The settlements: shrapnel in Israel’s backside

The “solution” of annexation as imagined by the settlers is of course nothing but a crazy dream. Extending Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, and Israeli law over an additional 2 million Palestinians, may not endanger the Jewish majority but it will shake up the Israeli economy and affect the standard of living enjoyed by many Israelis today. At present, some 4 billion dollars are required to shore up the Palestinian Authority, and Israel is not obliged to invest a single sorry cent. But if the Palestinian Authority is dismantled, Israel will have to invest what is currently paid by generous donors – an enormous sum in the development of infrastructure, education and health, and provide work for a population comprising 2 million people. If Israel is not even prepared to invest in improving the lot of its Palestinian citizens, it certainly won’t be willing to invest in those “annexed” along with the West Bank. What will emerge instead is de facto apartheid.

In time, Bennett’s shrapnel will become a putrid abscess that will spread from Israel’s backside throughout the rest of the body. Efforts to ensure Kerry’s failure will no doubt bear fruit, just as efforts to stop similar initiatives in the past have always worked. But as Obama explained in his speech at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, it’s your shrapnel and it’s your backside, and you’re not doing America any favors by solving the conflict – it’s for your own good. If you think the world will continue to fund your fantasies and pour money down the Palestinian Authority drain, you are very much mistaken. There’s a limit to everything.

Israel is going against the tide of history

The Palestinian Authority loses more of its raison d’être each day; the words of Bennett and Netanyahu merely hasten its end. The Arab world is in turmoil, and the regimes they supported have long since disappeared. In light of events in the region, the world is recalibrating its clocks, and public opinion, from Tehran to Istanbul, from Cairo to Damascus, is no longer willing to accept tyranny, occupation and violation of human rights.

One could claim that it’s all just a struggle between Shiites and Sunnis, Alawites and Copts, but the truth is, citizens are taking control of their own lives and demanding admittance to the family of nations as equals. Civil wars are sometimes the road to democratic states – as the histories of the US, France, Italy and Germany have shown. The Arabs are no different.

The entire world is settling its debt with Israel and the occupation. What’s taking place in the occupied territories is a serious violation of human rights, an apartheid regime in every way, discriminating in favor of the settlers and against the Palestinian residents who are the rightful owners of the land. This regime ensures that Palestinian society remains backward, refusing to respect Palestinian right to self-determination, never mind basic rights such as freedom of movement, property rights, and the right to employment, education, health and housing. Annexation will not be accepted – not by the Palestinians, not by the Arabs, and not by the free world. Netanyahu knows this, but his narrow political considerations enable the abscess to spread.

The shrapnel in Israel’s backside is not the Palestinians, but the settlements themselves. They are the barrier to any agreement with the Arab world, they are testimony to Israel’s racist character, they are the basis for the fascist groups stirring up war between Arabs and Jews, they encourage hatred of the Other, whoever the Other might be, they belie Israel’s claim to be democratic, and they hold Israeli society in a state of perpetual war. Above all, they are an immoral act, going against the tide of history, and undermining the basis of Israel’s existence, since Israel seeks a Jewish state built upon the ruins of the Palestinian nation.

Translated by Yonatan Preminger

 

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About Yacov Ben Efrat