A Question for Israelis

by William Pfaff - Oct 19, 2007

Is it possible to say something new about the present Israel-Palestinian stalemate? Let me try, by raising a question that seems completely, even resolutely, ignored -- or repressed, in its Freudian signification – in Israeli appreciations of the situation.

The question is this: suppose that Israel is given all that its government seems to want. No Palestinian state, Israel continues colonization, annexing more of the Palestinian territories, or even all of them.

What then? What will happen to the Palestinians in the years ahead? What would the land of Israel, and what now are the Palestinian territories, look like in 50 years?

A former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Dore Gold, recently published a well-argued defense of Israel’s position with respect to the Palestinians. The International Herald Tribune, October 17, 2007.]

He wrote in response to the recent book by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard, attacking the influence of the U.S. Israel lobby on American foreign policy and political life.

He wrote that “Israelis gave peace a chance and paid a huge price; they agreed in the 1993 Oslo Accords to bringing Yasser Arafat and his exile leadership from Tunis to the West Bank and Gaza, and in return got a spate of suicide bombing attacks that emanated from the very cities Israel turned over to the PLO.

He continued: “Over a thousand Israelis were killed. In 2005, Israel nonetheless unilaterally pulled out of the Gaxa Strip, hoping that the Palestinians and the international community would help create a ‘Dubai on the Mediterranean.’ Instead, in early 2006 Hamas won the Palestinian elections. It intensified the rocket attacks on southern Israel and Gaza came to resemble Mogadishu. Why should Israel feel a moral burden under these circumstances.”

Fine. Whatever the merits of the argument – and the Palestinians would make a different one -- it deals with the past. The question is what is to be done now. Forming a new state for the Palestinians is the solution that is being attempted. This is why Condoleezza Rice has made seven visits to Israel this year. She wishes to bring the parties to a meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, next month, to advance the creation of such a state.

It is hard to expect much to result from this initiative, since Israel gives no evidence of wishing to see progress in the matter. The government’s announcement of still another seizure of Palestinian land near Jerusalem a few days before Secretary Rice’s arrival seemed a deliberate slap in her face.

One must ask the Israeli government the following question. Suppose, as is probable, that no American administration, now or later, puts any obstacle in the way of whatever you want to do. Suppose there were no effective international pressures on you to stop colonization and land seizures. Suppose that no Palestinian state is created. What are you going to do about the Palestinians?

Israel’s present treatment of the Palestinian population has caused the UN’s representative on the so-called “Quartet” to recommend to UN Headquarters that the UN withdraw from that body (irrelevant as the Quartet has proven). There are calls in Europe for the EU to withdraw from the Quartet as well, for the same reason.

A former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, greatly respected for his humanitarian work and his freedom from the intolerant partisanship of current American politics, has been moved to write a book protesting what he describes as the conditions of “apartheid” in which Israel holds the Palestinians.

American opinion is shifting. The Walt-Mearsheimer book had had an effect. The deliberate Israeli sinking of the USS Liberty in 1967 has been taken up again in the mainstream press. War in Iraq and the possibility of attack on Iran has increased popular concern about Israeli influence on American policy.

Israeli human rights groups have denounced the treatment of the Palestinians, and recently have accused the Israeli authorities of trying to force Palestinians needing emergency medical help in Israeli hospitals to collaborate with Israel’s security services as a condition for treatment.

How long can this continue, even as a purely practical problem of physical control of a hostile population? The Palestinian population continues to grow more rapidly than Israel’s, and the average age grows younger, producing cohorts of young people who are politically radicalized, ready to turn again to violence to be free of these conditions of life. There are certain to be new Palestinian uprisings.

In international law, Israel is responsible for these people. What methods of permanent control does it envisage? There are some in Israel who hope their misery will force the Palestinians to abandon the territories. But to go where? In what conditions, and under what compulsion?

Is sustained control of a foreign population with such measures a politically supportable solution for the Israelis themselves, in view of the Jewish people’s own long experience of discrimination and suffering?

I am not asking this for polemical purposes. I am asking a practical question. What is Israel going to do with these people? The problem exists, and however convenient to ignore today, it will have to answered.