Israel and the West Bank

First a disclosure is in order.  I have close, personal friends who are Jewish and I also have friends who are Palestinian Americans who were in Jerusalem during the 1967 war there.  I have work friends who are Arab American; I had a Lebanese roommate in college and lived in South Dearborn, a mixed neighborhood of various Arab nationalities.  I am sympathetic to the Palestinians and to Israel.

Although I am not an expert, I believe that Israel, often maligned by the Arab press, has real security issues.  In spite of that, the treatment of Palestinians who are in the occupied territories is counter to our values and in disagreement with a large minority of Israeli citizens.  The latest move, as reported in Haaretz, is to separate Palestinians from Jews on buses there.  The minority opposition parties are denouncing it as apartheid.  

In the ugly America in which I grew up, we called it segregation.  In the south it was called Jim Crow.  We in this country do not have clean hands.  We had a Declaration of Independence written by a prominent slave owner.  We made treaties with the people already living on this continent and broke them.  We tolerated segregation, lynchings, and broad discrimination for nearly 100 years after we ended slavery.  Still, we moved on, we have attempted to redress most of the wrongs.  Although our progress is itself a work in progress, we are trying to get it right.

Now let's look at Israel.  We will look beyond the creation in 1947 and possible ethnic cleansing and land grabs.  Let's call that settled law.  While there seem to be legitimate grievances there, they cannot be addressed without first recognizing Israel's right to exist.  So, let us do that.  In 1967, a group of Arab states including Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan attempted to eliminate Israel in an all-out attack.  Some of the activity even came from the West Bank of Jordan.

The Arabs lost.  Syria lost the Golan Heights, Egypt the Sinai and Gaza, and Jordan the West Bank. Hooray those of us here said at the time.  

The 1973 Yom Kippur war was another debacle for Egypt and Syria although Egypt initially made some territorial gains that were mostly lost again.  Jordan also lost as they aided Syria.  The main point of the 1973 war for Egypt and Syria was to repatriate lost territory.  

Eventually Egypt got the Sinai back when they signed a peace accord with Israel.  Syria will likely never get back the strategic Golan Heights.  Jordan?  Do they want the West Bank back even if Israel wanted to give it up?

Perhaps if Egypt owned Gaza now, they could keep order and control Hamas.  Perhaps Jordan could similarly control the West Bank.  As it remains now, however, Israel has occupied the West Bank for almost a half century!  They control the water, the electricity, work permits in Israel, and the bus system.  This is in spite of signing the Oslo accords in 1995 and pledging a genuine two-state solution.  The Palestinians can vote for the government in Gaza whose territory they cannot reach without going through Israel.  There are strict limitations on political organization and freedom of expression in the West Bank.  

Essentially the Palestinians in the West Bank remain a disenfranchised and occupied territory after a half century of Israeli rule.  There cannot be a free Palestinian state, in spite of the Oslo accords, because there is no way to guarantee Israel security as formulated. Gaza is at least contiguous and they could, barring Hamas terrorism, have a genuine but small state. How practical this is given their small size I don't know.

Logically, Gaza would be better off economically as a part of Egypt or as a very close trading partner with Egypt.  The West Bank?  Israel shows no signs of really giving it up and continues to annex portions and create new Israeli settlements.  Perhaps their security really requires that they hold that territory.  If so, there is no way to justify 48 years of gross inequalities for the indigenous population, beginning with the right to vote for the government that rules them.  The Israeli opposition has it right, it is apartheid.  Not just the buses, the entire segregated population with no votes on their future.

The two state solution is not workable.  Israel should either cede the West Bank back to Jordan along the 1967 borders or annex the West Bank and give the Palestinians full citizenship.  There are real problems with this, starting with calling yourself a Jewish state but the result would still maintain a Jewish majority.  The right to return, a cornerstone of Israeli society for Jews everywhere, might be a problem if the Palestinians insisted on the same thing but there would not be enough votes to make that stick, at least initially.  Voila, a genuine representative democracy in all of the territory maintained by Israel.

Of course, the Palestinians in the West Bank would have to agree and so would Israel.  The current system has not worked for Israel and it has not worked for the West Bank.  Here is your legacy, Mr. Obama.  Mr. Netanyahu will just love you for it.