“There is something very un-Jewish about certainty…” So said the writer and thinker Rabbi Daniel Gordis during an event launching his new book Saving Israel.
I was reminded of his comment as I spent Shabbat a few days later with my friend’s family in Kfar Adumim, a settlement in the West Bank; potentially one of those evacuated as part of a final two-state solution with the Palestinians. Gordis was positing that, whether left-wing or right-wing, it is un-Jewish to be certain that our position is the correct one; we should always question.
The traditional left-wing position is that Kfar Adumim is one of many settlements built on land which Israel itself has not formally made part of the state and which prevent Palestinians from having a state of their own. The traditional right-wing view is that Kfar Adumim was built on territory that the Jewish people have a historical and religious connection to and which was not the sovereign territory of any other people when Israel took control of it in 1967.
Both of these statements are correct. But the certainty with which both sides proclaim their positions masks the more complex reality.
The left’s determination to abandon the territories conquered in 1967 led to the empowering of Yasser Arafat and a Palestinian movement in the West Bank and Gaza which would incite, encourage and abet terrorism against Israeli civilians. The left’s certainty of the justice of the Palestinian cause blinded them to the reality that many Palestinians would not be satisfied with a state alongside Israel but would seek to destroy the Jewish state and to murder as many of its people as possible. The second intifada that accompanied Arafat’s rejection of the Clinton Plan in 2000 was a brutal reality check to those Israelis who had believed that the Oslo Accords would bring peace.
Meanwhile, the right’s unqualified support for the settlement movement, their own certainty of the righteousness of settling biblical Judea and Samaria, has led Israel down a moral cul-de-sac, threatening its status as a democratic state. No democracy can permanently control territory in which they will not grant citizenship to one group of people defined by race. That will lead Israel towards apartheid.
The left forgot the tragic lesson of Jewish history – that there are people that simply want us powerless or dead with whom we cannot negotiate or compromise with. The right chose to ignore the basic truth that permanent occupation is incompatible with democracy.
The dilemma for Israel is acute. Its future as a democracy rests on ending its rule over the Palestinians as soon as possible, yet a withdrawal from most of the West Bank tomorrow would almost certainly lead to the establishment there of a Hamas state, allied to a genocidal Iran.
The message Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will give to President Obama when they meet in Washington next week is that he wishes to negotiate with the Palestinians, but that there is no hope of a two-state solution unless the Palestinian society and governing infrastructure is reformed so as to allow for a peaceful, lawful democracy to emerge – one that accepts Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State.
Netanyahu’s position makes a great deal of sense, but there needs to be a political horizon for the Palestinians also. Kfar Adumim may well be one of the settlements that remains part of Israel in a two-state deal. It is close to the “Green Line” and not so near Palestinian towns. There are however, many Israeli settlements built near Palestinian population centres which would render any future autonomous Palestinian entity nothing more than a series of cantons separated by Israeli roads and checkpoints.
So yes, Netanyahu is right that there can be no comprehensive settlement in the immediate future; Israel should not be expected to agree to the creation of a terror-state next-door within rocket range of the entire country. But, if he is serious about improving the lot of ordinary Palestinians and creating the conditions necessary for a solution to emerge, then the terrible mistake of the mass settlement colonization of the West Bank must be reversed.
The big settlement blocs around Jerusalem will remain. They contain the majority of the West Bank Jewish population and form a crucial buffer at a strategically important point for Israel. The future of Kfar Adumim depends on exactly how much of the West Bank Israel will ultimately retain. For the residents, including my friend’s family - even more than for the rest of us Israelis – nothing is certain.
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