Israel Matzav

Why is this so difficult to understand?

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg is an American and is well to my left, but he seems to have spent enough time here to understand where the country's center stands on a possible 'peace agreement' with the 'Palestinians.' Here's one of the better summaries I have seen of the mood of the country's political center.

One main reason it is so premature to talk about the disposition of Jerusalem is that the cynicism among Israelis about the ultimate aims of the Palestinians is deep and wide. It is true that many Israelis believe -- as many American Jews believe -- that the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, are very different sorts of leaders than Yasser Arafat. They are practical men who are trying to create reality-based policies that actually serve the best political and economic interests of their people. But Israelis tend to see them as semi-powerless; they see Hamas as the rising power (especially after Hamas's victory in the Turkish flotilla war), and they understand, in ways that many Americans don't seem to understand, that Hamas poses an existential threat -- you should pardon the expression -- to the Palestinian Authority led by Abbas and Fayyad. Seizing the Palestinian Authority, and taking over the Palestine Liberation Organization, is Hamas's penultimate goal (well, maybe not penultimate, because Hamas's ultimate goal is not merely the eradication of Israel but also the creation of a pan-Muslim entity led by the Muslim Brotherhood.)

But about those Israeli doubts: For the typical Israeli (and again, I'm not talking about settlers, but about people who have, in the past, agreed in principle that the Palestinians should have an independent state) two events in particular have soured them on the chance for compromise. In 2000, the Israeli army pulled out of Lebanon. It was hoped that this pull-out would lead to peace on the northern border, but instead it led to rocket attacks by the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah. In 2005, Israel unilaterally pulled its soldiers and settlers out of Gaza. Again, rockets followed. The saving grace of these rockets attacks -- both the Lebanon attacks and the Gaza attacks -- was that the rockets did not reach the center of the country -- Tel Aviv, as well as Israel's only international airport, Ben-Gurion.

Now, of course, the peace process, such as it is, hinges in part on an Israeli willingness to withdraw from the West Bank, including the hills of the West Bank that overlook Tel Aviv, the airport, and the entire thickly-populated central region of the country. This withdrawal will not be happening anytime soon, because there is a high degree of certainty among Israelis that a withdrawal from the West Bank hills would be followed not by peaceful reconciliation, but, again, by rockets. No Israeli wants to be a freier, a sucker, and right now the Israelis feel like suckers. Twice in ten years they've withdrawn from territory, and twice they've been hit by rockets. They are not doing this again, not until the politics of the Palestinians -- and the politics of Iran -- change dramatically.

But I'll take this three steps further:

1. I don't believe that the 'Palestinians' will EVER reconcile with a State of Israel of any size in this region.

2. By holding all the land that Israel controls as a result of the 1967 War as if in escrow, and not building on it, we are removing what might be the only incentive that the 'Palestinians' will ever have to compromise.

3. God gave this land to the Jews nearly 3,000 years ago. Although there have been Jews here constantly ever since, there has never been this large a Jewish presence here since the Second Temple was destroyed. We are being contemptuous of God's gift to us if we do not do all we can to take advantage of that fact.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:12 AM