Opinion

February 8, 2012

Opinion: ‘Decapitating’ Palestine, killing peace

by Leonard Fein

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Here’s a “sign of the times” factoid: In recent commentary on Israel’s settlement policy, the number of Jewish settlers beyond the Green Line has ballooned from 350,000 or so to 600,000.  It is as if there had suddenly been a mass immigration to the West Bank.  But there has been no such immigration.  What there has been, more ominously, is the inclusion in “beyond the Green Line” of two venerable major neighborhoods that had long since come to be regarded as part of Jerusalem proper – Ramot and French Hill, as well as other neighborhoods such as Gilo, Pisgat Ze’ev, Givat Shlomo, Har Homa and more.

Ramot and French Hill are, indeed, beyond the Green Line, Israel’s 1967 de facto border.  But they were also beyond controversy.  No one who thought about them — and hardly anyone did — regarded their fate as part of a future negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  Their provenance may have been problematic, but their destiny was not.

And now, simply by absorbing their inhabitants into the estimate of Jews beyond the Green Line, the period after their names has been replaced with a question mark.

That is one sign, a small one, of the impact of Israel’s settlement policy and, in particular, of its policy with respect to East Jerusalem.

This needs to be said as urgently and as clearly as possible: Israel’s settlement policy in and around Jerusalem is not merely controversial; it is calamitous.  Unless it changes, it will within a year render a two-state solution to the conflict impossible. 

There are people, here in America and in Israel, who will celebrate that.  They are comfortable with the prospect of de facto or de jure Israeli rule over, even annexation of, the entire West Bank.  They are prepared to live with an apartheid state, in which a large Palestinian minority is deprived of equal rights, or with a mass emigration of Palestinians, “encouraged” by Israeli actions.  And some few endorse a pure bi-national state, equal rights for all, an end to Israel as a distinctively Jewish state.

But most Jews, according to survey results, here and in Israel, prefer a two-state solution, even if they think it unlikely in current or readily foreseeable circumstances. 

Because my concern here is specifically with Jerusalem and its relevance to a two-state solution, I set to the side all the controversial and all the illegal (according to Israeli law) Jewish outposts and settlements that dot the West Bank, all the violence that emanates from more than a few of them, all the land theft they have practiced and all the current governmental efforts retroactively to legalize them.

(The ongoing work of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch program, headed by the formidable Hagit Ofran and readily available at peacenow.org, and frequent analysis by the apparently indefatigable Lara Friedman, American for Peace Now’s director of policy and government relations, provide comprehensive — and disheartening — details on settlement actions and issues in general.)

In East Jerusalem the pace of Jewish construction now borders on the frenetic.  The goal is so thickly to expand the Jewish presence in what was traditionally the heart of the national Palestinian community and so to encircle the remaining Palestinian neighborhoods as to separate Jerusalem completely from the rest of Palestine.  It amounts, from a Palestinian perspective, to a policy of decapitation. 

Thus, if building projects now under way or already approved are completed, it will not be possible for Palestinians from Bethlehem to Jerusalem’s south or from Ramallah to its north, to access Jerusalem.  And if, as seems likely, Israel finally begins active development of the area known as E1, East Jerusalem will be hemmed in on all sides.  It will not be available as the capital city of a new Palestine, nor as Palestine’s commercial and intellectual center. The northern half of the West Bank and its southern half will have been bisected, Palestine will successfully have been cantonized, transformed into a set of disconnected towns and villages. Palestine will not be a viable state. 

The acknowledged leading expert on what is happening in and to Jerusalem is Daniel Seidemann, founder of Ir Amim (A City of Nations). In his own writings and in the work of Ir Amim, it is made clear that the grim prospect of a de facto separation between all of Jerusalem and the Palestinian hinterland is no longer a distant hypothetical; it is around the corner. Seidmann himself is convinced that by 2013, currently unfolding facts on the ground will have destroyed the prospect of a two-state solution.

Those who understand that only a two-state solution can offer Israel genuine security, can protect the ever more fragile prospect of a democratic and Jewish Israel living at peace with its neighbors, should be alarmed and make their distress known — to the Obama administration, to their representatives in Congress, and to their friends in and government of Israel. Now.

Leonard Fein has written and advocated for progressive Jewish causes since the 1960s. In 1974 he founded Moment magazine, the journal of Jewish ideas, and in 1985 he founded MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger.

A version of this article appeared in print.

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“some few endorse a pure bi-national state, equal rights for all, an end to Israel as a distinctively Jewish state.”

You’re right about the 1st relationship - a bi-national state would give equal rights for all - at present, there are NOT equal rights for all.  You assume a bi-national state would “end Israel as a distinctively Jewish state”, but this is your own scare-mongering.  Is a “distinctively Jewish state” then premised upon a lack of “equal rights for all” then?  I see a democratic bi-national state as having the most Jews in the world, speaking Hebrew, with capitals of Jewish culture, food, and history.  All of that doesn’t require racist ethnocracy to be happen.

Comment by Woody on 2/09/12 at 5:30 am

Unfortunately, for the Palestinian people as a whole, their leadership turned down two far reaching deals. The first was Arafat who said no and walked away from Barak’s offer and the second was Abbas who walked away from Olmert’s offer. Either offer would have given the Palestinians the vast majority of the disputed territory Fein discusses and pre-empted Fein’s article and his accusations against current Israeli leadership. Israel neither can or should wait before consolidating territory, especially around Jerusalem, in order to protect it’s citizens.

Comment by Bill Bender on 2/09/12 at 11:11 am

Senior Fein, you wrote in Jewish paper.  You should assume that readers of your noncence about original division of territories voted by 51 nations in Italy.
I simpatize to your pain and empathy to “palestinian” people that are disrespected and discriminated all over arab world, but they refuse even to speak about their rights as civilised.
Do you believe that child murdering and schoolbus rocketing would warant them simpathy of Jews but renegates like you?

Comment by Arkady on 2/09/12 at 5:35 pm

I assume that Rob Eshman no longer draws a paycheck from Peace Now. However, for years he has presented their meanderings with the faithful allegiance that tells me they own his soul

May I suggest you invite Ted Belman or some other articulate, responsible, knowledgeable spokesman to discuss the “facts” as presented by Peace Now and their destructive implications for Israel

The Arab League has never deviated from: no recognition; no negotiations; no peace

Previously I posted the exact words of the Jordanian commander who bragged that he had destroyed forever the extensive Jewish presence that then existed in E Jerusalem and that the Jews would never be able to return

Comment by LT COL HOWARD on 2/10/12 at 7:59 pm

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