What the Critics and Supporters of Israel Get Wrong
I am a left-of-center Israeli, who believes our continued occupation of the West Bank is a national tragedy. That said, I am well aware that if someone made me king of Israel tomorrow, I would not know how to end the occupation, without endangering the safety of Israel and its people.
In my youth, I served in the West Bank and in Gaza a number of times, during my regular IDF service and in reserve duty. My experiences in both these places, over 40 years ago, convinced me of the folly of our occupation.
There is no such thing as a good occupation — and certainly not one lasting over 50 years. Unfortunately, merely stating occupation is bad, is not the same thing as finding a way to end it. At the recent J-Street Conference, both Senator Warren and others called for “a stop to US aid that helps the occupation”. Leaving aside the small technical problem, (i.e., all US Military aid goes to US arms manufacturers for equipment purchases; such as F-35 fighters, and not to pay for the occupation), attacking the occupation absent the suggestion of a reasonable plan on how to end it, without endangering Israel’s security, is pure demagogy.
This week, Human Rights Watch came out with a report, titled: “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.” The HRW report is filled with lengthy legal definitions that stretch the term apartheid well beyond the average layperson’s understanding of the term. HRW cites a long list of Israeli actions it defines as “persecution,” and extends its report not just to the West Bank, but also to Gaza — and even more dubious — to Israel itself.
I could fill 1000s pages with a point-by-point refutation of many of HRW’s claims. Nevertheless, there are some allegations leveled against Israel by HRW with which I do agree. One of the major problems with the HRW report, and most other denunciations of Israel, is that they are almost always presented without any historical context, or nuance.
To start with the most basic context … In November 1947, the United National voted on the partition of Palestine into two states, a Jewish State and an Arab State. The Jews accepted the UN plan. The Arabs rejected it, and promptly attacked the nascent Jewish State. If that attack had never happened, there never would have been any Palestinian refugees, nor an Israeli occupation of Arab land.
The same is true regarding 1967. Israel begged King Hussein of Jordan (who occupied the West Bank at that time) not to become involved in the war. But the king believed Nasser’s lie that Egypt was winning, and decided to attack. The result was Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Immediately after the war, Israel made clear it would happily withdraw from all the land captured, except Jerusalem, in return for peace. The response from the Arab states was a clear — No.
The position of many of Israel's critics has always been — If only Israel would do “X,” it could solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. That indictment ignores the fact that in 1994, Prime Minister Rabin took the biggest risk for peace he could imagine. Rabin agreed to recognize the Palestinian Liberation Organization — the same PLO that carried out countless terror attacks against Israel, both at home and abroad — as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Moreover, Rabin allowed the PLO to establish limited sovereignty in parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In exchange, the PLO both renounced the portion of its charter calling for the destruction of Israel and publicly recognized the state of Israel. However, the most fundamental part of the agreement was that while both sides still harbored tremendous disagreements, they would no longer resolve their differences using violence.
Rabin paid for entering this agreement with his life. In 1999, four years after Rabin was assassinated, and with the help of US President Clinton, Prime Minister Ehud Barak tried to resolve the remaining differences between Israel and the Palestinians. The Palestinians flatly rejected both Barak’s best offer, as well as a subsequent offer put forth by the US to try to bridge the differences between the sides. With Palestinian rejection came the second Intifada (a series of suicide and other attacks that took place all over Israel, killing 1,137 Israelis and wounding 8,341).
A generation of Israeli children grew up afraid to board a bus; terrified that a nearby Arab might possess a gun or bomb. By building a wall, and instituting strict security protocols, Israel brought the second Intifada to an end, and returned safety to its streets. Of course, the same security protocols applied to both would-be terrorists, and people who simply want to live their lives, have often rightly been described as human rights violations.
After bringing the second Intifada to an end in 2005, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came to the conclusion that a negotiated solution between Israelis and Palestinians was unlikely in the near future. So instead, he promoted separation of the two sides. The first, and most important disengagement was the Gaza Strip, where isolated Jewish settlements existed amidst a sea of Palestinians. Those settlements had to be protected, and the result: constant clashes between Israelis and Palestinians.
Sharon’s solution was to remove Jewish settlements from Gaza, and with them, the Israeli Army. I was a big supporter of the move. Terror groups from Gaza were already firing an occasional missile at nearby Israeli settlements, and at the time, I thought that if we pulled out of Gaza and they continue to fire missiles, we could then bomb them with impunity. Of course, Hamas continues to fire missiles, and we obviously cannot just indiscriminately bomb them— as every unintentional civilian death soon becomes an alleged war crime.
The lack of context in the HRW report is particularly striking when it comes to Gaza. The report refers to the Hamas take over of Gaza, in passing, as the reason Israel began restricting commerce and transit from Gaza. The report patently ignores the fact that when Hamas staged its violent takeover, it dismissed demands by the International Quartet who worked to facilitate relations between Israel and the Palestinians. The Quartet called on Hamas to recognize the State of Israel and remove its stated desire to destroy Israel from its charter, as a pre-condition for the Quartet’s recognition of Hamas’ authority. By ignoring the Quartet’s proviso, Hamas effectively asserted it was in a state of war with Israel. To underscore that state of war, Hamas continued to intermittently fire missiles at Israeli cities.
Today, Hamas, currently at war with the State of Israel, remains the sovereign authority in the Gaza Strip. Does Israel blockade the strip, prohibiting anything from entering or exiting until Hamas surrenders? No, Israel allows hundreds of trailers each day to bring supplies and fuel into Gaza. Even when rockets are fired at Israeli cities, supply trailers regularly continue to enter. However, what does HRW complain about? They protest Israel’s forced separation policy between Gaza ruled by Hamas, and the West Bank partially ruled by the Palestinian Authority.
Two very fundamental flaws with the HRW report go beyond the details. The first, is their attempt to view Arabs Israelis, and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as one entity. HRW seemingly defines all Arab-Israelis as “Palestinians living in Israel,” despite the overwhelming preference of the people it describes to a self-identity as Israeli Arabs, and not Palestinians.
Arab Israelis make up over 20% of the doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers in Israel. University campuses are filled with Arab Israeli students. Many Arab Israelis have now entered Israel’s world-class high-tech sector.
Yes, Arab Israelis suffer discrimination, and there are serious problems within their local communities. However, at this very moment, Arab Israeli political parties are about to actively participate in deciding who will form the next Israeli government, for the first time. To even intimate that Apartheid takes place within the pre-67 borders of Israel, undermines the very meaning of the term.
Second, the report’s attempt to describe the Arab-Israeli conflict as an ethnic clash in which one side is carrying on Apartheid against the other weaker ethnic group is a fundamental mischaracterization. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not an ethnic conflict. It is a national conflict between the Jews of Palestine, who agreed to a partition plan, and the Arabs who did not. This national conflict has been going on for over a hundred years. Fortunately for Jews who lived in Palestine, they prevailed in the War of Independence, as Israel continues to prevail. Otherwise, the Jews would no longer be here.
As an Israeli, I am not proud of many of the actions carried out by Israeli governments over the generations. However, many of those decisions were made based on the belief they were protecting the security of the country and Israel’s people. Some of these actions were mistakes. Several of these decisions were the result of deliberate policy promulgated by a minority who believe the whole land of Israel belongs to the Jews (many who hold this worldview are certain settling the entire land of Israel is their God-given right).
Some Israelis are racists. I am not proud that a number of my countryman are racists. However, because a minority of my countrymen are racists, does not make my country an Apartheid State. If I could, I would change many of our policies in the West Bank. However, until the Palestinians are willing to publicly accept an end of the conflict that does not provide for the return of the many generations of refugees born in the last 80 years; and until they recognize our permanent existence in this country, we have no clear path to end the occupation of lands, a stone’s throw from our country’s main international airport.
In the past decade, too many liberals have not sought to side with the party that is right and just, but with the weaker party. In this case, the Palestinians are the weaker party, but that does not make them right — and it certainly does not make Israel an Apartheid State.
Israel is not beyond criticism. I constructively criticize many of our policies. However, over the top, one-dimensional accusations, lacking nuance, like those that fill the HRW report, undermine legitimate criticism of Israeli policies. The majority of Israelis still support the concept of the two-state solution, but that same majority does not believe a two-state solution is currently possible to achieve. If HRW, or Senator Warren, want to help make true progress — instead of simply formulating statements that condemn Israel, or issuing mostly one-sided reports, it is time to propose actual policies that both Israelis and Palestinians can implement to bring the end of the occupation closer.
