Are Israeli settlements an obstacle to peace? Lots of people say so. Bulgaria’s Mladenov said it. The EU’s Mogherini said it. And the UN has said it again and again.
By why would anyone think that
Jews building homes stands in the way of a peace settlement?
The homes of the 10,000
Jews the Israeli government expelled from Gaza in 2005 did not stand in the way
of the unilateral gesture of peace that was Disengagement. We just knocked
those homes down. We left behind the greenhouses, the infrastructure for making
a living, and the Arabs knocked those down without Israel’s help, rejecting the
Jew-stench that apparently still clung to these structures, in favor of
poverty.
 |
| Demolition of Ganei Tal, Gush Katif |
The homes of the 7,000
Israelis expelled from Sinai in 1982, similarly did not stand in the way of
Israel’s peace agreement with Egypt.
This being not one, but two
instances in which homes did not stand in the way of peace, what is the
rationale for calling Jewish homes “obstacles to peace?”
Some say the problem is that
building homes expands existing settlements. But this is not so. Settlement
boundaries are already defined. Building more homes within those boundaries
doesn’t expand them. The boundaries remain the same. And the settlements that
are within the consensus as belonging to Israel in any peace agreement, retain
their dimensions whether or not Jews build homes therein.
The real issue is that when
Jews build homes in Judea and Samaria, their numbers increase in the land. The
issue isn’t limiting homes, but limiting Jews. Which is antisemitism.
But can the building of Jewish
homes be construed as a provocation? Is it as if the Jews are saying, “All of
this is ours and this also is ours?”
Well, yes. But so what?
In what sense does this prevent
the parties from sitting down at the negotiating table?
The fact is, it doesn’t.
Jews building homes on land Arabs
want, doesn’t stop Arabs from demanding more land. And Jews building homes on
land Arabs want, doesn’t stop Jews from being willing to sit down and discuss
land giveaways.
None of this stops anti-Israel
Jews like Peter Beinart from pulling a stern face when referring to the
building of homes for Jews in Judea and Samaria. Because he wants what the
Arabs want and not what the Jews want. He wants the land Judenfrei.
JINOs like Beinart want what
Arabs want because Arabs are brown people they see as victims. People like
Beinart feel better when they do nice things for the downtrodden.
Beinart and his ilk like to
identify victims and feel bad about them. They like to see themselves as
self-sacrificing heroes. So they demand that Jews living where they themselves
don’t live, give up their homes for the people they see as victims.
As for Jews like Naomi Chazan
or Amira Hass, the Israeli versions of Peter Beinart, settlers are a breed
apart from “normal” Israeli Jews like them. Settlers are vermin, while they sit
in their high tower, as Beinart sits in America, pointing a finger at the nasty
settlers.
From their perspective, settlers
are like Nazis seeking Lebensraum in Czechoslovakia, a land not their own. These
high and mighty Jews see the settlements as a colonialist project. But Judea
and Samaria are the indigenous lands of the Jewish people and always have been.
The idea that the land is not Jewish land betrays a preference to ignore ancient
history in favor of modern revisionist history that shuts Jews out and lets
Arabs in.
The truth is, building homes
for Jews is not a crime, never was, and never will be.
Building homes is just creating
shelter. It’s part of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which ironically, is a psychological theory proposed by a Jew, which recognizes that people have basic needs.
Like shelter.
Shelter doesn’t hurt anyone.
And a Jew deserves a home as much as the next person.
Homes don’t get in the way of
peace negotiations.
And Jews don’t contaminate
territory. They’re human beings like all other human beings. The only
difference is that God gave them the Torah and the Land of Israel.
Which hasn’t stopped them from
sitting down with the Arabs in peace negotiations.
And it appears it never will.