Borders for Israel

[The accompanying image is a photo taken by the author in the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sur Bahir; it depicts posters of Hussam Dwaith, the first Jerusalem bulldozer terrorist and former resident of Sur Bahir, and Yasser Arafat on the shutters of a closed shop.]



The case of Jerusalem can seem like an irresolvable mess. All one needs to do is consider the complexities of the interactions of what are essentially three different borders in Jerusalem—the green line, the municipal boundary, and the security barrier—to see how sticky it all is. But I believe that there is one principle which Israel must follow if she is to have any chance of improving this situation. The principle is that of clear boundaries, both in terms of territory and of citizenship.

There currently exist three basic categories of territory and of Arab population: (a) the territory and population which have been inside Israel since 1948, (b) those which have been in Israeli only since 1967 (by virtue of the largely unrecognised annexation of east Jerusalem), (c) and those which have been simply occupied since 1967. As if this degree of complexity were not bad enough, the latter two categories—the annexed and the occupied—are now further subdivided in the Jerusalem area by the separation barrier, which runs alternately inside and outside of Jerusalem's eastern municipal boundary, the annexation line.

My point here is most certainly not that I'm against the fence, because I'm not; my point is that Israel needs clear and simple distinctions. There must be no more than two classes of territory and of people as far as Israel is concerned, not three, four, or five. Today there are Arabs inside Israel (living under Israeli law) who are not given their due by the Israeli state, and there are Arabs outside of Israel for whom Israel takes responsibility (it provides food, power, a degree of governance, etc.). Israel must move towards a situation in which every Arab in the world is either a citizen or not, and all territory in the world is either sovereign or not. These clear distinctions must be reinforced by government policies giving Arab citizens perfectly egalitarian treatment both in terms of rights and duties, and non-citizens nothing. Israel must begin immediately to move towards a situation in which every Arab citizen is provided all the basic civic services (such as garbage collection, water supply, municipal zoning, public schools, passports) and civil rights (such as the right to vote and stand for election in both municipal and national elections) and is simultaneously required to perform some form of national service equivalent to the service owed by Jewish citizens. Meanwhile, non-citizens would receive nothing from the state, and residence in Beit Jala would give them no more claim to Israeli state services than would living in Canada. Naturally, we should strive for a situation in which all citizens reside on sovereign Israeli territory and all non-citizens do not.

The current situation in lacking in many respects. Some Arab citizens are provided substandard state services and few are required to perform any national service. Worst of all, the Arabs of east Jerusalem live under a legal regime devised specifically for them which gives them some, but not all, of the rights of citizenship. Meanwhile Arabs in places such as Gaza continue to demand and receive Israeli resources.

Today's messy situation with its multiple in-between categories, both of territory and of people, is encouraging Israeli-Arabs, east Jerusalem Arabs, and Palestinians to coalesce into a single hostile population which either straddles Israel's border or is entirely within Israel, depending on how one views things. It is hard to imagine a greater threat to the core Zionist principle of Jewish political sovereignty in the Land of Israel than such a simultaneously inside-and-outside hostile population. The only feasible and moral way to control this threat to distinguish as forcefully as possible between the Arabs who are in and those who are out; the country needs thus needs borders.

Ariel Sharon, in his autobiography, 'Warrior,' frames the question of the Israeli Arabs in an evocative manner. He says (note that he was writing in the late 1980s), that with the Palestinians, Israel has numerous options for conflict resolution, but with the Israeli Arabs, there is no other option but co-existence. Should they become implacably hostile, the Jews will either lose the country or forcefully expel the Arabs, and neither of these scenarios is acceptable. The process which is underway now, set in motion by the great victory of the Six-Day War and of successive Israeli governments' unwillingness to face the hard choices brought about by that victory, are gradually leading to a situation in which the non-citizen Palestinian Arabs are becoming more hostile to the State of Israel, and the citizen Israeli Arabs are becoming more at one with the Palestinians.

The situation is one which requires a combination of rapid action and long-term planning. Neither the left-wing approach of hoping against hope that genuine agreement with the Palestinians can be reached, nor the right-wing approach of hoping against hope that neither the world nor the immutable principles of human morality will notice if Israel retains control of occupied land without resolving the status of the people who live on that land has any chance of improving the situation, let alone resolving it.

A long-term plan, implemented in a largely unilateral manner, and based on the foundational understanding that the current Palestinian polity will agree to neither (a) a permanent Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria nor to (b) an Israeli withdrawal from these areas, must be developed and put into action with as much coordination as possible with Israel's allies. The core goal of such a plan must be to create a clear eastern border for Israel. No clean solution to Israel's problems is within reach, but movement in the right direction is quite possible.

Rioting for Lies

I am dismayed by the part that lies played in inciting the recent intercommuncal violence in Acco. Unfortunately, this fits an old pattern.

In 1929, Arabs rioted in Hebron, killing dozens of Jews, and expelling the centuries-old Jewish community from the city. The riots were were incited by the notorious Mufti Haj Amin al Husseini, who spread the false rumour, among other inflamatory materials, that the Jews planned an attack on the Al Aqsa mosque. By most reports, 67 Jews were killed. Some were raped and mutilated. And the violence was based on a lie.

In 1967, in the first day or two of the Six-Day War, Egyptian president Nasser (whose airforce the Israelis had just destroyed) persuaded King Hussein to attack Israel by lying about the strength of Egyptian forces. An entire front was opened up in this war based on a lie.

In 1996, Bibi Netanyahu, then Israeli prime minister, started a project to create an opening at the northern end of the Western Wall Tunnel. The tunnel starts near the Western Wall plaza and runs north, underground, along the outside of the wall. Until the excavation initiated by Netanyahu, its only opening was at its southern end. Yasser Arafat alleged that the Jews were seeking to collapse the Temple Mount so as to allow for the building of the third temple. This is a variation on a long-standing Arab conspiracy theory; note its similarity to the Mufti's lie in 1929. Arab riots followed in which dozens of Palestinians (I've seen numbers from 58 to 70) and 16 IDF soldiers were killed. Once again, this was violence based on a lie.

A week and a half ago, on the evening of Yom Kippur, an Arab named Tawfik Jamal drove through a Jewish neighbourhood of Acco with two passengers (according to what I've read, they were his 18 year-old son and the son's 20 year-old friend) playing loud music. Reports differ on details, but some sort of altercation between the three men and local Jews ensued. The false rumour was spread (I'd like to know by whom) in the Arab neighbourhoods of Acco that Jamal had been killed by the Jews. This rumour led two hundred Arabs to march on the Jewish neighbourhoods breaking windows and yelling "death to the Jews." Jews rioted back and did some pretty shameful things themselves. The violence continued for four nights. My point though, is that this is yet another example of Arab violence incited by a lie.

I have cited these examples of lies inciting violence off the top of my head. I have no doubt that these are far from being the only cases of their kind.

But here's my point: let us assume that riot, murder, rape, and mutilation were proper responses had the rumours inciting them been true; let us assume that had the Jews really been planning to take over the Al Aqsa mosque in 1929, the Hebron massacre would have been the proper response; let us assume that had Jamal really been killed by a Jewish mob a week and a half ago, the resulting Arab riot would have been justified. Even assuming this, then surely the Arabs of Acco must today be scratching their heads and thinking to themselves "Well since the Jews didn't lynch Jamal, then I guess I was wrong to smash all those windows while yelling 'itbach al yahud' and 'allah hu akbar' in the same breath. And come to think of it, who the heck told me Jamal had been killed anyway?"

If I had smashed up my neighbour's shop, let alone castrated and killed him and then raped his wife (as happened in 1929), based on what I later came to know was a lie told me by my community's leadership, I'd lose faith in that leadership, to put it lightly. Sadly, there's little evidence of such soul-searching. The Arabs deserve leaders who don't incite them to unjustified intercommunal violence (if any such violence is justified), but until some of this kind of soul-searching happens, and until it is given political expression, the bulk of the Arab leadership, both inside Israel and indeed in much of the Middle East, will continue to combine lies and violence for the sake of power.