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Jonathan Friendly is the national editor of , which owns the weekly Jewish newspapers in Detroit and Atlanta. He is a former journalism professor at the University of Michigan and a former reporter and editor at The New York Times.
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By Jonathan Friendly
October 9, 2003
Israeli leaders, pondering the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, ought to consider one of Yogi Berra's insights: "You've got to be careful if you don't know where you're going 'cause you might not get there."
It is indeed a great mystery. Where do Israeli leaders hope their settlements will lead? Is there a strategy to what is allowable and what is not, or is there merely a set of processes and political compromises that vary with time and circumstance?
Making the guiding principles and goals clear is desperately important for both the near - and long-term future of the Jewish state. Its enemies and its allies - along with a lot of states that may be trying to decide which category they will choose - need to know Israel's intent. So, too, do Israelis, who are being asked to bear special burdens on behalf of those settlements, some crucial to Israel's security.
The 2002 Statistical Abstract, published two weeks ago by the College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel, reported that the Jewish population of the West Bank had grown to 213,000, an increase of 144 percent in the past decade. In the two years from 2000 through 2002, the new study said, the West Bank Jewish population rose 20 percent, more than three times the rate for Israel as a whole.
This rise came at the same time as the current Intifada - the renewed Palestinian terror against Israel and its settlements. Obviously, the incentives to move to the West Bank - nice homes, convenient commutes to work, tax subsidies, military protection, and, in many cases, the religious passion to settle in all areas of the land of Israel - outweighed any Palestinian threat.
Israel is building a security fence on the West Bank. But it cannot stop terror attacks such as the one that claimed the life of a baby girl in Negohot, within the West Bank, last week. And Israel's firmest American ally, the Bush White House, has criticized the fence and forced difficult changes in the route.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon no doubt sees a tactical advantage in never being clear about which settlements he thinks Israel should keep as part of a negotiated peace plan that recognizes a Palestinian state. But that lack of precision, while serving his domestic political aims of not giving the settler movement anything to complain about, does not serve the country's best long-range interest.
As the new census data shows, Israel has tolerated or even encouraged settlement growth that it knows will infuriate the Arab world and much of Europe - who already believe that Israel would never support Palestinian statehood. Many American supporters of Israel are correctly concerned about Jerusalem's failure to halt unlimited settlement growth.
The best course for Sharon would be to identify which West Bank and Gaza settlements are absolutely necessary for Israel's security and will be allowed to grow. Despite the domestic political risks, he needs to say which are negotiable should the Palestinians ever prove themselves worth talking to. And he should crack down firmly on illegal outposts, preferably by making it clear in advance that they will not get the military protection they need to survive.
A more open declaration by Sharon of his aims for the settlements, coupled with consistent enforcement, could end a confusion that harms Israel far more than it could help it.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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