A completely absurd idea –Part 2 Reality on the ground

As we noted the last time, Israel in the last 20 years has succeeded in establishing in the territories that it occupied in 1967 facts on the ground which will be very difficult if not impossible to reverse. The current estimate of the cost to evacuate and relocate 40,000 settlers as required to begin the Kadima convergence/disengagement plan is $10b. This bill will be paid by the American taxpayer. By extension the cost to evacuate the 400,000 settlers currently on the West Bank will be $100b. (A low estimate as the other settlements are more elaborate and established – See picture) This is probably a number that, even if there were the political will in Israel to accomplish this evacuation, the American taxpayers would not swallow. Another reality for Israel is that, although it is militarily very strong and is supported by the strongest country in the world, it is strategically in a precarious position. It exists in an unstable area and is surrounded by neighbors who are hostile either to its existence or to its behavior. As Tony Judt, professor of history at NYU, points out: “Israel is utterly dependent on the United State for money, arms and diplomatic support. One or two states share common enemies with Israel; a handful of countries buy its weapons; a few others are defacto accomplices in ignoring international treaties and secretly manufacturing nuclear weapons. But outside Washington it has no friends – at the United Nations it cannot even count on the support of America’s staunchest allies.” International law is pretty clear that the Palestinians have a legal right to resist the occupation of their land. We have seen numerous examples of resistance, even violent resistance, to occupation in recent history – the French resistance to Nazi occupation, Chinese and Korean resistance to Japanese occupation. The issue, therefore, is not do the Palestinians have the right to resist, but what form should it take. There is much truth to the statement that the Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Despite the fact that they are militarily weak, but diplomatically strong relative to their enemies, they have heretofore always opted for violent military resistance. Even though Palestinian leaders can claim that their violent resistance has forced Israel out of Lebanon and Gaza and forced Israel to abandon its strategic vision of a “greater Israel”, it has not succeeded in improving the lives of average Palestinians. Zionists will claim that there was a lot of vacant land in Palestine when Israel was founded. (A land with no people for a people with no land.), but a trip through this part of the world will make it clear that there is not a lot of unpopulated land. (Except maybe some pretty forbidding desert) There is one piece of land that seems to me to be completely unpopulated and that is the moral high ground. NY Times columnist Tom Friedman pointed out in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem that because of its brutal reaction to the first Palestinian intifada (uprising), Israel has forfeited the moral high ground. The question, therefore, is “Will the Palestinians seize this vacant piece of land, the moral high ground, and if so how?”. Some thoughts next time.


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