Matt Lavine

March 9, 2010 JERUSALEM — Hours after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed unyielding American support for Israel’s security here on Tuesday, Israel’s Interior Ministry announced 1,600 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem. [The] interior minister, Eli Yishai, [ ] has made Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem one of his central causes.

[Vice President Biden] declared that the announcement “runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel.” [After a tour of Yad Vashem], he said: “all you have to do is walk through Yad Vashem to understand how incredible the journey has been for world Jewry and why Israel is such a central part of its existence.”

ETHAN BRONNER in the New York Times, published: March 9, 2010.

On a Summer’s morning, an Israeli guide stood with a group of American tourists on a Jerusalem rooftop. The guide understood the confusion of the Americans, squinting through the sun. Sweeping his hand across the horizon dotted with Israeli flags, the guide, a veteran of the ‘67 and ‘73 wars, shook his head. “We fight so a Jew is safe to live anywhere in Israel, but we have not learned what to do with our strength. Just because you can do a thing, sometimes you should be smart enough not to do the thing. That area has always been Arab. Proving that we can live there tells the Arab what he already knows.”

The competition for land and other resources is historically unremarkable. For Americans, the Middle East conflict appears distinctive because of America’s connection to the region, to Israel, and to Judaism. Certainly, American sensibilities have aided Israel and it is the continued support of the United States that has substantially eliminated external threats to Israel’s existence. What remains is the danger from within areas controlled by Israel. The seemingly intractable struggle between Israel and the Arab residents of the territories seized by Israel in the 1967 War confounds Americans who perceive the issues through a kaleidoscope of feelings about their own mistreatment of Native Americans and African Americans and the status of Puerto Rico and other so-called commonwealths of the United States.

Like the United States, Israel was founded on a set of moral principles recognizing the intrinsic value of every citizen. Moreover, both nations can trace their concept of morality to the same source, the ancient Hebrews. Unlike the United States, Israel is the only nation that can and does claim that it exists to sustain the Hebrews’ civilization, Judaism. It is a responsibility that subjects every Israeli act to a scrutiny unknown to other nations. Because of this constant self-analysis, Israel is conflicted. The seriousness of this internal conflict is revealed by the vocabulary Israel deploys in the debate over the treatment of the seized land.

For thousands of years, Jews, Christians, and Moslems knew of the regions called Judea and Samaria. In 1949, after its establishment, Israel agreed that Jordan would retain the part of its land located west of the Jordan River. Although Jordan’s land ranged far from the bank of the River , the parties identified the area as the “West Bank”. Indeed, it was this accord that resulted in a place called “East Jerusalem” that was part of the “West Bank”. In the 1967 War, Israel took the land from Jordan. Jerusalem, that marks its construction to the time of King David over three thousand years ago, was restored, after an eighteen year aberration, to a single city.

That “the West Bank” and “East Jerusalem” would be acceptable nomenclature suggests Israeli discomfort with including this region as part of Israel. This discomfort is more fully evident in Israel’s reference to the region as an “occupied territory”. Contrary to those claiming that Israel’s occupation violates the Geneva Convention’s prohibition against seizing another nation’s land, there is no other nation seeking to control this region. Since losing the land in 1967, Jordan has never petitioned for its return. Yet Israel’s self-description as an occupying power demonstrates an angst associated with its status as an occupying force.

Perhaps viewing the expansion of the United States through the West in the kindest of lights, years ago, Israel may well have viewed the seized land as necessary to accommodate the constant flow of immigrant. In prior generations, Jews had settled in barren land and created successful farms. This “settlement movement” had built Israel and served as the foundation for the modern Israeli ethos. Population projections and then demographic reality revealed that Jews would remain a minority in the “occupied territories”. Thus Israel can not grant full citizenship to the residents of the occupied territories without losing Israel’s status as the Jewish Nation.

Despite this reality, Israel clings to the “settlement movement”. It is beyond dissonance to compare the Jews of the settlement movement who fled European oppression and built a nation from unwanted land with powerful Israel’s insertion of Jews to serve as a political counterweight to a residential population superior only numerically.

There are some whose examination of the numbers leads them to propose the forced removal of several hundred thousand Arabs from land controlled by Israel. Aside from this proposal, which would certainly violate not only international law but essential precepts of Judaism, Israel is left with three possible courses of action. It can include the occupied territory as part of Israel and accept the risk of democracy. It can accept the secession of the territory and risk attack by a hostile neighbor. Discarding these options, Israel has chosen the third option, to impose its rule over the territory by force; deny citizenship to the Arab residents; and use settlements to disrupt the emergence of a coherent polity in the “West Bank”.

This third option, Israel’s present course, poses the greatest existential risk to Israel. While not all Jews share a vision of Israel as a modern democracy, their decision to live in Israel consciously places them within the continuum of the civilization called Judaism. If Israel no longer serves as the exemplar for the polity, then Judaism is extinguished. Israel’s abdication of Judaism’s role as the civilizer of humanity will prove only that Judaism inapplicable to modern nations.

The real contest is not between merely the survival of Arabs and Jews in the Middle East of today but between the internal forces tugging at Israel’s soul. It is a contest that Americans have rarely, if ever, seriously confronted in the political debates of the United States.

Tony Judt, Fictions on the Ground
MAPS DON’T LIE
Zionism & Israel Information Center
Yossi Verter “Likud minister to rightists: Give up dream of Greater Israel”
Uri Blau “Secret Israeli database reveals full extent of illegal settlement”