ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sept. 3, 2019. (PHOTO CREDIT SEBASTIAN SCHEINER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June/July 2020, pp. 13-14
Israel and Judaism
By Allan C. Brownfeld
IN THE RECENT ISRAELI ELECTION, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu campaigned aggressively on annexing portions of the occupied West Bank while his opponent, Benny Gantz, opposed unilateral annexation. Now, with a “unity” government and Netanyahu remaining prime minister, to be followed by Gantz, the agreement between Netanyahu and Gantz says that annexation should proceed in a way that does not harm Israel’s interests.
The Economist notes that, “Mr. Netanyahu will probably have the final say…Annexation of territory that the Palestinians regard as part of their future state would probably kill any hope of a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict and could ignite violence. Mr. Netanyahu will obviously want to avoid that, but he may feel he needs to move before November, when his chum Mr. Trump may be voted out of office.”
In an historic reversal of U.S. policy, the Trump administration announced in November 2019 that it does not view Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal. The policy change was announced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He declared, “The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.” Netanyahu hailed the change in U.S. policy, saying, “this policy reflects an historical truth—that the Jewish people are not foreign colonialists in Judaea and Samaria. In fact, we are exiled Jews because we are the people of Judaea.”
The dramatic change in U.S. policy was challenged by 106 House Democrats in a letter to Pompeo, organized by Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI), who is Jewish. They called upon him to “immediately” reverse his position. The letter was signed by 12 committee chairs, including veteran Reps. John Lewis (D-GA) and Maxine Waters (D-CA).
If Israel proceeds with annexation, it may bring an end to its “special relationship” with the U.S. and with the American Jewish community. It would also challenge the idea that Israel has bipartisan support and confine its embrace to right-wing Republicans.
For Israel’s right-wing, annexation has long been a key part of its agenda. This has been the case since the area was captured and occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War. East Jerusalem was the first part of the West Bank to be annexed following the 1980 Jerusalem Law. Israeli law has been applied to Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank leading to a system of “enclave law” and claims of “creeping annexation.” Netanyahu first announced that the Jordan Valley was “off the table” for negotiation with the Palestinians in November 2013. Israel also began to apply their Labor Laws in Area C that same year.
In 2009, Netanyahu endorsed the two-state solution. But, ahead of the April 2019 election, he stated his intention of unilaterally annexing Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Failing to form a government, Netanyahu called for snap Knesset elections to be held in September. Annexation of the Jordan Valley, first proposed in the 1967 Allon Plan, was announced by Netanyahu in September 2019 as his own plan. Targeted to win over support, on Sept. 16, 2019, in an interview with Israeli Army Radio, Netanyahu said, “I intend to extend sovereignty on all the settlements and the settlement blocs including sites that have security importance or are important to Israel’s heritage.” He said he had received a green light from the Trump administration. The area Netanyahu outlined to be annexed is roughly 22 percent of the West Bank.
The next day there was international condemnation of the proposal from Palestinians, the Arab League, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Kingdom, among others. The U.N. declared that any Israeli move to impose its administration over the Palestinian territory would “be illegal under international law.” The EU said there would be a “strong response” if annexation proceeds.
Liberal Zionists emphasized the damage to Israel’s international reputation if annexation takes place. Americans for Peace Now warned that Israel will become a “pariah” and J Street’s Dylan Williams said, “U.S. leaders should make clear that it’d be nearly impossible to maintain the same special relationship with an Israel that abandons a commitment to democracy.” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) condemned the annexation plan as the “death-knell of the two-state solution,” and an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.-VT) called annexation “recklessness that goes against U.S. interest in peace.”
According to the New Israel Fund, “Annexation would be an existential threat to—and perhaps even a death-knell for Israeli democracy.” Yair Lapid, the opposition leader in the Knesset, said that if annexation takes place, “…the peace agreement with Jordan will be canceled. There will be irreversible damage to the relationship with the Democratic National Committee and Jewish communities in the U.S.”
Yael Patir of J Street said that Lapid’s warning that annexation will damage Israel’s relationship to the Democratic Party and American Jewry “is not a notion that is understood in Israel.” She and Jeremy Ben-Ami, who leads J Street, called for a campaign to convince Israelis that annexation will threaten these most valuable assets. J Street is “publicly and privately” urging Joe Biden, whom it has endorsed for president, to “reiterate” and “repackage” his opposition to annexation and to make it clear that he won’t accept annexation as president. Biden has said, “Israel, I think, has to stop the threats of annexation and settlement activity” because they will undermine “support for Israel in the U.S., especially among young people of both political parties.”
Ben-Ami also called on right-wing elements of the pro-Israel lobby to speak out against annexation. In a Zoom briefing, he addressed the question of AIPAC’s stance on this question. “For anyone who is watching us, who belongs to AIPAC or supports AIPAC, I ask you to ask them. It is notable, the silence of AIPAC and many other right-of-center organizations, on the question of annexation—when they have tried to say through the years that they support two states.” He said it is time to end a policy of “Israel, right or wrong.”
In Ben-Ami’s view, Democrats might be able to convince Israelis by threatening to rule out any U.S. aid for annexation. He said, “We do not think that the U.S. should foot the bill for anything that has to do with annexation” and suggested Israel might lose the “diplomatic immunity” the U.S. provides for its human rights violations at the U.N. and elsewhere if annexation goes through.
Israel promotes itself as a “democracy,” but by Western standards this is hardly the case. Palestinians in the occupied territories have almost no legal rights and Palestinians within Israel are second-class citizens. Israel does not believe in genuine religious freedom, even for Jews. There is an official state religion and government-paid chief rabbis are ultra-Orthodox. Reform Rabbis cannot perform weddings, conduct funerals, or preside over conversions. There is more religious freedom for Jews in any Western country than in Israel. In the view of some observers, annexation would simply make clear to the world that Israel is not the kind of democratic society it proclaims itself to be, and which many Americans of all religions think it is.
Professor Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania, in his new book Paradigm Lost, calls for policymakers to give up the “false belief” in the two-state solution and acknowledge the struggle for equal rights in a one-state reality. In his view, annexation would create a single state, which already exists on the ground. The effort of those who believe in democracy would then properly turn to calling for equal rights for all of the state’s inhabitants. The alternative would be apartheid.
In his talk at the Middle East Institute in December 2019, Lustick explained that he was “an avid and early supporter” of the Zionist state for nearly 50 years. But, in the last decade, he came to believe that he and other two-state advocates were being misled as Israel took over the West Bank and Jerusalem, “territories no Israeli government will ever withdraw from…Netanyahu has used liberal Zionists to proclaim that a two-state solution is possible, when it is a delusion. Entertaining that possibility is actually playing a sucker’s game into what the right wants, which is a constant feeling of that carrot, that maybe we get two states, and meanwhile you send the whole thing into decades and decades and decades of apartheid.”
You send the whole thing into decades and decades and decades of apartheid.
“What I want in Palestine,” Lustick said, “is something that Jews and Arabs can live with and that honors the principles of democracy and equality…The demographic argument is ‘racism’ that goes to the heart of Zionism. Guess what folks, there are more Arabs than Jews west of the Jordan…Where a state dominates Arabs for the sake of Jews, you are going to subsidize the domination of the country by the clerical right.”
Some have argued for years that Israeli plans for annexation merely publicize the fact that there is only one state in Israel and Palestine, with vastly different rights for Jews and Palestinians, and it’s been that way for 50 years. The struggle should be for the equal rights of all the inhabitants of a single state, according to this view. As former White House aid Dennis Ross declared on Twitter, “It’s one state. Democracy and equal rights for all—or apartheid.”
Many Israelis, concerned about their country’s direction and treatment of Palestinians, lament its departure from Jewish moral and ethical values. Prof. David Shulman of the Hebrew University, notes that, “No matter how you look at it, unless our minds have been poisoned by the ideologies of the religious right, the occupation is a crime. It is, first of all, based on the permanent disenfranchisement of a huge population…In the end, it is the ongoing moral failure of the country as a whole that is most consequential, most dangerous, most unacceptable. The failure weighs heavily…on our humanity. We are, so we claim, the children of the prophets. Once, they say, we were slaves in Egypt. We know all that can be known about slavery, suffering, prejudice, ghettos, hate, expulsion, exile. I find it astonishing that we, of all people, have reinvented apartheid in the West Bank.”
Within the American Jewish community, Israel and Zionism have become increasingly divisive issues. In his book, Trouble In The Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel, Prof. Dov Waxman of Northeastern University, writes, “A historic change has been taking place in the American Jewish relationship with Israel…Israel is fast becoming a source of division rather than unity for American Jewry…A new era of American Jewish conflict over Israel is replacing the old era of solidarity…This echoes earlier debates about Zionism that occurred before 1948. Then, as now, there were fierce disagreements…Classical Zionism has never had much relevance or appeal to American Jewry. Indeed, the vast majority of American Jews reject the basic elements of classical Zionism—that Diaspora Jews live in exile, that Jewish life in Israel is superior to life in the Diaspora…American Jews do not think that they live in exile and they do not regard Israel as their homeland..Zionism has never succeeded in winning over the majority of American Jews.”
Since 1948, Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, now topping $3.8 billion annually in military aid. By annexing portions of the West Bank, not only would Israel be asking American taxpayers to subsidize an action which is clearly in violation of international law but it is unlikely to be supported by very many American Jews. It could well bring its “special relationship” with both the U.S. government and with American Jews to an end.
