From Ireland and Algeria

...That is a point illustrated clearly by the finite—though lengthy— periods of British and French rule of Ireland and Algeria...

...Reforms that were implemented in the late 19th century were both too little and too late...

...Leading Israeli politicians have, ever since 1967, publicly condemned the idea of permanent incorporation of the West Bank and Gaza on ideological, demographic, pragmatic and even security grounds...

...It was the gradual unwillingness of Englishmen to continue to pay the price for ruling Ireland, not the physical expulsion of the English army by Irish guerrillas, that was decisive in gaining practical, and soon, formal independence for most of Ireland...

...Indeed, since 1967, their responsiveness to anti-Arab appeals has been a key facet of Israeli political life...

...The British and French cases can also be used to identify elements in the Israeli-Palestinian case which cannot be considered decisive in determining the permanent disposition of the occupied territories...

...Moreover, Israel faces and will continue to face a much weightier array of international pressures toward disengagement than those which impinged on either Britain or France...

...Insistent Palestinian demands for separation from the State will eventually be supported by significant numbers of Jews...

...Sharon accuses them of preventing Israel from presenting a united front to Arab opponents, of providing ammunition to critics of Israel in foreign capitals and at the United Nations, and of undermining the public's will to do what is necessary to sustain Israeli control over the administered areas...

...In such a context it will be easier for political moderates to argue that funds poured into the construction expansion and protection of settlements are being diverted from subsidy programs and badly needed housing projects and social services...

...As late as 1957, public opinion polls showed that fewer than 20 percent of all Frenchmen were willing to accept the permanent separation of Algeria from France...

...In March 1914, the army in Ireland mutinied at the prospect of enforcing home rule in predominantly Protestant Ulster...

...For a great gulf separates the predominantly Ashkenazi, upper-middle-class, well-educated settlers in the West Bank and Gaza from the masses of disadvantaged, poorly educated Sephardim, whose votes for the Likud and the National Religious Party have been so important for the ultranationalist camp in recent Knesset elections...

...In 1920 terrorism and violent disturbances broke out in southern Ireland...

...Learning from Analogies As noted, British disengagement from southern Ireland and French disengagement from Algeria do not and cannot demonstrate that Israel's relationship with the West Bank and Gaza will eventually resolve itself in a similar manner...

...Encouraged and protected by the French government and military administration, these settlers prospered, benefiting especially from the systematic transfer of Arab lands to their proprietorship...

...By the end of the war, home rule, though finally supported by majorities in both houses of Parliament, could no longer satisfy demands for independence from Britain advanced by Sinn Fein (the Irish nationalist forerunner of the IRA...

...By organizing rallies to denounce the dismissal of mayors, or by staging sympathy demonstrations in Ramallah or Beir Zeit, Jewish Israelis critical of government policies—so claims Sharon—offer encouragement to Arabs resisting the occupation...

...Conjuring the fall of the Second Commonwealth to silence Jewish advocates of "home rule" or "self-government" for the West Bank and Gaza cannot succeed on a long-term basis...

...The vast majority of Englishmen were still staunchly opposed to the final separation of what had come to be thought of as an integral part of their country...

...Rather, it now approximates a problem of separatism, or secession...

...France and Algeria: 1830-1962 Much of the same explanation can be offered for France's disengagement from Algeria in 1962...

...While neither British nor French history can be used to argue the inevitability of Israeli disengagement from the West Bank and Gaza, both of these cases do suggest that Sharon may be right in believing that the most dangerous threat to permanent Israeli control of these areas is Jewish, not Arab...

...By the second decade of the 20th century the "Irish Question" had become the "Damnable Question...

...to compel Irish signatures on a treaty for the partition of Ireland, the bare facts of the matter are that the coalition that had blocked Irish seces-sionism for 120 years finally collapsed...

...In the wake of these external shocks, public boredom with sovereignty issues, desires to solve important social and economic problems at home, frustrations with the intransigent and threatening demands of the settlers and horror at the brutal methods used to quell secessionist dissent in the outlying territories set the stage for the decisions to disengage...

...In actuality, the requirement that Muslims renounce Islam in order to become eligible for French citizenship made it impossible for all but a negligible minority to enjoy the rights of French citizens, including the right to vote...

...In these cases, the fatal flaw seems to have been a persistent unwillingness to extend opportunities to the indigenous population for full and equal participation in the life of the central state...

...Yet this was but the prelude to long, indeed ghastly, struggles for economic and social reforms...

...Though Irish nationalists were at the brink of military defeat by the time negotiations between the Sinn Fein "terrorists" and the British government began in July 1921, and though Prime Minister Lloyd George could still use a threat of "war, and war within three days...

...But World War I had left Britain emotionally exhausted...

...It is in that context that the disposition of the West Bank and Gaza will emerge as a "Jewish problem" of unmanageable dimensions...

...Britain and Ireland: 1801-1922 After centuries of conquest, land expropriation and settlement by English and Scottish Protestants, Catholic Ireland was formally and legally incorporated into the United Kingdom by the Act of Union of 1801...

...Lower-class Israelis will feel the pinch first and hardest...

...But if Arik Sharon is more concerned with Jewish opposition to de facto annexation than he is with Arab resistance, he is justified by more than the details of the fall of the Second Commonwealth...

...There followed a series of political campaigns to sever the links that bound Ireland to England...

...Long struggles, both peaceful and violent, pit natives of the outlying territories (Irish Catholics, Muslim Arabs and Berbers, and Palestinian Arabs) against governments that are either supportive of ultranationalistic and settler ambitions, or politically unable to oppose their programs for fear of punishment by an electorate with chauvinist tendencies...

...Still, "separation" or "secession" (of southern Ireland in 1922 and Algeria in 1962) did take place...

...The Minister of Defense tells his audiences that "there is no Arab problem that cannot be solved—but they [domestic critics of government policy] are creating a Jewish problem...

...Indeed, this was precisely and explicitly the strategy of Menachem Begin and the Irgun...

...The failure of Britain to rescue millions of Irishmen from starvation and disease during the potato famine reflected the fact that though Catholic Ireland was legally a part of the same country as England, Wales and Scotland, it was not treated as such by their peoples or the British government...

...Still, the settlers, the vanguard of the annexationist movement, are increasingly aware of how risky it may be to depend on the support they have drawn from this segment of Israeli society...

...When social and economic reforms were threatened by the taxes and inflation associated with the war, both businessmen and trade unionists began to question the importance of "Alg?rie Franchise...

...some suggest that disengagement might be less feasible in the Israeli-Palestinian case, others suggest the opposite...

...More intensively colonized than any other French dominion, Algeria was annexed as an integral part of France in 1871...

...Neither Algeria nor Ireland constituted security problems for France and Britain on the scale of those which Arab control of the West Bank and Gaza might pose for Israel...

...Finally, when ultranationalist settlers and sympathetic army officers violently challenged the authority of the state, conservatives, who had traditionally allied themselves with the settler lobby in parliamentary maneuvers and public debate, moved to accept de Gaulle's leadership and, subsequently, his decision to permit Algerian independence...

...When their claims have conflicted with the perceived needs of Jews, as in matters pertaining to the use and ownership of land, they have invariably been overridden...

...In France, despite the rhetoric of "assimilation," "integration" and the "civilizing mission," repeated attempts to repeal or reform discriminatory laws and taxes imposed upon Algerian Muslims failed...

...The Fourth Republic lurched through six governments from 1954 to 1958...

...However, the movements to repeal the Act of Union and establish "home rule" for Ireland, though they disrupted 19th-century British politics as did no other issues, were themselves stymied by the dedicated opposition of Irish Protestants, allied with right-wing political parties and anti-Catholic workers in English and Scottish cities...

...But as different as these cases are, and as uncertain as the ultimate disposition of the West Bank and Gaza must remain, comparison with the experiences of Britain and France provides intriguing guidelines for thinking about the dynamics of Israel's relationship to these territories...

...For circumstances are bound to arise which repeatedly bring the Jewish public face to face with the costs incurred in enforcing Israeli sovereignty over areas with large and hostile populations...

...In Paris, coalitions among European settlers, French businessmen with interests in North Africa, and right-wing parties drawing upon jingoist lower-class and lower-middle-class sentiment, doomed successive efforts to introduce comprehensive reforms of France's Algerian policies...

...The revolt in 1954 erupted against a background of a final failure, in 1947, to implement legislation providing genuine opportunities for the assimilation of Algerian Muslims into the French political system...

...The drum of anti-Arab ultranationalism will have to be beaten more or less continuously, but its effectiveness in consolidating support for costly policies will almost certainly diminish...

...In sum, France abandoned Algeria not because the French army could not handle the "Arab problem," but because the rising costs of continued rule undermined and eventually broke apart the coalition that had made "Alg?rie Frangaise" a necessary condition for any government's survival...

...The basic character of the political problems involved in the three cases is strikingly similar...

...Useful analogies to Israel's relationship to the West Bank and Gaza are not, however, likely to be found by examining typical cases of imperial control of far-flung dominions...

...Of course, from ideological, political and security standpoints, withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza will be enormously more difficult than withdrawal from Sinai...

...What Israel may eventually do, of course, is what the Labor Party has long advocated and what Lloyd George indeed managed to do in 1921—orchestrate a compromise (the Allon plan, equivalent to the treaty dividing Ireland into North and South) that gives practical independence to the bulk of the disputed territory while calming the domestic political firestorm by maintaining sovereignty over crucial and heavily settled areas (East Jerusalem, Gush Etzion, the Jordan Valley—Ulster...

...Large budgets in almost every ministry, dedicated to the goal of de facto annexation, are sustained by expenditures to improve the quality of life in Israel that are lower than they might otherwise be...

...Weary of bloodshed and strife, public opinion in England turned strongly against the brutal measures adopted by government forces for Ireland's pacification...

...Unlike the Palestinians, neither the Irish nor the Algerians entertained irredentist ambitions with respect to the core territory of the ruling state...

...Those who, like Sharon, favor eventual annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, must realize that their struggle to preserve Israeli rule in those areas will have to continue long after the appropriate legislation has been passed and a strong Jewish presence established...

...How and why they did is of considerable interest in considering Israel's situation today...

...Because of infrastructural and other costs over the "green line," each housing unit in a West Bank settlement means several fewer flats in Tel Aviv or Haifa...

...Only the outbreak of World War I saved Great Britain from a civil war...

...These agreements provided for the separation of Algeria from France, setting the stage for the FLN to declare the country's immediate independence...

...They only served to intensify demands by Irish Catholics for self-government...

...In other words, even if the "Arab problem" is itself contained, the "Jewish problem" will remain...

...The demands of non-Jewish citizens (Israeli Arabs) have accordingly never been given a high priority...

...One million more emigrated...

...This has permitted Sharon to tighten Israel's grip on the territories, without articulating a long-term solution to the "Arab problem...

...International isolation, risks of war, burdensome and unpleasant reserve duty, economic, social and cultural strain, political authoritarianism, police brutality, etc., will combine with new issues and problems, particularly in the wake of severe external shocks...

...That, and that alone, would have made possible social and economic legislation responsive to the needs of the native population, thereby facilitating the development of strong new identities and loyalties...

...Between 1845 and 1851 at least 1.5 million Irishmen died, of starvation and disease as a result of the great potato famine and British economic and social policies...

...There appear to be only two cases in which powerful democratic states have attempted to absorb territories with relatively large hostile populations—Great Britain's struggle to incorporate Ireland into the United Kingdom, and France's efforts to find a way to absorb Algeria into the French body politic...

...But in the long run, repression, even combined with piecemeal reforms, as it was in Britain and France, will not provide a stable basis for an accommodation of interests between hostile populations...

...Following the French conquest in 1830 and its gradual pacification, European settlers flocked to Algeria...

...This is not at all to say that Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza is inevitable...

...Unless Israel implements mass expulsions of Arabs, or disengages from the areas within which most Arabs live, the society will be faced with a fundamental choice: maintain democratic norms and sacrifice Zionism, or maintain the Zionist character of the State by sacrificing democratic norms...

...This is, of course, increasingly the case with respect to Israel and the West Bank and Gaza...

...The Likud, which is explicitly annexationist, has expanded that foothold...

...Political expendiency, which led Israel's Labor Party to accommodate the hawkish tendencies of the National Religious Party in order to protect its political flanks, is what gave the ultranationalist camp its first foothold in the West Bank and Gaza...

...If the West Bank and Gaza are absorbed into Israel, a Palestinian Arab minority approaching 40 percent will materialize, with a birth rate nearly twice that of Jewish Israelis...

...The experiences of these two countries have an enormous amount to teach us about what may lie in store for the State of Israel in its efforts to maintain control of territories acquired in 1967...

...together these will distract former supporters of annexation from their commitment to Jewish sovereignty in all the Land of Israel...

...The separation of Algeria from France was not the result of the defeat of the French army by Algerian guerrillas...

...examining the change permits some plausible guesses about the circumstances under which adjustments in Israel's relationship to the West Bank and Gaza, though now difficult to imagine, might take place...

...But when those costs do rise, whether because of international pressure, Palestinian resistance, economic crisis or military defeat, hard choices, among Zionist, democratic and economic objectives, will be unavoidable...

...These cases also suggest that the West Bank and Gaza are not likely to be absorbed without building into the Israeli political arena strong centrifugal forces...

...That Israel will ultimately succumb, not in wars with the Arabs, but to "wars of the Jews," is a common theme of Israeli political discourse...

...In the French case, however, when the idea of partitioning Algeria was mooted as a way to preserve French sovereignty over heavily European areas, de Gaulle rejected it...

...Horrified by revelations of brutal methods used by French officers and men to combat the FLN, many intellectuals, clerics and professionals declared their support for Algerian self-determination...

...Examples of this dynamic can be found throughout the whole history of decolonization...

...Many important differences exist...

...Great Britain's Pyrrhic victory in World War I, and France's humiliation in World War II and in Indochina, encouraged the British and French peoples to discount appeals based on bigotry and ultranationalism in favor of arguments focusing on the real costs of continued rule over hostile populations...

...The social distance between settlers and Sephardic slum dwellers is of potential political significance because of a clash of economic interests...

...Permanence, at any rate, is a long time...

...In this context the European settlers (150,000 in the 1850s, over one million by the 1950s) emerged as the real rulers of Algeria and its seven million (1954) Muslim inhabitants...

...These external shocks, combined with the staggering weight of the defense budget, and resentment against obstreperous, greedy, even seditious settlers, helped the Likud government overcome opposition from the extreme right and agree to complete withdrawal from the peninsula...

...Yet in a referendum on the question of self-determination for Algeria held in January 1961, a majority of 75 percent voted "yes...

...Nor, in contrast to Britain and France, has Israel declared these areas (apart from East Jerusalem) to be legally integral and inseparable parts of the state...

...Whether and how to absorb heavily populated and hostile territories emerge as central political issues that subject the political system to chronic and increasingly severe strain...

...Political resistance or revolt by the indigenous population in the controlled territory has been an important spur to disengagement, but it has usually been decisive only when it (or outrage at the state's reaction against it) has led important groups within the home country to support disengagement...

...After nearly 30 years of struggle, Catholics secured limited political rights...

...Implementation of home rule was conveniently postponed "for the duration...

...Nor do the best studies of the Irish and Algerian questions conclude that attempts to incorporate those territories into Britain and France were bound to fail...

...The Second Temple fell, it is said, not because the Romans were able to defeat the Jews, but because the Jews defeated themselves by internecine quarrelling...

...For example, a settler community equalling 13 percent of the total population was not, in and of itself, enough to ensure French rule over Algeria...

...By the end of 1958 the French military had all but eliminated armed resistance within Algeria and had effectively sealed its borders against incursions by the FLN's "external army...

...Constituting 14 percent of Israel's population, Israeli Arabs (those living inside the 1949 armistice lines) have been given the clear message that if they behave themselves they will be permitted to continue living within the borders of the country...

...In time, the permanent absorption of Ireland and Algeria by Britain and France came to be seen as accomplished and irreversible facts, enshrined in both law and myth...

...It is far easier to imagine Israel enforcing the subordination of Arabs through increasingly stringent techniques, especially in view of Israel's relative success in controlling the Arab minority within the green line and the general effectiveness of its repressive apparatus in the occupied territories...

...From that point on, efforts to build a common sense of political community were probably doomed...

...Thus Arik Sharon's concern with Jewish opinion is well placed...

...The bloody, enduring conflict in Britain over the future of Northern Ireland, compared to the close and peaceful relations between France and Algeria, suggest that there are long-term costs to political expediency when dealing with entrenched nationalist movements...

...Political change in those countries resulted in the reversal of "irreversible" policies and the surrender of sovereignty over "permanently incorporated territories...

...Meanwhile Palestinians have been unable to raise appreciably the costs of annexation...

...Such was the case in both Britain and France...

...On the other hand, the permanence of Israel's hold over these areas is not nearly as widely supported within the Israeli political arena as was the integrity of the "Union" in Britain or the principle of "Alg?rie Frangaise" within the Third and Fourth Republics (1871-1958...

...FROM IRELAND AND ALGERIA Lessons of the British and French experience IAN LUSTICK Arik Sharon is confident that Arab unrest in the West Bank and Gaza Strip can be controlled and ultimately squelched...

...He does not worry about the "Arab problem...

...After the shock of the Yom Kippur War, with its high casualties, and the shock of Sadat's visit to Jerusalem, the spectrum of conceivable and implementable options widened dramatically...

...In the modern era, underground movements and popular uprisings have seldom driven powerful states from valued territories...

...From a Zionist standpoint it will be more necessary than ever to exclude Arabs from effective participation in the life of the State...

...The former would entail drastic adjustments in the allocation of national resources to meet Arab needs, and would be possible only to the extent that Arabs and Jews begin to share a common set of loyalties and aspirations...

...By the middle of 1956, nearly half a million French troops were fighting in Algeria to crush the rebellion...

...In light of these and other differences it might be argued that disengagement is a less likely scenario for Israel than it was for Britain and France, and that if implemented, it would precipitate even more political disruption at home than did withdrawal from southern Ireland or Algeria...

...More often, it has been the weariness of the "metropolitan" electorate that has compelled disengagement from areas ruled against the will of the indigenous population...

...instead, by their acts of terror and resistance, they sought to break the will of the British people to support the continued presence of British troops in Palestine...

...After desperate attempts to stem the tide against withdrawal, nearly one million French settlers sailed for France...

...How open can Israeli Jews become to the idea of Arab Israelis playing a full and equal role in their society...

...For the great majority of the French people, more than a century of declarations and laws, as well as the vast scale of European settlement, had made French withdrawal from Algeria inconceivable...

...A similar dynamic has already occurred in Israel...

...If and when the costs of the absorption of the West Bank and Gaza rise, these budgets will decline further...

...Thus even the presence of 100,000 settlers in the West Bank (11 percent of its population) would not, in and of itself, be a reason to believe Israel can never withdraw from that area...

...But they also know that they can never expect to share political power with Jews, to participate in the social, cultural and economic development of the society on an equal footing with Jews, or to find, among Jews, any particular solicitude for their needs and aspirations...

...But France, militarily strong in Algeria, was politically weak at home...

...Against the backdrop of enormous war losses and the staggering problems of post-war reconstruction, many leading Conservatives had lost their former enthusiasm for the demands of die-hard Irish-Protestant Unionists...

...In principle, French citizenship was open to indigenous Algerians...

...They did not seek to drive the British army from Palestine...

...Israel is a Zionist state...

...Accordingly, Labor Party leaders are castigated for criticizing occupation policies on the floor of the Knesset...

...It had severely weakened the Liberal Party, helped to paralyze English parliamentary life, and appeared to threaten the very fabric of British society...

...If attainable, such an outcome would probably be irresistible for some future Israeli government...

...The process of de facto annexation has gone too far, the disposition to consider these areas part of the national patrimony is too deeply rooted, the extent of Jewish settlement too great and the security and political interests at stake in their ultimate disposition too important, for the problem to be thought of as one of "decolonization...

...In the course of the eight-year conflict at least 500,000 Algerian Muslims were killed, compared to 10,000 European settlers and 20,000 French soldiers...

...For disengagement from these areas to occur, boredom, frustration, and/or economic self-interest must reduce the enthusiasm of lower-class Sephardic Jews for the maintenance of Jewish sovereignty over the "whole Land of Israel," and convince them as well to abandon the ballot box as a vehicle for anti-Arab sentiment...

...Consideration of these cases is also a good antidote to the propaganda and settlement campaign of the Likud government, which seeks to convince the Israeli public as well as the rest of the world that bulldozers, settlers and declarations can permanently determine (if they have not already sealed) the fate of the West Bank and Gaza...

...In 1971 the Labor government was unwilling, perhaps unable, to respond positively to Egyptian offers to negotiate partial withdrawal in Sinai...

...At bottom this means that the state functions as an expression and instrument of the Jewish national movement...

...But English Protestants did not really accept Irish Catholics as equals...

...Settler lobbies and highly nationalistic right-wing parties, drawing support from moderately racist segments of the lower classes, strive for absorption of the territories without full assimilation of the native populations...

...It is a state with a Jewish mission...

...These differences would suggest that Israel's disengagement from the West Bank and Gaza might be considered less difficult to orchestrate, and more likely to take place, than were British and French withdrawals from southern Ireland and Algeria...

...They foundered on the refusal of most Frenchmen to consider a future in which Arabs and Berbers would have as large a role in their society and as much claim on their sympathies and resources as Bretons or Parisians...

...Fifteen months later, 90 percent of the French electorate, in another referendum, approved the Evian agreements ending the Algerian war...