From the New York Times, June 2, 2001
The Price of Occupation
By ANTHONY LEWIS
BOSTON
On June 5, 1967, Israel went to war with Egypt. Jordan and Syria
joined the fighting. Six days later triumphant Israeli forces
controlled the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, the Sinai and the
Golan Heights.
Israelis were euphoric at the extraordinary victory: most of them. One
who was not was Saul Friedlander, a professor of history specializing
in Nazism and the Holocaust. He foresaw disaster in the triumph. Why?
I asked him this week.
"I thought that occupation would lead to a dynamic of domination," he
said. "It would backfire on the fiber of our society, destroying the
values that idealistic Zionism had nurtured."
Like Cassandra, Professor Friedlander has seen his prophecy ignored by
those in power in Israel. But he was right. Indeed, if anything, he
understated the damage occupation would do. It has endangered the
security of Israel and corrupted the values of not only Israel but
some of the Jewish community outside.
The 145 Jewish settlements planted in the West Bank and Gaza since
1967 sap Israel's finances and its governing energy. Israeli military
leaders say they strain the country's defenses. A minister in the
present government, Ephraim Sneh, said in Washington two months ago
that Israel would need large new sums from the U.S. in supplemental
aid to protect the settlements.
The establishment of the settlements in violation of international law
mocks the tradition of Jews as a people of law. Louis Brandeis, a
great Zionist as well as the greatest of Supreme Court justices, would
denounce them with the force of an Isaiah if he were here.
The damage occupation has done to Jewish ethical values is
distressing. When I wrote critically of the settlements in a recent
column, I got letters and messages seeking to justify them in the most
fantastic terms. One dismissed Palestinians as a nonexistent nation -
people who had "crept into the country from Egypt, Jordan and Syria."
Other readers insisted that Jewish settlements in the occupied
territories were built, as one put it, "on unwanted, unclaimed
property." Can such readers really be ignorant of the pain suffered by
Palestinians who have seen their olive groves bulldozed to make room
for settlements? A report in The Financial Times of London this week
described the plight of Ibrahim al Tus, 81 years old, who inherited 30
acres of land near Bethlehem from his grandfather. He made a good
living from grapes and other fruit - until Jewish settlers occupied
the ridge above his land seven years ago.
Since then the threat of attacks by the settlers has kept him from his
land. The Israeli high court ruled that he had a right to bring his
tractor through the settlement to plow his land. But when he tried, he
was beaten.
That Jews should be indifferent to the mistreatment of another people
- that they should invent justifications for inhumanity - seems to me
the bitterest of ironies. When all the invention and pettifogging
arguments are finished, the inescapable fact is that Israel has been
colonizing the occupied territories. And still is.
Professor Friedlander was not alone in his concern about holding onto
the territories. The creator of modern Israel, David Ben-Gurion, came
out of retirement in 1967 to say that, Jerusalem apart, "To get peace,
we must return to the pre-1967 borders. Peace is more important than
real estate." He said the occupied territories should be given back
quickly, before resentment could build. The Arabs would not make peace
at once, he said; pride barred that after such a defeat. But it would
come.
The moment for peace came with the Oslo agreement in 1993, when the
P.L.O. at last accepted the reality of Israel. Palestinians believed
it meant that they would have a state alongside Israel. A wise Israeli
government would have made that belief concrete by closing down at
least the settlements in Gaza, which have no purpose except
provocation and domination. But instead, settlements continued
growing.
The United States has a heavy responsibility for this disastrous
history. For 30 years it has provided enormous aid to Israel while
making no effective objection to the settlement process. What a
difference it would make if President Bush had the courage to say no,
finally, to a process that undermines the hope of peace in the Middle
East.
