The West Bank: How Late Is Too Late?

Lustick, Ian

THE WEST BANK: HOWIATE IS TOO LATE? A new debate is raging in Israel: Has the process of absorbing the West Bank passed the point of no return? Or is a negotiated solution still possible? IAN...

...The force of Benvenisti's "point-of-no-return" argument lies less in his characterization of what is currently happening in the West Bank, more in his projection of what will happen...
...With continued employment opportunities for educated Palestinians in the oil-rich Arab states, lower birth rates to be anticipated in association with standards of living in the territory, and Israeli policies designed to minimize economic opportunity for West Bank Arabs, Benvenisti concludes that "the so-called demographic threat, that is, the gradually increasing proportion of Arabs versus Jews, a notion that is widespread in Israeli dovish political circles, is not upheld by the data...
...Benvenisti himself provides several reasons for expecting West Bank Arabs to stay...
...Meron Benvenisti and the Irreversibility Argument Benvenisti's views are most systematically presented in his recent book, The West Bank Data Project: A Survey of Israel's Policies, published by the American Enterprise Institute...
...And the mechanisms through which changed living patterns lead to political integration are inadequately and ineffectively specified...
...Sophisticated Gush Emunim strategists understand that what they must do is make the question of withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza equivalent to the non-question of withdrawal from the Galilee...
...They are convincing evidence of annexationist visions and intentions...
...But there can be no question that the prospect of such a crisis itself inhibits political initiative...
...The principal conclusion of the book is that Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank is, for all intents and purposes, impossible: "The political, military, socio-economic, and psychological processes now working toward the total annexation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip outweigh those that work against it...
...Benvenisti himself characterizes Arab "building activity and sprawl" on lie West Bank as "phenomenal...
...He concludes that "the interim target of the WZO-Israeli government of 100,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank [exclusive of greater East Jerusalem] will probably not be achieved before the end of the decade...
...The first four chapters describe the selective incorporation of the West Bank into Israel-selective in the sense that its Arab inhabitants are excluded from Israeli jurisdiction when their inclusion would threaten the economic position of important Israeli groups or entail the extension of political and social rights to them, but are included when their exclusion would jeopardize Israeli control over key resources or prevent Israeli settiers from feeling that they continue to live fully within the state...
...Ironically, as he point* out, intensive Jewish settlement acti* jty provides substantial employment opportunities for Arab villagers in both construction and services, thereby increasing the number able to stay...
...He notes that flg amount of public investment planned for the West Bank "is almost triple the average annual investment in the West Bank between 1977 and 1983...
...Nor, for that matter, is the electoral power of the 60,000 Jews who live in greater East Jerusalem the most important barrier to compromise on that issue...
...Benvenisti is correct to focus on ue creation of "internal political facts" «s decisive, but his image of a settler lobby 'ar8e enougn t0 vet0 political initiatives toward territorial compromise does not do justice to the complexly of the political processes Involved, nor to the opportunities to intervene in those processes...
...Dovish protests also prevent prospective settlers and investors from ignoring calculations about the political future in their decisions to move to or invest in the West Bank and Gaza...
...There is much that is sound in the Benvenisti analysis, and moderates who insist on the necessity for territorial compromise cannot afford to ignore it...
...Predictions that more and more Israelis would be prepared to take or ignore those risks are based in part on the notion that an unambiguous annexationist climate would prevail, and be sufficient to reassure the faint-hearted that the future was, indeed, secure...
...How can we usefully think about the process of de facto annexation in a way that acknowledges the limits that have been placed on Israel's options, but that, at the same time, acknowledges the malleability of the political realm'' Between Two Thresholds In assessing how far towards annexation Israel has moved, we may think °f two different "thresholds" that must be crossed before annexation can be considered permanent-as perma-"ent, that is, as anything can be in Politics...
...In fact, the planners themselves have become disillusioned with their ability to design and guide the social, economic and residential decisions of masses of people in such a complex and intensely political environment...
...How, then, does Benvenisti think to persuade the reader that absorption of the West Bank has passed "the critical point...
...Less attention has been devoted to the fact that-in spite of a thick network of zoning and construction restrictions-Arab residential construction has also expanded rapidly...
...In fundamental ways, it must affect their strategy in the years to come...
...The fact is that there are barriers to withdrawal other than settler lobbies, just as there are opportunities for extrication other than the explicit choice by an Israeli government to negotiate and implement a territorial compromise...
...So, too, does stone-throwing on the West Bank, as also tense relations there between Arabs and settlers, as well as outright violence, Jewish violence against Arabs and Arab violence against Jews...
...Taking into account Jewish development of the area, Benvenisti pictures a radical transformation in the numerical balance between Arabs and Jews...
...But to say that last J* 'j, warnings have already come 46 that it is already too late, is a very ' fftrent matter...
...In his demographic discussion, Benvenisti places particular emphasis on the out-migration of 136,000 West Bank Palestinians between 1967 and 1982...
...In the long run, unless the fate of these areas is removed from the agenda of legitimate political debate, changing constellations of power inside and outside the country will continue to force the annexationist camp to struggle vigorously if it is to prevent movement towards withdrawal...
...Benvenisti acknowledges the par-ticular sensitivity to economic and political shifts of subsidized, suburban-type settlement...
...Hence the raging debate over his work and his conclusion often focuses on vilification of the messenger rather than examination of the message...
...These all work to prevent the integration of the West Bank and Gaza Strip into the psyche of the Israeli Jew...
...At most this represents three Knesset seats-and, as Yossi Sarid has observed, these votes would be divided among numerous parties, which already receive many of them...
...Cited in Ma'ariw August 14, 1984...
...Those who seek today to weigh the chances for peace must judge whether any Israeli government will be able to cut the ties that currently bind the areas occupied in 1967 to the Jewish state...
...A freeze in settlement activity is surely important, but at this juncture the more important consequence of anti-annexationist activity is that it prevents the second threshold from being crossed...
...The Likud may celebrate what it calls Benvenisti's "scientific proof that permanent absorption has already been accomplished, but there simply does not exist a theory of territorial integration or of metropolitan development or of migratory behavior that can reliably predict such absorption...
...indeed, nothing is absolutely final in politics...
...It thereby undermines the Gush Emunim effort to make annexation a non-discussed and a non-discussable fact of Israeli life...
...But, once again, it is Benvenisti himself who provides good reason to wonder whether this approach to the "massive settlement" of the West Bank has any better hope of success than the previous failures...
...Defense Minister Rabin has already moved to encourage a number of development projects in the West Bank, some new, some thai had been postponed by his predecessors, precisely in order to increase th number of jobs for Arabs of all levels of education...
...At the same time, employment opportunities in the Gulf states have fallen substantially over the last several years, due to economic slowdowns and political uncertainties Nor are they expected to improve significantly in the near future...
...the locus of political incapacity is widely seen to have shifted to Israel...
...Indeed, the idea that Je*ish settlements might literally crowd" Arabs out of the West Bank is debunked by Benvenisti himself, who comments that "the Arab population can be doubled within the existing built-up areas without causing congestion...
...These plans, such as the Master Plan for Settlement of Samaria and Judea, 1983-1986, and the Matei Benyamin Development Plan, predict that tens and even hundreds of thousands of Israelis will pour into the West Bank to take advantage of its subsidized land and housing...
...If they succeed, if they bring about a situation in which the majority of Israelis are as incapable and/or unwilling as the Gush Emunim settlers of imagining the country without "Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District," then-and only then-will annexation be complete...
...An^ ation on these terms makes absorption of the territories very ^ for non-ideological, centrist Israelis to accept, since they have every reason to believe that they can have their cake (the West Bank and Gaza) and eat it, too (by denying equal po...
...Yoram Peri, in his ground-breaking study of civilian-military relations in Israel, is only one of many respected and levelheaded analysts of the Israeli scene to predict the breakdown of parliamentary democracy, violent threats to the legitimacy of the political order, and explicit military intervention in politics in the event a serious movement towards a territorial compromise over the West Bank and Gaza is attempted...
...The motivation is partly economic: There are few other investment outlets for savings and remittances from relatives abroad...
...Gush Emunim has, in fact, expressed deep concern about the phenomenon of Arab labor in Jewish settlements, but has so far failed to stem the flow of Arab street-cleaners, sub-contractors, domestics, construction workers and laborers into the settlements...
...Benvenisti bases his projections on the assumption of what he calls "normal conditions...
...With this real scenario in mind, it becomes clear that doves who employ the demographic argument-that is, that an Arab population of 40 or 50 percent is not tolerable-are doing the dirty work of the annexationist right...
...so be it...
...Do hundreds of settlements...
...Since 1967...
...If, they say...
...It depends on ideas about war and peace, about religion and history, about feasibility, that are energetically debated in Israel every day...
...IAN LUSnCK There are many variations, but the theme itself is constant: Its names are partition or territorial compromise...
...While it is surely true that Israel's political options have been drastically affected by 17 years of creeping and not-so-creeping annexation, these flaws in the Benvenisti analysis must be understood before the choices that remain can be appreciated and thoughtfully considered...
...The Israeli Labor Party arid its dovish allies do not accept the Benvenisti argument...
...litical rights to the Arab inhabitants o the territories...
...Discarding the Demographic Argument What does this mean to those who seek to stop, and then to reverse, the annexation process...
...Though he is careful not to use absolutely categorical language about the irreversibility of annexation (he uses the term "quasi-permanence"), Benvenisti attacks the "naivete" of Labor Party spokesmen who, he says, ignore the fundamental changes that the Likud and its settler allies have introduced into Israel's relationship with the West Bank...
...That is what the effort to replace the words "West Bank" with the words "Judea and Samaria" is about, and that is why the Gush Emunim so much prefers unanswerable ideological/historical/religious arguments to political/security arguments, whose validity is open to reasoned discussion and subject to changing conditions...
...But after Likud policies of de facto annexation, implemented at a frenetic pace between 1977 and 1984...
...that Benvenisti offers his most distinctive analysis...
...Benvenisti, as well as those who echo his opinions, is clearly wrong to think that the curve of political possibilities simply stops at one critical '"point of no return...
...His crucial contention is that the 115,000 Jewish settlers that he estimates will live in the West Bank by oof) by throwing their electoral supto annexationist parties, will f ustitute an effective barrier to any C|jtical alternative espousing terri-¦Cial compromise...
...Benvenisti emphasizes the impact of the Likud policy of creating economic incentives for non-ideologically oriented Israelis to move to the West Bank...
...In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the barrier to its implementation was on the Arab side, reflecting a political incapacity to accept the partition of Palestine, to relinquish, finally and decisively, efforts to destroy the Jewish state...
...He n°tes that the per capita rate of build-tag starts among West Bank Arabs *as 30 percent higher than the rate *ithin Israel during the 1974-80 pe-n°d...
...But unless they are willing, by word and by deed, to make crystal clear their insistence on equal political rights for Arabs, and their refusal to accept the emergence of an effectively apartheidist "Jewish" state, they may get the worst of both worlds...
...As Yuval Elizur put it in Ma'ariv in November of 1983, the unwillingness of political leaders in Israel to greet the prisoner exchange with the PLO as even a "small step in the right direction" reflects "a fear-and not only in the Likud, but also, to some extent, in the Alignment-of the internal upheavals that will inevitably result from a breaking of the political ice...
...Their anger is sharpened by the fact that Benvenisti is one of their own, a familiar figure on Israel's left...
...Doves vvouki be left with two unpalatable alternatives: Either abandon the search for peace and live as well and as se-Lurelv as possible in a Zionist version of an apartheid state, or abandon the jjea df a Jewish state and seek peace and the realization of Zionist ideals in abi-national democracy...
...In their view, the claim that it may soon be "too lai to reverse the annexation process is useful as a spur to apathetic Israeli moderates or to distracted Americai .jsion-makers...
...In the end, he argues that it is not the weight of everyday facts, or the settlement in the West Bank of a specified "critical mass" of Jews, that will seal the area's fate, but the outcome of "domestic political struggles within the Israeli body poli" tic...
...But the analysis is also flawed, methodologically and conceptually...
...But they are not convincing evidence of what is actually likely to happen...
...There are, for example, parts of Galilee with substantially lower proportions of Jews than some heavily settled areas of the West Bank-yet no one raises the question of relinquishing western and central Galilee, "occupied" by Israel in 1948...
...Contrary to the thrust of Benvenisti's argument, and to the explicit claims of right-wing politicians who have sought to exploit his work, economic motives may actually be less successful than ideological motives as inducements to settlement...
...The challenge for Jewish doves, for the foreseeable future, is to preven the second threshold from being crossed by keeping the problem of tin Palestinian territories on Israel's agenda...
...Not only will the image of a large and politically vigorous Arab population dampen the enthusiasm of many Israelis for territorial expansion, but, if annexation does happen after all, such alliances will be decisive in the battle that will then ensue for the preservation of Israeli democracy...
...and Haaretz, June 26, 1984...
...The fact that middle-class Israelis have moved to the West Bank in search of larger apartments, detached houses, clean air and pleasant surroundings is, he asserts, a sign that annexation has already happened-and an instrument for its acceleration...
...Indeed, for the last several years the Galilee has had a growing Arab majority...
...that mem, that territorial compromise is irrvpov ble...
...The West Bank (including greater East Jerusalem) and Gaza might yet be separated from Israel-but that would be the result not of withdrawal, but of war or secession, and it would take not five to 15 years, but more like 30 or 50...
...See Peri's Between Battles and Ballots, Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp...
...Faced with such unattractive alternatives, it is not surprising that Labor Party spokesmen and Israeli peace activists vigorously and angrily reject Benvenisti's conclusions...
...But a closer look suggests a far less categorical conclusion...
...It is the choice between Israel as a Jewish state and Israel as a democracy that the Labor Party and Peace Now say they want to avoid...
...They will find themselves isolated, living in an anti-democratic Israel-hence in an Israel that is no longer meaningfully Jewish...
...His reasoning appears to be that Israelis would not be moving with their families across the Green Line if, in their view, the incorporation of the West Bank into Israel were not already an accomplished fact...
...Bold leadership is required, leadership willing to draw national attention to the costly and continuing resistance in the occupied territories, able to point to the existence of Arab leaders prepared to make real peace and to support for that effort by the United States, ready to pay whatever political and economic price is necessary to achieve a secure territorial compromise...
...Yet a growing number of Israe journalists and other observers-n^ of whom themselves favor lerritm compromise, and who enjoy betiL access to the changing realities on ground than most others-believe ih the "point of no return" has.Mndeej been passed...
...He considers the plan feasible only "if it is perceived as the top priority national project for the 1980s...
...This threshold is crossed when the question of the future of the West Bank and Gaza is removed from the political agenda, much as the future of the Western Galilee or the southern Negev was removed from the agenda by 1950...
...These plans are extraordinarily useful to the scholar interested in understanding the mind-set of sophisticated annexationists, and to critics eager to discover weaknesses in the annexationist program, and to Arabs anxious to protect themselves from threats to their property and livelihood...
...And even then, he admits, the success of the effort would remain directly dependent on continuing increases in US economic aid...
...6) In short, those who argue against annexation on the grounds that to annex the West Bank would mean to risk an Arab majority in the Jewish state-or, at least, an intolerably large Arab minority-are wrong, and getting more wrong...
...Indeed, according to Benvenisti, the electoral clout of the settlers and tin allies within Israel is so strong that n> government inclined to move towan meeting Arab demands can any longer emerge...
...Although the change that has taken place in the last seven years may not be irreversible, it has been substantial...
...Israel's current economic crisis does, indeed, threaten substantial Arab unemployment in the West Bank...
...The real danger to the anti-annexationist position is that a combination of despair and a commitment to the idea of a homogeneous Jewish state will lead to a de facto acceptance of annexation-an annexation undeclared, theoretically temporary, but increasingly acceptable even to liberally-minded Israelis who do ryn, after all, bear its direct costs...
...But these assim* tions have already proved mistek^ The national unity government has slowed its investment in settlements and the Israeli public, far from protest, ing, has repeatedly indicated to pollsters that it prefers cutting budgets for West Bank settlements to any other proposed cuts...
...organizations and the U.S...
...If anything, the gap has actually "idened since...
...His position, interpreted as a counsel of despair, is therefore seen not only as a betrayal, but also as a particularly potent weapon in the hands of the annexationist right...
...Nothing is absolutely final in politics, say Labor Party spokesmen...
...284-7...
...Further, the planners' predictions in 1983 that waves of new settlers would find or build their dream houses in the West Bank over the next 10 years, that a new "Silicon Valley" would emerge in the hills around Ariel, and/or that new roads would cut the driving time from the middle of the West Bank to Tel Aviv in half-all these assumed...
...The gap between the contending forces will ultimately permit the complete integration of the occupied territories...
...Benvenisti himself points out how unreliable Labor Party plans for Jewish settlement in the Jordan Valley were as predictors of what in fact happened...
...Considered statistically, those processes do not yet appear to have reached the point of no return...
...He simply insists that suggestions for the future that do not take account of the pern nence of Israeli rule in the West Ban and Gaza are exercises in fantasy...
...Hence their political significance is likely to be much smaller than might be supposed...
...These economic developments, together with Jordanian restrictions on the movement of West Bank Arabs over the bridges, have had the effect-duly noted in Benvenisti's analysis-of substantially reducing out-migration...
...Foremost among those who have a,: vanced this view has been Meron Benvenisti, former Deputy Mayor, Jerusalem and a noted Israeli dove Benvenisti has spent the last seven: years studying the annexation proa-and his conclusion is that no Israeli government can offer acceptable ten to Arab moderates without triggerin irresistable domestic opposition...
...Besides, if the only barrier to withdrawal from a territory is the political commitment of settlers who live there to the protection of their high standard of living, then withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, where no one predicts the Jewish presence will rise much above one percent, should be rather easy...
...employment opportunities in Israel or the West Bank...
...There is good reason to think that the first threshold has already been crossed...
...government to generate funds for economic development...
...And in June of 1984, military government sources reported that the balance of out-migration had dropped to zero...
...Furthermore, as increasing numbers of Israelis make this choice, it becomes less and less likely that images of the West Bank as "occupied Arab territory" will survive...
...Benvenisti offers no way out of ih present predicament...
...one ought not hide fro,, the reality...
...And, eventually, it will lose one such struggle...
...The fact that the first threshold has been passed means that the process of Israeli extrication from the territories will take decades, not years...
...One disgruntled planner in the Land Settlement Department of the Jewish Agency told me this spring, while the Likud government was still in power, that competition among different ministries, settler groups and bureaucratic interests, devotion to short-term political payoffs as against long-term effectiveness, and the categorical unwillingness of most . settlers to make the reality of the Arab presence a part of their planning, has created chaos in the West Bank and has already made the accomplishment of the objectives laid out in the Master Plan for Settlement of Samaria and Judea, 1983-1986, unattainable...
...It has nothing directly to do with laws, formal declarations or the number of settlers...
...to produce conclusions regarding the Judaization of the West Bank that are unwarranted...
...Rather than flatly predict its success, Benvenisti actually says no more than that the suburban settlement plan stands a "chance of being carried out with more success than the previous two plans...
...But there are good reasons to wonder if in fact Arab out-migration will not slow, or even stop altogether in the coming years, perhaps to be rt placed by a net inflow of returning "emigres...
...For example, although corporate investments are guaranteed by the terms of government loan programs against change in the political status of the area, private residential construction is not...
...But the "irreversibility" argument, at least insofar as it is based on Benvenisti's work, is also vulnerable in ways that Benvenisti's critics have not yet appreciated...
...This would reduce the land cultivated by Arabs, but it does seem inevitable that the economic future of the West Bank, whether ruled by Israelis or Palestinians, lies in industry and services rather than in agriculture...
...Anti-annexationist activity keeps the issue alive in Israeli society...
...Discussions of the changing landscape of the West Bank have rightly focused on the scope and pace of Jewish settlement...
...Thus, according to Benvenisti, the key element that affects Arab out-migrati^ is the level of employment opportune in the Arab world vs...
...If they are, peace efforts are doomcd-for no one believes that a peace settlement is possible if Jewish rule of the West Bank and Gaza is perpetuated...
...for it' it be accePte(l that it has be-•ome politically impossible for Israel L relinquish control over enough of ,(,e West Bank and Gaza to make a difference, the "'anti-annexationisf t-amp loses its raison d'etre...
...In this sense, however inaccurate it may be to label annexation "irreversible," the "options are still open" argument is also wrong...
...In order to dampen political unrest, the military government has always placed a very high priority oi maintaining full employment in the territories...
...And...
...The only way Israel could stabilize its internal order and preserve its democratic self-image for such a long period would be to engineer the "departure," sudden or gradual, of most of the Arabs who live in the incorporated territories...
...The future of the rest of the West Bank and Gaza, however, remains not only an issue on the Israeli agenda, but also the single greatest-and most divisive-question facing the society...
...What is at stake, after all, is not merely the survival of a government, but the survival of the political order itself...
...In the Jordan Valley, he writes, "The actual growth is 40 percent of the planned rate envisaged by the Jordan Valley Development Plan...
...The problem here is that it is exceedingly difficult to extrapolate the future from present trends-even if those trends were unambiguously in the direction of a growing Judaization of the area, which they are not...
...Nor, as 1 have noted, does Benvenisti make so categorical a claim...
...First: There is no prospect that any government in the foreseeable future, even if it could maintain its coalition majority intact, will be prepared to take the risks associated with a serious move towards territorial compromise...
...The first threshold on the way to "permanent" annexation has been passed, and territorial compromise is no longer an option open to an Israeli government unless that government is prepared to risk, and is capable of withstanding, massive and violent challenges to its authority...
...it includes 30 tables and is complemented by 13 carefully drawn maps...
...Such a trade, in one or another of its many forms, is the only proposal for ending the Arab-Israel conflict that has had support among both Arabs and Israelis...
...The book is divided into seven chapters...
...An ingrained presumption does exist within the Israeli body politic that respectable politicians cannot and will not question the political unity of the expanded municipality of Jerusalem...
...100,000 Jewish residents (including greater East Jerusalem), billions of dollars worth of infrastructural facilities, and a thick network of economic interests mean that the incorporation of the areas into Israel is "irreversible...
...To cross the second threshold-to transform the nation's cognitive and emotional maps in such a way that few Israelis are any longer willing or even able to imagine their country without the West Bank and Gaza-is a psychological task...
...The actual data that Benvenisti supplies, and the analysis of those data he reports, yield a different picture of the annexation process than is captured in the slogans often used as shorthand descriptions of his position...
...Democracies have, in the pasj, weathered such storms...
...The implicit expectation is that these new "settlers" will adapt their political views and voting behavior so as to insure Israeli control and eventual sovereignty over their new neighborhoods...
...continuing commitment of public funds to these ends...
...Arab allies, both inside Israe and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, must be enlisted in this struggle...
...One hundred thousand settlers, for example, means-subtracting children-50,000 voters...
...it forces the right to justify annexation to the non-ideological center, which means that it must come forward with specific and debatable arguments...
...The first threshold is the point at which an Israeli government interested in moving towards territorial compromise finds itself more worried about civic upheavals, violent disorders and challenges to the legitimacy of governmental authority than with possible defections from the governing coalition...
...That is why they place their primary emphasis not on the number of settlers or of settlements, but on the ideological re-education of Israelis...
...The momentum for the next 40 or 50 years may be in the direction of absorption, not extrication...
...As Abba Eban never tires of saying, de Gaulle led France out of Algeria despite 120 years of colonization, a wide range of vested economic interests, military opposition and the presence there of a million determined settlers...
...Settlements can remain even if Israeli authority is withdrawn...
...Especially prominent among the emigrants are young and middle-aged men with relatively high levels of education...
...Accordingly, opponents of annexation must not evaluate the effectiveness of their agitation and protests in terms of how many settlements are or are not built, or by whether this or that target for settlement or this or that extension of Israeli jurisdiction into the territories is accomplished...
...64) '"Therefore," he says in the Preface, "the whole political discussion, which is based on the premise that things are reversible, is irrelevant and has been overtaken by events...
...There are, after all, inevitable and unavoidable risks in moving to what is, officially, territory held temporarily by Israel as a "belligerent occupier...
...He seeks to demonstrate that with respect to the "third phase" of West Bank settlement, calling for subsidized suburban communities for non-ideological, upwardly mobile Israelis, the plans will work...
...The second, and more fundamental, threshold is the point at which the absorption of the territories into the State of Israel ceases to be problematic for the overwhelming majority of Israelis...
...Indeed, according to a Bank of Israel study issued this past summer, the negative migration balance of Arabs from the West Bank dropped to 110 in 1982-and to 4,000 in 1983...
...In short, there is considerable reason to take a skeptical view of the "irreversibility" thesis...
...As part of its commitment to the United States to enhance the "quality of life" of West Bank Arabs, the Peres government has also encouraged West Bankers to contact U.S...
...He also characterizes as "grossly exaggerated" World Zionist Organization predictions made in the Master Plan for Settlement of Samaria and Judea, 1983-1986-itself a more conservative version of its forerunner, the much-touted "Drobles Plan...
...But with the important exception of East Jerusalem, the second threshold has not yet been crossed...
...Second: The anti-annexationist camp must abandon what it has for too long seen as the sharpest arrow in its polemical quiver-the demographic argument...
...It is also political: Arabs believe that land on which homes have been built will I* less easily expropriated than land devoted to other uses...
...The data are over-interpreted Ian Lustick is a professor of government at Dartmouth College, and author of Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority...
...In the absence of an adequate theory, Benvenisti uses plans-the plans of those in the World Zionist Organization, the Likud government and Gush Emunim who have been trying with all their might to make annexation a reality...
...Just as non-ideological factors are more important than ideological motives in explaining and predicting Jewish settlement on the West Bank, so too will these factors determine Arab movement out of-and into-the West Bank...
...these have meant the trade of Palestinian rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for Arab recognition of Israel within guaranteed and defensible borders...
...When we consider the dynamics of all the forces as well as the time element, however, we can see that the critical point has passed...
...And that is why the annexationist camp seeks to stigmatize as "anti-National" any position that does not accept Jewish rule over the territories as an absolute imperative...
...But such images must survive in the consciousness of significant numbers of Israelis if a decision to withdraw is ever to be taken and implemented...
...He reports that even the scaled-down targets of the plan "would not be reached before the mid-1990s and probably not until later, if at all...
...Annexation on these terms also deprives those who favor s just peace with the Arabs of a potentially powerful and probably necessary political ally-the West Bank and Gaza Arabs themselves...
...But it is in his last chapter, "A Turning Point...
...He compared this debacle to the well known failure of countless plans to "Judaize the Galilee," none of which has succeeded in establishing an unassailable Jewish majority in that region...
...His article, "Considering the West Bank: Lessons from Ireland and Algeria," appeared in these pages in June 1982...
...Yet there are important respects in which, in fact, the message itself is flawed...
...In the West Bank, as in the Galilee, "things just haven't worked out as we predicted...
...While the right sets about convincing the Israeli public that the West Bank and Gaza are immutably a part of the state, it can leave it to the left to justify expulsion, the only acceptable alternative for those who believe both that withdrawal is impossible and that a large Arab population is inconsistent with the minimum requirements of Zionism...

Vol. 10 • March 1985 • No. 3


 
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