of one of the hills a tent and the same people were there. Then they came with some goats and sheep and started fencing in the area. Within a short period of time, the access road leading to H.’s land was fenced in with barbed wire. When he tried to get access to his land, his new neighbors started throwing stones at him.
Now this small outpost, Havat Eitam, has control, often violent control, of the entire area. Havat Eitam is planned to significantly increase the number of Israeli settlers in the area, at the same time that there are no building permits available for any of the Palestinians there.
This is but one small story, there are many like it. There are, of course, many stories that Israeli Jews can tell about their Palestinian neighbors using violence against them.
I write this story because one of the important issues
Storm clouds have gathered on the political horizon. They are already moving swiftly toward Israel. If the new government does not soon take a firm grip, it will be overwhelmed by a veritable hurricane of universal condemnation. Israel’s enemies, like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, will have achieved their aim. Israel will be delegitimized in the eyes of the world.
Perhaps because the new government was so long in the making, Israel’s publicity and media relations machine has still not swung into action. As a result, there is confusion in Israel and abroad about what action Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is actually proposing in the West Bank. He certainly indicated action of some sort during his election campaign.
Because there has been no subsequent clarification, however, global opinion has decided that he intends unilaterally to annex Israeli-occupied areas within Area C. That perception has given rise to pre-emptive condemnation from around the world, not least from much Jewish opinion in the Diaspora.
There are a number of ways to view the issue.
First, the matter of land swaps is central to the Trump peace plan – rejected totally by the Palestinian Authority, but given a cautious welcome by a clutch of Arab states including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
In essence, the plan breaks that I raise in all of my consultations is that it seems that if peace will require forcing people to be uprooted from their homes, it probably will not work. Including east Jerusalem, there are more than 700,000 Israeli Jews now living over the Green Line.
H. says that he has no problem with Efrat – he even wants to build a horseback riding facility on his land that would enable Israeli and Palestinian kids to meet and to learn horseback riding together. Havat Eitam is another story, and unfortunately represents the way that most Palestinians see their immediate neighbors in the settlements that will probably remain where they are forever.
Peace in Israel and Palestine, through the argument over the status of the “occupied territories” – namely the areas conquered from the Jordanian, Egyptian and Syrian armies in the Six Day War in 1967.
In line with previous US determinations, the plan does not recognize the West Bank as Palestinian land since it belonged to no sovereign state when it was fought over and won by Israel. Accordingly, the plan allows Israel to incorporate the settlements in that area – historically known as Judea and Samaria – into Israel proper.
Nevertheless, the plan envisages the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state on the areas outside the settlements, plus a Gaza greatly expanded by the yielding of Israeli territory south of the Strip. All Palestinian occupied territories would be made contiguous by way of a network of highways and a tunnel linking the West Bank to Gaza.
That prospect is dependent on the Palestinian leadership fulfilling certain preconditions – such as renouncing terrorism and recognizing Israel as the Jewish state. The plan allows four years for these conditions to be met.
At the White House on January 28, both Netanyahu and Benny Gantz accepted the plan, and undertook to abide by it. If the government indicates that any change in status of the West Bank is part of a firm intention to facilitate a sovereign Palestinian state, the anti-Israel situation could be largely detoxified. The onus would then be on the Palestinian leadership to justify
In Pursuit of their objection to talking peace.
A second cause of confusion is to equate extending Israeli law and sovereignty to West Bank Jewish communities with “annexation.” They are not the same, but the government has so far issued no indication as to which path it is taking. Taking Israeli communities under normal Israeli jurisdiction rather than leaving them under military occupation could seem a reasonable step to much unprejudiced opinion.
Third, as two experts in international security from the University of South Wales pointed out in The Jerusalem Post on June 7, Israeli action in the West Bank can be viewed from either end of the telescope. Extending Israeli jurisdiction to Jews living in the West Bank could indeed be seen as extending the scope of Israeli sovereignty. Alternatively, it could be viewed as Israel disengaging from its military occupation of Palestinians and taking its own citizens under its wing.
The current problem is that there is no firm hand at the tiller of Israeli public and media relations. A clear decision needs to be taken at top leadership levels as to what exactly is proposed in regard to the West Bank. Then, the government publicity machine must carve out a firm line to disseminate to the world’s media, and get on and disseminate it.
The writer is Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is The Chaos in the Middle East: 2014-2016. He blogs ata-mid-east-journal.blogspot. com.