Immorality of occupation

by George S. Hishmeh

WASHINGTON - The Israeli settlers who are being evacuated from the Gaza Strip's 21 settlements in fulfilment of the Israeli government's unilateral "disengagement" plan, a process that is due to end in three weeks time, are receiving an unbelievably sympathetic but myopic coverage in the media.

Here is how one writer in The New York Times put it last Sunday: "(The evacuation) is an admission not of error but of failure. Their (supporters') cherished goal - the resettlement of the full biblical land of Israel by contemporary Jews - is not to be. The reason: Not enough of them came."

Ethan Bronner gave two reasons for that, one offered by the Israeli consul general in New York, Arye Mekel, who said: "Ideologically, we are disappointed because Zionism meant the Jews of the world would take their baggage and move to Israel. Most did not." Of the world's 13 million or so Jews, Bronner reported, "a minority - 5.26 million - make their home in Israel, and immigration has largely dried up." In fact, he continued, "last year, a record low 21,000 Jews immigrated to Israel."

The second explanation for the shift in Israeli settlement policy, he added, is that "the Palestinian population has grown far more rapidly - and Palestinians have proven far more willing to fight - than many on the Israeli right had anticipated." According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the proportion of Jews in the combined population of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza had dropped below 50 per cent for the first time. Bronner explained that for many Israelis this means that "unless they yield territory, they have to choose a Jewish state or a democratic one; they will not be able to have both."

This emphasis on Israeli democracy rings hollow when one notes the treatment of Arab Israelis, now about one fifth of the country's population.

Aluf Benn, the diplomatic editor of Haaretz, admitted in an Op-Ed published in The Washington Post on the same day as Bronner's, that "...the failure to fully integrate our Arab citizens has been a flaw of Israeli democracy since its inception." He continues: "Israel's Arabs have been discriminated against in funding and infrastructure and our Jewish and Arab communities have minimal contact even after decades of living together. This gap was tragically illustrated on Aug. 4, when an AWOL soldier turned terrorist murdered four Arab Israeli citizens on a bus in the northern town of Shfaram."

Interestingly, both writers underline without objection this Israeli concern about demography and not topography. In fact, there have been various Israeli ideas since the occupation of the West Bank to swap Arab-dominated areas within pre-1967 Israel with the major Israel settlement "blocks" that lie east of the Green Line on the West Bank, home of a future Palestinian state.

Again, the underlying reason for these proposals is demography. "In the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea," Benn points out, "Israeli Jews will soon become a minority; if they aren't already." In other words, "getting rid of an Arab-populated area (within Israel) and adjacent to the West Bank would instantly improve the balance."

Benn continues: "The essence of the demographic argument is that, given the higher Arab birthrate, Israel will be forced to choose between it being Jewish and being democratic. To remain a democracy, it can either control all the land east of the Jordan River and become a binational state, or it can preserve its Jewish character over a smaller territory."

In the wake of this option, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, father of the settlement movement, had a change of heart that can now be seen in the construction of the "separation barrier" or "apartheid wall" between Israel and the West Bank and the unilateral withdrawal of Jewish settlement from the Gaza Strip. But Benn believes that Sharon has not completely forsaken topography. "He still favours Israeli control over wide `security zones' in the West Bank, including major Jewish settlements that overlook Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the Ben Gurion International Airport."

Shockingly absent from this Israeli thinking is any consideration to the immorality of occupation or the futility of turning Israel into a garrison state, if not a "greater ghetto" - a way of life that has been detrimental to Jews throughout history.

This article was published in the Friday-Saturday, August 19-20, 2005 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.