No to settlements is yes to peace
Too many American Jewish groups have their heads in the sand when it comes to the damage the settlement project has done to Israel.
By Eric Yoffie Tags: Reform Jews Israel newsToo many American Jewish groups have their heads in the sand when it comes to the damage the settlement project has done to Israel. They embrace those on the American religious right who endorse settlement as a religious principle, without realizing that the influence of these groups is declining. They talk to each other or to themselves, but not to their own children on campus who must deal with this topic every day. Yet those of us who do the actual work of making Israel's case in local communities know full well the damage the settlement issue causes in grassroots America.
You can convince Americans of the miracle of Israel's founding and the justice of her struggle against terror and rejection. You can convince them that it makes demographic and political sense for Israel to trade settlements near Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority in return for land elsewhere in Israel. But you cannot convince Americans that it makes sense for an Israel that supports a Palestinian state to maintain a large settler population in the heart of the West Bank.
Too much of the American Jewish community responds to this problem by saying things that convince no one. Settlements are not the issue, they say. They may not be the only issue, but they are certainly a critical issue - and one that we ignore at our peril. Jews should be able to settle anywhere in the Land of Israel, they say. But only if they are prepared to live under Palestinian sovereignty, and the overwhelming majority of settlers are not - which means that what they are really calling for is permanent occupation.
American Jewish leadership is rightly focused on the threat of Iran, and I favor the immediate imposition of tough economic sanctions on Iran - multilateral if possible, unilateral if not. Sanctions are preferable, but no option should be off the table. If Iran becomes a nuclear power, some Arab states will quietly drift into Iran's orbit, while others will move quickly to acquire nuclear weapons. Any possibility of an Israeli-Palestinian peace will evaporate.
Time is not the ally of peace in this situation; inaction is not an option. Those on the left who appear content to do nothing puzzle me. But I ask those on the right: If you fear that you will wake up in a few years and confront a radical Iranian state brandishing nuclear bombs, why do you not fear that you will wake up shortly to confront an emerging consensus - not only from our enemies but also from our friends - that a two-state solution must give way to a one-state solution? The latter possibility is no less likely and in some ways no less dangerous than the first.
We should not demonize the settlers. They have done what Israeli governments, of both the right and the left, have permitted them to do. With strong government leadership, I believe that most will be prepared to relocate. But to those who will not - those who embrace an ugly fundamentalism and misread the Torah for their own purposes - we must be prepared to say: maspik. Enough. No more messianic dreams that have held Israel hostage and put the destiny of the Jewish people in their hands. It would be pragmatic for the government of Israel to offer generous incentives to the settlers to leave so that the process can begin now. And if need be, let military installations be put in place to deal with security issues.
I am troubled by the positions of Arab and Palestinian leaders. I do not know if they are ready for an agreement. While I am convinced that the great majority of the Palestinian people yearn for peace, they have not been well served by those who speak in their name.
But none of this is an argument for maintaining or expanding ideological settlements. If it is true that peace is not possible at this moment, this is not a reason to advocate policies that will make it impossible for there ever to be peace.
It is certainly not an argument against U.S. President Barack Obama doing all he can to promote an agreement. Precisely because the prospects for peace are uncertain, it is more important than ever for the administration to search out every possibility for moving forward. The president has been right to reach out to Palestinians, the Arab world and the Muslim world. He, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and special envoy George Mitchell know that Middle East peace requires an American presence and that nothing happens unless the United States is involved. They are absolutely correct that the status quo does not serve Israel's interests.
If Palestinian moderates are not strengthened, the only party left will be Hamas. Therefore, reaching out to the moderates and strengthening their hand is a vital and pressing interest of the U.S. government.
The government of Israel needs to do everything it can to maintain the support of the American government and the American people, and to demonstrate Jerusalem's commitment to a two-state solution and to a Jewish and democratic Israel. American Jews, untiring partners in the building of Zion, need to join in this effort. After all, Israel's fate rests not only in the hands of Israel's citizens, but also in the hands of the Jewish people.
Rabbi Eric Yoffie is the president of the Union for Reform Judaism in North America.
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"I don't see how you can claim that the average Palestinian is interested in a true peace with Israel ... " (arthur) You talkin' to me? Just in case you are, here is my answer. I never claimed what you said I claimed. And the reason I could not is: Had we waited for the average Egyptian to be interested in a true peace with us, the IDF would still had, today, to guard the shores of the Suez Canal. And Israeli settlers would still be living in Ophira/Sharm-el-Sheikh. Had we, of course, won all the wars that would had inevitably erupted between 1979 and now. 1979, you may not know, is the year we did not make our peace with the average Egyptian, but with an Egyptian ruler. What the average Egyptian was then interested in, was Anwar Sadat's problem. Not ours. Can you see better now?
It seems like you see no difference in what the Palestinians call settlements... there are those at the green line and those deep in the occupied teritories and treatment jkof both the same way makes no sense. Add to that the constant terrorism that is protected by the masses and I don't see how you can make a claim that the average Palestinian is interested lin or willing to accept a true peace with Israel and not just a lull before the storm of another war.
"Secular Israeli leaders allowed the settlers in and maintain them there." (Sam) " ... settlements prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the land of Israel. This is the goal, and this is the reality." Daniella Weiss, a veteran settlement leader to Bob Simon reporting on the spread of Jewish settlements, in CBS ?60 Minutes?, Jan. 25, 2009. www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/23/60minutes/ main4749723.shtml "The endless war that the settlers are trying to impose on us, which they need like fire needs oxygen, is endangering our future and fanning the flames of a new wave of hatred against Jews in the Diaspora. No normal society can flourish in the oppressive conditions generated by the settlement enterprise. The fact that Israeli governments, one after another, have blessed this enterprise, and society at large has surrendered to it, MAKES NO DIFFERENCE." in "Post-Zionist settlement", Haaretz June 20, 2003, by Professor Zeev Sternhell, former head of the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew U of Jerusalem, one of the world's leading experts on Fascism. 2008 Israel Prize for Political Science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeev_Sternhell
"Secular Israeli leaders allowed the settlers in and maintain them there." (Sam) " ... settlements prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the land of Israel. This is the goal, and this is the reality." Daniella Weiss, a veteran settlement leader to Bob Simon reporting on the spread of Jewish settlements, in CBS ?60 Minutes?, Jan. 25, 2009. www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/23/60minutes/ main4749723.shtml "The endless war that the settlers are trying to impose on us, which they need like fire needs oxygen, is endangering our future and fanning the flames of a new wave of hatred against Jews in the Diaspora. No normal society can flourish in the oppressive conditions generated by the settlement enterprise. The fact that Israeli governments, one after another, have blessed this enterprise, and society at large has surrendered to it, MAKES NO DIFFERENCE." in "Post-Zionist settlement", Haaretz June 20, 2003, by Professor Zeev Sternhell, former head of the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew U of Jerusalem, one of the world's leading experts on Fascism. 2008 Israel Prize for Political Science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeev_Sternhell
Secular Israeli leaders allowed the settlers in and maintain them there. They thought for a while to boot them out and quickly changed their minds when Arab missiles kept falling on them. In the same way they will adjust to changing circumstances.
"As long as they would consider Tel-Aviv to be a Jewish settlement, achieving lasting peace would remain a fantasy." (Gene) Has Anwar Sadat ever declared that Tel Aviv is not a Jewish settlement? He never did, nor was it something anyone here expected him to do. But we are now in peace with Egypt for already 30 years. Try to get it, Gene.
"Return the land, move the settlements out of there is exactly what we did in Gaza." (E. Rosen) Return the land? Is it really what we did? To whose hands? Big mistake. Think again. We did not returned the land. We abandoned it, leaving it behind as only a dimwit would have done, who, having put a property up for sale, claims as an excuse he has found no suitable buyer to his taste. In Washington DC, 26 March 1979, Israel returned the whole of Sinai to President Sadat, and got peace. In summer 2005 we abandoned Gaza in chaos into nobody's hands, and got war with a tiny Islamist enclave armed with home-made rockets, we cannot live with - nor defeat. We who knew once how to defeat three Arab armies, in six days. There is a price to all folly, has no one told you that yet?
"Jews will continue settling their biblical homeland until the Palestinians accept 2 countries for 2 nations." (Sam) We were settling our biblical homeland long before Binyamin Zeev Herzl was born. Not for this purpose was Israel created. You and your fundamentalist ilk have hijacked the Zionist movement for your own agenda - namely, to merit the coming of Mashiach. Has it ever occurred to you, Mr. Sam, that, if the Palestinians never accept "2 countries for 2 nations", and we continue settling the West Bank, a land outside Israel's sovereignty, in the midst of a foreign stateless occupied population, all the chances are, given the demographics, that we find ourself, in a future not so distant anymore, living - those of us who are still here - as a Jewish minority in 2 states for 1 people? Suggested reading: "Battle of the numbers: Jewish minority by 2020", Jerusalem Post, Oct 25, 2007. by Professor Sergio Dellapergola, of the Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, the Hebrew U in Jerusalem, and Senior Fellow at the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. http://www.jpppi.org.il/ (News & Events -- From the press)
If there were more Jews here of Mr. Yoffie's (and my) opinion - instead of the American settler cowboys who do come - things would look a lot different and better here. Fear and loathing are winning, at the moment.
Return the land, move the settlements out of there is exactly what we did in Gaza. What is the result? Hamas and daily misiles to the Israeli population living next to Gaza. I am all for what Rabbi Yoffie wishes, but the reality in the ground is a bit different. It is much easier to write from NY than from Ashkelon.
The Arabs will never allow Israel to live in peace, no matter what concessions are offered. To a people that respects only strength, Yoffie offers only weakness. Every indication that Jews are not sure that the land is theirs is an invitation to Arab aggression. Israel will achieve peace not by ceding land for an Arab state, but by demonstrating through its deeds that Jews, and not Arabs, are the rightful owners of the land, and will defend every inch of it no matter who tries to take it away. What Yoffie decries as "ugly fundamentalism" is in fact the normative principles of our faith that have sustained us for the past 4000 years, but which Yoffie apparently abandoned many years ago.
Thanks to Rabbi Yoffie for a clear statement of the problem and the painful solution that is necessary to solve it. Now let the political parties gather their courage to begin the process of requiring withdrawal from illegal settlements unless the settlers are willing to subject themselves to Palestinian legal authority.
Yoffie in Hebrew means pretty or beautiful. Does anyone believe that is a coincident. Or is it serendipity that makes this clever Rabbi aspire toward Peace. I don't know... maybe maspik is the right word. Let's hope we can get at least 100 Knesset members with this Rabbi's namesake.
It is my fervent wish that your common sense way forward is taken to heart. I sincerely hope that you are not now labeled as a "self-hating Jew" or a "traitor" or a "turncoat" or worse by the rabid peanut gallery. But I fear that by morning in Tel Aviv this talkback will be filled with vile invective against your pragmatic, and as you rightly point out: last chance view.
Thank you Mr. Yoffie. The solution you suggest, whilst still being painful for both sides, appears realistic and feasable. I hope, the involved parties are smart enough to listen to voices like yours.
Leaving Gush Katif did not give Israel peace.
based on what?-when they voted in Gaza, they voted for Hamas overwhelmingly-where is your evidence that they yearn for peace?-where???????
If these so-called settlers want to move to a place which will eventually become part of Palestine, let them. Eventually they will become Palestinian citizens who will travel on Palestinian passports and spend Palestinian currency. Israel has Arabs. Palestine will have Jews. It's the same thing!
Well written article laying-out the situation of settlements, especially in the American perspective of both the American Jew and non-Jew American. The non-Jew American category is growing in importance and Israelis should take note. Obama has put the mid-east on the "front-burner" very different from Bush. Therefore US news is now focussed on Israel and all the issues, more than the previous eight(8) years. Americans want solutions.
Unfortunately for your thesis, Israel DOES need the world's consent to exist. Consider what would happen if, for example, the EU, the US, Russia and China decided to embargo Israel.
What those Jews grew up believing really doesn't matter if the rest of the world doesn't accept it. The problem with being a big frog in a small pond is that you tend to forget there is a great deal larger world out there.
Did it ever cross your mind that whatever you call the "settlements" might be different from what Palestinians call the "settlements"? And since they are the ones with whom a peace treaty needs to be signed - it is their definition of the "Jewish settlements" which is counts and not yours. You can do anything you want - you can dismantle Kiriat-Arba, get out from the West Bank, give away East Jerusalem and Kotel, but as long as they would consider Tel-Aviv to be one of the Jewish settlements the prospect for achieving lasting peace would remain a fantasy. Try to get it, Rabbi.
One of the lessons of Israel is that Jews do not need the world's consent to continue to exist. We will stick to our rights to "maintain" our existence and if some thinks that this is a threat to peace I would suggest psychiatric treatment as they are in real need of help.
Palestinians yearn for a peace where Israel disappears and is replaced by an Arab Muslim entity. Jews have 2 visions. In one vision there is 2 countries for 2 nations. In the other vision Jews live in their biblical homeland. The hard reality is that Jews will continue settling their biblical homeland until Palestinians accept 2 countries for 2 nations. While some Jews are prepared to wait others are not. These Jews whether religious or nationalistic, left or right, grew up learning that the West Bank is an inseparable part of Israel and for them that trumps upsetting the non-Jews.
"You can convince them that it makes demographic and political sense for Israel to trade settlements near Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority in return for land elsewhere in Israel." Try to Convince the Palestinians, and not strong-arm them. Israeli settlements on the wrong side of the Green Line are all illegal. East Jerusalem is not part of Israel, except in Israeli legal fiction. Until the Palestinians agree to their presence, it's Israeli occupants are profiteers of the occupation and obstacles to peace. And should be sent home to Israel.
Finally a clear-minded article about the settlement issue! Thank you, Eric, there should be more articles like that
Shabbat Shalom...
and history just keeps repeating itself, repeating itself, repeating itself.