ISRAELI POLICY AND THE WEST BANK
Walzer, Michael
The municipal elections held on the Israelioccupied West Bank this April resulted in a decisive victory for a new generation of Palestinian nationalists. In town after town, the...
...in Lebanon, they have come into sharp and sometimes deadly conflict...
...The elections were by no means a simple PLO triumph...
...The nationalism of the right, unattractive as it was, was never an integral nationalism...
...And it has opened new opportunities for the Israeli right, whose leaders are insensitive to the difficulties of the occupation and favor a quick resolution of the strategic problem...
...For all these reasons, the occupation has now become a political and moral liability...
...they must be recognized and dealt with...
...It is a situation that makes for immobility and fear—the hallmarks of the present government...
...Waiting for a settlement, the Rabin government can set itself two goals: first, that military rule be recognized as an expedient to which no one, Arab or Jew, need be committed and by which no one need be compromised...
...Even the decisive defeat of the rightist-religious forces, however, would not solve the dilemma...
...o 236 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS...
...The alliance is still incomplete...
...This is what Levi Eshkol, then prime minister, called for in the immediate aftermath of the Six-Day War...
...In Jordan, where a majority of the people are Palestinians, every expression of Palestinian nationalism is brutally repressed...
...Hence also the dangerous alliance of rightist and ultraorthodox religious forces...
...Hence the new pressure to settle and annex the West Bank...
...The annexationists must be defeated, if not for the sake of peace, which Israel will still be waiting for when the fight is over, then for the sake of moral and political strength during the long wait...
...And then there must be the beginnings at least of normal relations, political and commercial...
...Now the right reaches out to that small group of religious zealots who call themselves the "Faithful" and through them to the established religious parties...
...Right now, these goals require a major political fight within Israel...
...There's also a new sense among local politicians that only hostility to the military authorities will make possible a political career later on...
...For after a withdrawal, Israel would once again be all border, with no possibility of defense except by preemptive attack, as in 1967...
...Paradoxically, it is the only one compatible with even a short-run maintenance of the occupation...
...it isn't easy at all, given the actual situation, to answer the question, what is to be done now...
...it had no traditions...
...These results were not entirely surprising, given the economic and political changes on the West Bank since 1967, but they make for a strange and striking situation...
...It means that the government must commit itself now to a future withdrawal...
...These are roughly the terms advocated by the Israeli left for a return to the pre-'67 lines, and they are sensible enough...
...West Bank politics is complicated, and both the Baathists and the Communists did well in certain towns...
...In Syria, Palestinian politics is rigidly controlled...
...second, that the prospect of withdrawal be linked with that of peace, so that it does not appear to the Arabs as the first triumph of an irredentist nationalism or to the Jews as a national defeat and disaster...
...The Israelis cannot solve it by themselves, for it is not of their own making...
...This means that they should neither settle nor annex the West Bank...
...the zealots, by their defiance of Israeli law, have aroused much resentment and hostility...
...But the dilemma of the occupation breeds and will continue to breed this sort of nationalism, as dangerous to Israel's future as is the nationalism of the PLO...
...But it is not avoidable now...
...How closely these three groups can work together is uncertain...
...The occupation will be hard in any case, but it is defensible so long as it is clearly seen to be temporary...
...It is easy to design scenarios of peace, especially when the scene is so empty of real prospects...
...ISRAEL IS CAUGHT between the liabilities of holding the West Bank and the liabilities of giving it up...
...It can't easily be said anymore that they are simply holding a piece of Jordanian territory, as they are holding Egyptian territory, pending a peace settlement...
...In town after town, the enlarged electorate (including women for the first time) turned out in record numbers and voted out the traditional leadership, the old notables whose authority dates back to Jordanian, British, and even Turkish times...
...Though much of the world seems to regard the Israeli occupation as the major source of Middle East tension, it is well to remember that the occupation followed upon 20 years of war, guerrilla war, blockade, and terrorism...
...It has not been without its costs all along, of course, both to Israeli society and to Israel's standing in the world, but these are far greater now...
...Then there must be an agreement to demilitarize the West Bank and to set up surveillance and control arrangements that both sides can regard as stable and safe...
...Indeed, withdrawal should be its goal, not some bitter pill it expects the great powers will one day make it swallow, but a central feature (and a well-publicized feature) of its own plan for peace...
...So long as the occupation lasts, nationalist feeling will intensify and with it the sullen hatred that already frightens, bewilders, and angers the young Israeli soldiers who must deal with it every day...
...At the same time, giving up the West Bank would involve major strategic risks, and no friend of Israel can recommend it without turning immediately to the concessions the Israelis would have to ask (have a right to ask) in return—not only from whatever political leadership takes over in Nablus, Hebron, and East Jerusalem but also, and more important, from the surrounding Arab states...
...Throughout that time, and ever since, the central issue has been the very existence of Israel...
...Already tension has 234 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS increased on the West Bank, after years of relative quiet...
...This alliance is a new factor in both Jewish and Israeli life, for right-wing Zionists, like the leftists, were always secular in their political commitments...
...And while Jordanian patriotism made little trouble, Palestinian nationalism will make a great deal more...
...This is due partly to the provocations of Israeli rightists, but even more to the new sense among the Arabs that they have found their own voice...
...All they can do, and what they have to do, is to hold open the possibilities of a future solution...
...perhaps by the time this article appears in print the government will have rallied support against them...
...But a settlement on these terms is not likely in the immediate future (and demilitarization is particularly problematic if the West Bank is to be constituted as an independent state...
...Only on the West Bank, under military occupation, is there a freely elected Palestinian leadership genuinely responsible to its own people...
...The Israelis have understandably avoided this fight, feeling harassed and threatened enough by external enemies...
...In Lebanon, the PLO operates without restraint (and intervenes on a large scale in the Lebanese civil war), but its various member groups exist by virtue of the force they can muster and iivide the refugee camps by mutual agreement: even where they have most room for maneuver, they have not constituted themselves as representative organizations...
...Sa'iqa, the terrorist group, and the Palestine Liberation Army are both in effect organs of the Syrian regime, their leaders handpicked, unable to act independently...
...But for the moment they are united in opposition to Israeli rule, and that opposition, newly legitimated by the Israeli-run elections, will make the occupation more and more difficult...
...The years of continued struggle and unremitting hostility have COMMENTS AND OPINIONS 235 since dulled the optimism he no doubt felt, but his policy was and is the right one...
...its creed was strange and its symbols were alien to most Jews...
...However liberal Israeli rule is, or precisely because of its liberality, there are certain to be periodic eruptions like the March riots, and these will require repressive measures...
...Therefore Arab recognition of Israeli sovereignty is the first prerequisite of Israeli withdrawal...
...The Israelis have in effect created the Palestinian "entity" they fear so much...
Vol. 23 • July 1976 • No. 3
