Issue #8
April 2002
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A Reply to Middle Israel by David Katz Sherwin Pomerantz has graced us with a thoughtful and nuanced description of the dilemma that middle of the road Israelis find themselves in. He marshals facts and history to bolster the position he has come to as a result of living at the center of the conflict for the past 18 years; I concede that most of his facts are accurate, and that he has made a plausible interpretation of the history. Nevertheless, I strongly disagree with most of his conclusions.
Sherwin's article was an outgrowth of a brief correspondence in which he commented on some then-current events in Israel and the West Bank, and I responded. His reaction to my comments was that if my thinking was typical of that of American Jews, Israel was in deep trouble. This was my reply:
You are, indeed, in really big trouble. Israel is losing the PR battle, in no small part because of its own actions and policies. It has gone from being perceived as the valiant David battling an Arab Goliath to being viewed as a Jewish Goliath bullying the Palestinian David. American Jews are deeply divided, and each day of Sharon's administration makes that division worse. Your settlements policy is viewed as senseless and destructive, and a major obstacle to any possibility of a negotiated end to the regional madness. Your bulldozing of Palestinian houses, refusal to grant building permits to Palestinians while expanding Jewish settlements, and searches and delays at checkpoints for Palestinians traveling from one Arab area to another are viewed as expansionist, demeaning and gratuitously nasty. Tanks are not a great PR move either.
The Palestinian state offered during negotiations was a hodge-podge of disconnected areas sundered by Israeli security roads connecting what the Romans called “colonia”, semi-military settlements meant to act as a tripwire against enemy invasion. These settlements, originally referred to as “creating facts on the ground”, have expanded all through the peace negotiations of the past decade, and have been taken, even by moderate Palestinians, as evidence of bad faith on the part of the Israelis, as surely they were. Allowing “organic growth due to population expansion” of the settlements, while refusing building permits to Palestinians for their “organic growth” exposes the hypocrisy of the situation.
It is indeed true that there is no Palestinian leadership willing to give up the idea that Israel will one day disappear. The emergence of such leadership has been delayed a decade or more by the right-wing Israeli fanatic that assassinated Rabin, and by the provocative and deadly actions of Sharon, who in my view is a thug, and just as bad, a cynical liar to the Israeli people who elected him. The Palestinians are indeed unmatched in their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The Israelis are becoming equally adept.
The point is, even if your enemies are implacable in their desire for your destruction, you need not cooperate by giving them hostages to violence, in the guise of settlements. You are better served by creating as much withdrawal and separation, and as little contact and provocation, as geography permits. As for "strategic depth" and defendable borders, there ain't no such thing any more, thanks to modern military technology. Close the settlements, close the borders, and let the Palestinian state, such as it may be, flounder or flourish as its inhabitants determine.
I am a reasonably well-read and well informed American, whose press is in fact well-disposed to Israel and acts as such. If I have reached these conclusions, it doesn't matter whether some details of my understanding are correct or not; you do indeed have a problem. Perhaps the problem is not all PR; perhaps Israel's actions and policies need yet another review to see whether Israel is increasingly part of the problem, not of the solution. Your own reservists (or at least some of them) seem to agree. In addition, these policies are making the position of Israeli Arabs, both Moslem and Christian, increasingly untenable, with potentially dire internal consequences.
As for the world's reaction being an indication of antisemitism: it's true but irrelevant. The alienation goes way beyond antisemites; you are losing allies right and left. I have no problem with going after those who send children to die as martyrs; they should be willing to be martyred themselves. The problem is, though, that by reacting to suicide bombers while some sort of peace process was underway, Israel handed control to the terrorists and went down the path guaranteed to make sure the Palestinian terrorists obtained their objective, the dissolution of any hope for peace. Similarly, Palestinian reaction to Settler attacks gave control to Israel's most intransigent element. Painful as it might have been, the right course when there was still hope of a political agreement would have been to ignore the deaths and injuries and persevere with negotiations. Any other course was a losing one.
Citing history ("he hit me first ... I'm just hitting him back") has also become irrelevant. There are enough injustices perpetrated by both sides so that neither has clean hands anymore. The question has to be, not "Who is right?", but "Where to we go from here to reduce the killing, the shaming and the despair." Separation is a first step; a Marshall Plan (admittedly difficult to administer in the absence of real Palestinian leaders with any concern for the well-being of their people) to give the Palestinians a real economy and some prosperity may be a second. People with something to lose tend to be less likely to commit suicide.
Sharon's policies, which promised an end to terrorism in 100 days (remember his election promises?) have instead led to an escalation of violence into a veritable bloodbath. Clearly, his policies aren't working and are indeed counterproductive for the Israeli people, deadly for the Palestinians, and an obstacle to finding any solution to the problem. A good rule of thumb in business is "if it isn't working, do something else." This should be true in government as well. What we have here is a repeat of Sharon's debacle in Lebanon, on an even grander scale. He has found a willing partner in mutual self-destruction in Arafat; the two of them deserve each other. Unfortunately, neither the Israeli people nor the Palestinians deserve either one of them, although each has gotten the leader it asked for.
In any event, I thank you for a cogent, forceful and reasoned explanation of your position, and I respect your on-site expertise in this area, especially as it comes from someone used to doing business with the Arabs.
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