By M.J. Rosenberg
September 1, 2004
It is easy to understand why Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wants to expand some existing West Bank settlements. It is even easier to understand why his government chose to announce the expansion now.
The latest West Bank expansion is apparently linked to the Gaza withdrawal. Defying the far right by his continued insistence on getting out of Gaza, Sharon feels the need to appease them in the West Bank. The only flaw in this logic is that the extremists who want to remain in Gaza - come hell or high water - are probably not appeasable. These are people who assume that Israel will remain in 100% of the West Bank in perpetuity anyway. A few thousand new apartments will produce neither euphoria nor the inclination to make nice over Gaza.
But it has enraged the Palestinians, damaged what is left of the peace process, and complicated life for the United States. And getting out of Gaza remains as politically difficult for Sharon as before.
Of course, Sharon has calculations that are not related to Gaza, at least directly. He wants to expand the Israeli presence on the West Bank for its own sake. In fact, some of his supporters within the Likud party argue that one of his main reasons for wanting out of Gaza is so that Israel can retain the West Bank.
Getting out of Gaza will buy Israel some time demographically (with one million fewer Palestinians, the Jewish majority will last longer) and diplomatically as well. Already the emphasis on Gaza has reduced the pressure on Israel to resume negotiations over the West Bank.
This is where U.S. and Israeli policy rationales diverge. Sharon may want out of Gaza, in part, so he can keep the West Bank. The United States wants Israel out of Gaza as a means of kick-starting some form of negotiations and ultimately the Roadmap.
Its reasons are obvious but they are not primarily altruistic. Naturally, the United States would prefer to see a peaceful Middle East. It would like to see Israelis living in security and Palestinians with a state.
But such high-minded thoughts are not the main reasons America needs progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It needs it because every day the conflict continues, America's standing in the Muslim world deteriorates and the threat of terrorism directed at Americans and American interests increases.
This is not to say that Al Qaida cares about what happens in the West Bank. It doesn't, but its recruits do. The fury Arabs and other Muslims feel toward America today is heavily driven by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And that fury is more intense than ever before. This spring the Pew Charitable Trust's Research Center conducted a survey of attitudes toward the United States nine countries, among them Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and Morocco, all U.S. allies.
The Pew group reported that "in the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed, anger toward the United States remains pervasive... Osama bin Laden is viewed favorably by large percentages in Pakistan (65%), Jordan (55%) and Morocco (45%). Even in Turkey, where bin Laden is highly unpopular, as many as 31% say that suicide attacks against Americans and other Westerners" are justifiable.
Some of this anti-American animus is driven by the Iraq war but, not surprisingly, the Palestinian issue remains a central source of Muslim grievances against the United States. In fact, the belief that Palestinians are getting a raw deal is pretty much the only belief which virtually all Muslims - Sunni and Shiite, traditionalist and secular - share.
Moving toward resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would not eliminate anti-U.S. feelings. But it would reduce them. That is what happened during the Oslo period when attitudes toward both the United States and Israel were improving in the Muslim world. (It is hard to imagine today but less than a decade ago Muslim and Arab states were opening diplomatic and trade relations with Israel, the Arab boycott had been abandoned, and the United States was sponsoring anti-terror summits in which Israelis and Arabs joined in common determination to confront the terror threat.)
Today, however, the Palestinian issue is a terrorist recruiting tool. It will remain one until Israelis and Palestinians, with U.S. help, move toward an agreement that will bring both peoples security. And that means the two-state solution.
But the two-state solution will be a dead letter if settlement expansion continues. Writing in yesterday's Washington Post, Daniel Seidemann, a lawyer and counsel to Ir Amim, an Israeli organization concerned with the future of Jerusalem, wrote that the current settlement expansions, "will dismember the West Bank into two cantons, with no natural connection between them."
As an Israeli Jew, desperately worried about his country, Seidemann fears that the expanded settlements "will create a critical mass of facts on the ground that will render nearly impossible the creation of a sustainable Palestinian state with any semblance of geographical integrity. And denying the possibility of a sustainable Palestinian state leaves only one default option: the one-state, bi-national solution that signifies the end of Israel as the home of the Jewish people."
This is a prospect that no friend of Israel can countenance. The very idea of the Zionist dream being sacrificed on the altar of West Bank settlements is unthinkable. Israelis, and Americans too, have a great deal at stake in the current debate over the settlements. In fact, the stakes couldn't be higher. Silence is simply not an option.
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