“End the Occupation!” This is the cry of Israel’s critics, on campus and elsewhere. It’s a great slogan. It’s short, it’s simple, and it sounds reasonable enough.
After all, Israel’s continued military occupation of much of the Gaza Strip and West Bank is a terrible thing. While the Palestinian Authority controls the cities and towns where upwards of 90 percent of Palestinians live, the continued Israeli occupation of much of the remainder of the territories restricts Palestinian freedom of movement and contributes to Palestinian despair and economic distress.
Why then, one might ask, doesn’t Israel simply withdraw from the Occupied Territories? Indeed, one might conclude that Israel’s refusal to do so is evidence that the Jewish State has only itself to blame for its conflict with the Palestinians. This is precisely the reaction that the slogan “End the Occupation” is intended to elicit.
Achieving an end to the occupation is a laudable goal. Indeed, most Israelis are also sick of the occupation. But it’s no longer clear, even to many who had wholeheartedly supported the peace process, that withdrawing from the Occupied Territories would end the conflict. Many Israelis today fear that ending the occupation would only make Israel weaker and less secure.
It’s worth remembering that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict predates the occupation. The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in 1964, a time when the West Bank and Gaza Strip were occupied respectively by Jordan and Egypt, and yet its stated aim was Israel’s destruction.
Israel only found itself in control of the Occupied Territories in 1967, as a result of a war that began against the backdrop of Arab leaders’ public vows to annihilate the Jewish State. And one could make a strong argument that Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank is what made peace with the Palestinians possible. It gave Israel something that it could trade for peace, something that the Palestinians wanted and that Israel could actually afford to give up–as opposed to its existence, something Israelis understandably considered non-negotiable.
By demanding that Israel unilaterally withdraw from the Occupied Territories, with no reciprocal peace agreement from the Palestinians, Israel’s critics insist that Israel take a step backwards in time to 1967, a time when there was no occupation, but also no peace.
Only a negotiated settlement can truly put an end to the occupation. And unfortunately it is Palestinian actions that are largely to blame for the failure to conclude such an agreement.
The basic premise of the peace process was that Israel would exchange land for peace–an end to the occupation in exchange for an end to the conflict. In surrendering assets that could be used against it, Israel was making a tremendous leap of faith.
There is little doubt that, if it had ever possessed sufficient strength, the PLO would have long ago used force to end Israel. The land for peace formula, however, was predicated upon several key assumptions: 1) That the Palestinians had accepted the immutable reality of Israel’s existence. 2) That given this reality, the Palestinians realized that the best outcome they could realistically hope for was the creation of a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, alongside Israel. 3) That the establishment of a Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would therefore not pose any threat to Israel.
The peace process died because Palestinian actions led Israelis to call into question these assumptions. It was understood that the Palestinians would refrain from violence against Israel, yet the Palestinian Authority incited violence whenever it felt it was in its best interest to do so. It was understood that lands surrendered to the Palestinians would not become safe havens from which terrorists could launch attacks against Israel, and yet this is exactly what they have become. It was understood that the newly established Palestinian Authority would be demilitarized so as not to pose a threat to Israel, but the Palestinians quickly accumulated weapons far in excess of what they were permitted under the Oslo Accords, and then turned these weapons against Israelis. More recently Israeli anxieties were fueled by the seizure of a vessel smuggling weapons to the Palestinian Authority that yielded a cache of Katyusha missiles that if fired from Palestinian territory could hit Israel’s large cities.
Perhaps most importantly, even when the peace process was moving forward, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was wont to make statements that led many Israelis to question his commitment to coexistence. Arafat would draw analogies between his accords with Israel and the Prophet Muhammad’s accord with the Qureysh tribe in Arabia, which was abrogated shortly thereafter, with Muhammad then proceeding to defeat the Qureysh.
Of course, Israel is not without blame for the failure of the peace process. Israel’s continued expansion of Jewish settlements and the continued presence of its military checkpoints in the territories were both tremendously destructive to chances for peace. Israel also dragged its feet on transferring land to Palestinian control. Even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s offer to the Palestinians at Camp David was not as generous as Israel’s supporters have claimed. (But it was a serious and brave proposal containing many of the essential elements of a just settlement, and it certainly could have been improved upon had the Palestinians negotiated in good faith and had they not launched their ill-fated Intifada.)
It must be remembered, however, that it was Israel, and Israel alone, that was expected to surrender tangible assets as part of the peace process. And it takes much more faith to give strategic assets than it does to receive them. It takes much more faith to empower your adversary than it does to be empowered.
Even some Palestinians concede the devastating impact that Palestinian actions have had on Israeli support for peace. In remarks cited in The New York Times, Sari Nusseibeh, the PLO’s commissioner for Jerusalem affairs and a true voice for peace, hit the nail on the head. He said: “We’re telling the Israelis we want to kick you out: it’s not that we want liberation, freedom and independence in the West Bank and Gaza, we want to kick you out of your home. And in order to make sure that the Israelis get the message, people go out to a disco or restaurant and blow themselves up. The whole thing is just crazy, ugly, totally counterproductive. The secret is to get Israelis to side with you. We lost our allies.”
Many Israelis still believe that, even if Arafat is not a trustworthy partner, Israel can still conclude an agreement with him, and that it is in Israel’s best interest to do so. Others, however, have concluded that negotiating with Arafat is futile and support a unilateral withdrawal from portions of the territories. Few, however, advocate a complete unilateral withdrawal to 1967 borders as is implicitly demanded by the slogan “End the Occupation.” Still others question the wisdom of surrendering any more territory to Arafat’s regime, whether through unilateral actions or negotiations. Given the present situation, none of these stances is wholly unreasonable. (Of course, there is also an influential minority of Israelis who use Palestinian misbehavior as a justification for occupying Palestinian lands forever as part of a greater Israel.)
I still believe that negotiations provide the best chance to escape the current intolerable state of affairs. And I still believe that a just final settlement will necessarily entail the establishment of a viable Palestinian state, the removal of most Israeli settlements from the Occupied Territories, and a shared Jerusalem.
But no reasonable person can fault a country for its reluctance to hand over strategic ass
ets to an adversary that implies its intention to use those very assets to vanquish the giver. Certainly, a country cannot be expected to surrender the very assets it had hoped to trade for peace to such an adversary in exchange for nothing, not even a promise.
Faced with cant like “End the Occupation!” Israel’s supporters on campus should shout back, “End the behavior that makes even the most peace-loving Israelis afraid to end the occupation!” But that’s not a very catchy slogan.
