Are the Settlements Blocking a Two-State Solution?

Rather than trick or treating tonight (not really done here, anyway!), I went to a lecture in Jerusalem organized by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Tonight's speaker was Akiva Eldar, a senior political correspondent and member of the Haaretz editorial board, and author of the new book Lord of the Land.

Tonight's topic was: "Are the Settlements Blocking a Two-State Solution"?

Um...

Is there really enough material for a lecture on that? Of course they are! 500 illegal settlements tend to be an obstacle to creating a viable state for Palestinians. An emphatic yes.

But Eldar managed to pull off an interesting lecture, in spite of the fairly obvious answer to the above question.

The main thesis of the first half of his lecture was that settlements are actually contrary to the Zionist ideals that the founders of Israel had when they declared Israel's independence in 1948, and that they actually threaten to undermine the Jewish state, rather than to strengthen it.

He started the evening by referencing the Israeli Declaration of Independence

In the declaration, it says:
THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles;
it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants;
it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel;
it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex;
it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture;
it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions;
and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

(Now, I'm not going to give a lot of commentary in this post, but let me just say that Israel's sticking to its principles of equality about as well as the U.S.A. did/does.)

Using the above criteria, as well as the bit in the Declaration about good neighbourliness, Eldar determined that the act of settlement building is contrary to the Zionist vision.

Okay. Sounds plausible. I'm pretty sure that Ben Gurion considered Eretz Israel to be everything from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, so I'm not convinced that Zionists even believe that the West Bank is occupied, but I'm willing to go with this thesis. In his lecture, he also said that he was taught when he was younger that the settlements were supposed to be a way to create leverage for a bargaining chip, a "land for peace" sort of deal, similar to giving the Sinai back to the Egyptians.

Another thing that he said was that the settlements were unjust because the Israeli government spends more on them than they do on comparable sized towns within Israel, and that the cost spent on "Internal Security" within the West Bank should actually be spent on National security and social programs.

After that, things went downhill from there, because he started talking about the settlements from the point of view of someone who advocates for a two state solution, and what that might be like.

Then he went on to say that demographically, within "Israel proper" (inside the Green Line - 1967 borders), there is a clear Jewish majority (74% Jewish, 26% non-Jewish), which would narrow slightly over the next 20 years. However, the settlements and their infrastructure leave the West Bank in such tatters that a Palestinian state is unviable, and therefore unacceptable. Without a separate state, the demographic balance evens out almost immediately (even though he didn't include Gaza OR the refugees--red flag!), and within 20 years, Jews would be a minority.

Obviously, this is unsettling to many people who believe that it is essential to have a Jewish state. Therefore, in order to preserve the Jewish nature of Israel, it is necessary to abandon the settlement project. Unfortunately, the manner in which he defined "settler" was discouraging. He defined settlers as Israelis living in the West Bank, except for the "suburbs" around Jerusalem and East Jerusalem. Now, this is a big red flag, because half of the settlers and settlement activity is in Jerusalem and the surrounding area, and we're talking about 250,000 people. He said that East Jerusalem was off the table (really?), and that these would need to be part of the "swap deal." The other 250,000 people live in areas of the West Bank (10% or so on the outside of the separation wall, and 1-2% on the "Palestinian side" of the wall).

He went on to say that the wall would have to be dismantled and moved to the Green line, and that the 250,000 or so living in the West Bank (again, settlers in East Jerusalem and the surrounding areas are a special case!) would need to be moved. He claimed that half of them would go willingly, if there was economic incentive to do so. The other half are more ideological.

Breaking for commentary: I'm not the world's biggest math whiz, but isn't that about 125,000 people? Doesn't anyone remember the pull out from Gaza, which was only about 9,000 people in a fairly undeveloped settlement? Or for that matter, some of the smaller "outposts" in the West Bank? Violence. Destruction. It would be a civil war just trying to evict them. I'm having a hard time imagining this working.

Which really was his point. His point was that settlements create a serious problem for Israelis who wish to see Israel remain a Jewish state. With the settlements and their infrastructure - and the military protection and other support from the government - there is no viable Palestinian state. In the absence of a viable state, we have two choices: 1. the status quo - occupation, or 2. a single state with a Jewish minority (about 50-50 if you don't count Gaza or the refugees (!!! - he didn't, I do). That is, unless the Lieberman plan to "transfer" Arabs from Israel is implemented.

Other things that he said that would raise eyebrows for activists wanting to use international law and human rights as the framework for a peace agreement:

The consistent separation of East Jerusalem and the settlements surrounding it from inclusion in the category of "SETTLEMENTS". It may well be that there must be some land swapping, but to exclude them from the conversation that settlements are an obstacle to peace is absurd. Jerusalem and the settlements activity in and around East Jerusalem is a huge problem. Maybe it will ultimately be considered a corpus separatum, controlled by some sort of inter-faith coalition, but it's not off the table or separate from this discussion.

Refugees: seemed pretty insistent that they must return to the Palestinian state, not Israel. I always understood that the refugees rights of return were individual rights rooted in humanitarian law, not state rights to be negotiated. Am I correct? If so, then Israel doesn't really get to negotiate where the refugees return to. Ever.

He referred to the talks at Taba, the Geneva Initiative, and Bush's "roadmap" and letter to Sharon as documents to guide the process in Annapolis. He also said that Bush needs to do what Carter did at Camp David: lock them in a room until they agree on a proposal that the U.S. could support.

Commentary: Maybe it's just me, but I'm not sure why the Palestinians might not trust the U.S. to give them a fair deal. Sarcasm, of course. The idea that the U.S. could be a just arbiter of peace in the Middle East is absurd. See U.S. Foreign policy exhibit A: Iraq. Or it's deep and long history of giving Israel the political and military capital to occupy Palestine.

There may be something to the idea of giving Israelis and Palestinians someone to blame for the sacrifices that may be necessary in order to negotiate peace, but to think that the offer that the U.S. would come up with is going to be just is just silly. If the U.S. doesn't acknowledge international law or human rights (pre-emptive invasion and occupation of Iraq, a sovereign nation, under the pretext of preventing terrorism, long-term detention and torture at Guantanamo, etc., why on Earth would anyone think that it would force its friends to?


Eldar continued by saying that:

The Arab League's recognition of Israel within the 1967 borders seemed to also give support to the idea that these should be the final borders, but that any adjustments to the 1949 armistice lines should be mutually agreed upon.


He closed up by saying (I'm paraphrasing here) that in the interests of pragmatism and peace, that Palestinians need to be flexible about international law and the right of return. Israelis need to feel that they got a "good deal" in exchange for peace and security. He also said, quite depressingly, that 95% of Israelis don't have a problem with occupation, and they don't see a connection between occupation and terrorism. They don't want to see Palestinians, and the wall suits them just fine.


And this is someone who considers himself to be part of the Israeli peace camp. A pragmatic member. An ally in the struggle to end the occupation. My impression was that he does want peace, but once again, the terms are set by what Israelis are willing to accept. As one person in the audience mentioned, it sounds like the negotiations are happening between the Israeli left and the Israeli right, rather than between Israelis and Palestinians. It also sounds like Annapolis is being set up to fail, since if these are the terms, neither party will be going back to their people with an offer that they're willing to accept.