Israel at the End of 2011: Better than Ever

No, this blog is still dormant, as explained here. However, I still post every now and then, so the Google overlords won't delete the entire blog for having gone entirely silent. The end of 2011 is a good moment to reflect on Israel's condition, which, if you believe much of the media, is catastrophic. Growing numbers of folks dislike us, we're told, our isolation is growing ever more dire, our democracy is crumbling, we're forcing women into second-class status, America's Jews are turning away in growing disgust, and so on and on and on...

Well, no.

Back in my blogging days I used to propose three criteria for measuring the long-term robustness of Israel. So let's start with them:

Economics: While the European economy enters recession if not worse, and the American economy is in a protracted funk, the Israeli economy continutes to boom. Here, check it out at the Economist website, which tells that GDP is growing higher in Israel than in any European country, the US, and lots of other places too. Unemployment, you might be interested to hear, at 5.6%, is not only lower than in most countries, it's at its lowest in Israel for decades and by some estiamtes, the lowest ever. If things stay this way until the next elections there will be no need to speculate on how crazy the Israeli voters have become to re-elect that supposedly universally hated government: any government running for re-election with an economy like this would stand a fine chance of re-election.

The BDS campaign to destroy Israel is not obviously working, apparently.

Culture: is Jewish culture thriving, stagnating or declining in Israel? This is a rhetorical question. There's no measure I can think of by which to claim there's any stagnation or decline. It has been thousands of years since the Jews have had such a broad-based cultural creativity, which isn't surprising if you remind yourself that for the first time in millennia there are millions of Jews living in their language in their own society (and their own land).

How does cultural creativity fit into disappearing freedom of thought, you ask? It doesn't. The disappearing freedom and democracy exist only in the minds of a certain section of Israeli society and the multitudes of ignorant foreign reporters and politicians who avidly agree with them whenever they criticise Israel. Apart from them, it's not happening. There's a racuous debate about all sorts of things, of course, but in other countries that would be called democracy, not facism.

Demography: here the question is simple: are there more Jews in Israel today than a year ago. Of course there are. In an aside, there are growing indications that the demographic pendulum has peaked and is swinging back in favor of the Jews over Palestinians, whose birthrate is either declining or tumbling, depending on the data-sets one uses. (Here, for example).

Terrorism is mostly dormant, by Israeli standards. 2011 was one of the most peaceful years Israel has had since 1947. (The Palestinians had a rather peaceful year, too, since there's some correlation between the two).

The internal clash with the Haredi sections of society seems to be moving in two contradictory directions. The crazies are growing ever more crazy; but there's a long-term trend in which ever-growing numbers of Haredi are slowly acquiring modern education and entering the labor market; some thousands of young Haredi men are even finding their way into special programs in the IDF. I can't say which trend will ultimately be more important, but I feel confident in hoping for the better outcome.

The Arab revolutions seem likely to create ever more outlandish-looking societies. I don't see how normal Westerners (as distinct from the chattering classes) will look at them in 5, 10, or 15 years, and then look at us, and not prefer us.

You'll hear endless punditry about how bad off Israel's Arab citizens are. Well. The reality I see is that growing numbers of them are integrating into mainstream society. I have Israeli Arabs working under me, as well as alongside me, and they are just regular folks and treated as such. I see Arabs - Israeli citizens or East-Jerusalem permanent residents - everywhere: in markets, at the university, in professional groups, in hospitals, at universitities, and so on. Also in the hallways of the government ministries and even in classified installations.

Whinch brings me to my final point. I stopped blogging when I joined the civil service, and went behind a wall of security clearance and the need to shut up about it. Indeed, I won't report on what cannot be reported. But I will say that what I find there is very heartening. Alongside the usual, and universal, red-tape and mediocracy, there are large numbers of highly talented Israelis purposefully going about their jobs of making this a better country, stronger, more successful, better able to withstand whatever gets thrown at it.

Yes, there are lots of folks out there who dislike us, but that's always been so. These days we don't have to give them too much attention. Seen historically, 2011 was probably one of the best years in millennia of Jewish history.

Law isn't Objective Science

The Mishna is instructing how to determine if various physical defects make an animal permanently impure and ineligible to be sacrificed while still being permitted for non-sacred consumption. At one point Rabbi Akiva suggests a method of checking a particular defect, in which a lamb seems to have only one testicle. The Gemara then brings a story of a case in which his method was used, yet after slaughtering the lamb it turned out the second testicle was there all along, only not visible. Rabbi Akiva permitted the animal to be eaten, while Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri forbade the animal to be eaten (as a fistrborn it should have been given to a cohen). This led to a sharp excahnge between the two rabbis:
Rabbi Akiva to Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri: how long are you going to waste the money of [the people of] Israel?
Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri to Rabbi Akiva: how long are you going to feed forbidden carcasses to Israel?
 the original Hebrew is more pithy:
עד מתי אתה מכלה ממונם של ישראל?
עד מתי אתה מאכיל את ישראל נבילות?

Both scholars start from the same set of facts: the lamb seemed to have a defect, Akiva's proposed method of checking was used and proved the defect was permanent, and the animal was slaughtered based on that tested proposition. Then, they both agree, an external fact, unknowable at the moment of slaughter, was revealed. They differ on the ultimate outcome. Is doing your best enough? Is there an objective commandment which supercedes informed intentions? Do social considerations trump (unknowable) facts? Is there a legal truth which overrides all social measures and intentions?

This deliberation is exactly as fresh today as it was two thousand years ago when Akiva and Yochanan had their altercation; each side brings a set of values which precedes their interpretation of the law and informs it. It's the reason there can be no permanent, immutable and universal legal system: every legal system has to reflect the values of the society which legislated it and applies it and adapts it as the underlying values change.

B'chorot 40a.

If you've never visited this blog before, well, now it's too late; I've stopped blogging as described here.

Hanan Porat, 1943-2011

This blog is still shut down, as explained here. I did however mourn the death of Hanan Porat, here. He was a greater man than his misconcieved politics.

Do Ants have a King? Is it Permissible to Ask?

It's been almost two months since I shut down this blog. The reason for the shutdown is still in place: Having been appointed as Israel's State Archivist and a high-ish civil servant, I can't write a political blog. (Nor, to be honest, do I have the time). Interestingly, however, since the shutdown there's a steady stream of a few hundred daily visitors to this dormant blog; apparently, if one believes the visitor stats, some of the posts are useful even long after they were written. Which poses a problem since truly dormant blogs eventually get deleted by the owners of the servers on which they reside (Google, in this case). So by way of staving off that fate, I will ocasionally post here, never on political matters, and only rarely - just enough to keep the appearence of a live blog.

Here's a nice Daf Yomi story from Hulin 56b, which we passed earlier this week. It is written, in Proverbs chapter 6 verses 6-8:
Go to the ant, you sluggard;
   consider its ways and be wise!
⁷ It has no commander,
   no overseer or ruler,
⁸ yet it stores its provisions in summer
   and gathers its food at harvest.

Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta asked himself if this was really so, and decided to test it. On a hot summer day he found an anthill, and used his cloak to cast shade over it, since ants (so the story) like shade and dislike the hot sun. Soon an ant came out and saw the shade. Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta marked the ant so he could recognize it. The ant went back into the anthill and annonced that there was shade outside, and soon enough other ants began swarming out. Rabbi Shimon then removed the shading cloak; When the new ants saw there was in fact no shade, they killed the first ant; from this Rabbi Shimon infered that they indeed have no king, since if they had one they would have required his permission before killing the errant ant.

The Gemarah then tells of a discussion between a number of Amoraim, scholars of a latter generation, who aren't sure Rabbi Shimon's research reslts were vaild. Isn't it possible, for example, that the ants had standing permission from the king to kill individual ants who lie to the community? Or perhaps the king was one of the ants that came out and felt tricked, and he authorized the killing on the spot? Or perhaps it just so happened that the experiment fell on a transitional moment between kings, as is told in the book of Judges (17, 6) In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Rashi (11th century) and Tosafot (12-13 century) debate how it's possible that Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta didn't take King Solomon's word (King Solomon being traditionally regarded as the author of Proverbs); they also wonder how the Amoraim ask so many questions: after all, King Solomon must have known what he was talking about, no? This discussion continued at least until recent centuries, when some rabbis resolved it by pointing out that King Solomon himself said we should go and observe the ants, back in the original verse.

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If you've never visited this blog before, and now, as I said, it's dormant, see my reading recommendations here.

Farewell to Blogging

I'm shutting down this blog. In a moment I'll explain a bit about why, and what might come next, but first a word about what's still here.

Blogs are a very ephemeral type of writing. No-one reads old blog-posts, or entire blogs from cover to cover. They can be a useful way of saying immediate things, but they're not very good for saying anything of lasting value. Indeed, most of what I've written here these past four years hasn't been durable. Some bits, however, perhaps have, or so I'd like to hope. These parts I've now collected in a short series of pages, listed at the upper left corner of this screen. There are three such series:

At Don't Divide Jerusalem I've collected links to the 15 essays I wrote explaining and demonstrating why I think the idea of dividing Jerusalem is a travesty which, should it ever be implemented, will be the root of the next war.

At Seeking Peace, Living at War I collected the dozen or so essays about war and peace which I hope will have some value for readers who might stumble upon them even well after they were written.

At Jewish Culture, Israeli Culture I told about the Daf Yomi series I ran here, and about the Shirim Ivri'im one.

Regular readers will have noticed that I've been uneasy with blogging for quite a while. The reason I'm desisting precisely now is that I seem to have been offered the job of Israel's State Archivist. The appointment is not yet official, and the way these things work, it shouldn't be regarded as final until it does become official, but even were it to fall through I wouldn't continue with blogging in the present form. Assuming the appointment does come through, however, I obviously can't be both a civil servant and a political bloggger.

What next? Well, mostly I expect to be engaged in that new job, which includes some very large challenges. Alongside it, however, I intend to continue with the researching for and writing of a book about Jerusalem, the living city that it is, rather than the historical city it as been these past 4-5,000 years - though of course, the present city is also the historical one - very much so. One of the nicest things about blogging is that I've had the opportunity to listen to intelligent people as they responded to the thoughts I've been spewing. I've been wondering if it might be feasible to have a website where I put materials, thoughts, ideas, pictures and general stuff that I'll be collecting (and discarding?) along the way towards writing that book. Professors use their students as sounding boards for the emerging drafts of their research; perhaps a website could do the same? So I've put up a provisional site, over here. It's not supposed to be a daily blog, and Im not certain what it will evolve to be, but if you're interested, feel free to come by from time to time.

Another idea I've had is connected to the archivist position. The State Archivist does various things, including being the head of the national archives, and also the professional head of the entire field. This means he can acquire a good idea about what Israel's various archives have, and what stories they tell. Perhaps, if I find the time, I'll set up a blog that reports on interesting documents from our many archives. Perhaps.

I remain on Twitter, @yaacovlozowick, and whenever I feel I've got an announcement to make, it will happen there. Should I someday return to something resembling blogging, in this format or any other, for example, I'll tweet the momentous news.

Finally, I wish to thank the many readers who followed this blog, those who identified themselves and joined the discussions, and the many who never did. I appreciate the time you gave me.

Yaacov

Politics Trump Treaties

In the summer of 2005 America and Europe wanted Israel's disengagement from Gaza to be complete. It was really important to them. So by way of convincing Israel there'd be no danger in opening the border between Gaza and Egypt, everyone signed a treaty. The Americans signed, the EU signed, Egypt signed, Israel signed, and the PA signed. The treaty described how European professionals would watch the movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza, and they'd be nice to the Palestinians but also protect Israel's interests.

Then, about six months later, Hamas won the Palestinian elections and it all started unraveling. By the time Hamas violently threw the PA security forces out of Gaza, nothing was left of the treaty. This week, less than six years later, a new Egyptian regime (a temporary one, perhaps) opened its border with Gaza, and no-one even pretends to respect the defunct treaty, nor to care.

Meanwhile, far away in Africa, Sudan is using military force to change its border with the emerging country of South Sudan. If you look hard enough you can find mention of this at well-informed websites such as the Economist; the Guardian has even mentioned it repeatedly (here, here, here and here). So far as I see, words such as "illegal according to international law" or their synonyms don't make it into any of these reports; though here's a blogger who's pretty explicit about what's going on. A blogger. At one point the Guardian does use the term "disputed territory", however, thereby demonstrating that there's at least one keyboard in their system that has the keys necessary for such words.


Just another example among many that international law may be useful when peaceful democratic states suchas Iceland and Britain need to resolve disagreements about fishing rights in the Northern Atlantic, but it's useless when coping with international conflicts.

My point, of course, is not to bemoan the irrelevance of international law; on the contrary, my position is that international law needn't be brought into armed conflicts in the first place, not as a tool for resolving them. The mere fact that they're violent proves that at least one side is willing to kill so as to promote their interests, so why would they be frightened off by some words in a dusty book on a shelf. National interests are what makes international relations happen, not laws.

Michael Totten Visits Hebron

And comes back with an unsettling report.

I once did the same, in 2009, and also came back with a report.

Liberation of Jerusalem, 44 Years

Yossie Klein Halevy writes about Israel's most famous picture (The article was published four years ago. Today is the 44th anniversary of that day, by the Jewish calender).

Photographs which Say the Opposite

Michael Totten recommends an essay by Walther Russel Mead, who claims that America very much won the war in Iraq. Personally I think it's still too early to know, but I"m glad such a compelling and cogent argument can be made; it wasn't long ago that anyone who didn't regard the American war in Iraq as total lunacy, was assumed to be a lunatic themselves. Perspective will make the picture look different.

Michael then links to a weird collections of photos from North Korea, by Charlie Crane. Crane was allowed into North Korea to take pictures, but only the pictures his minders permitted. So he turned the tables on them by taking only pictures they'd approve of, and presents them to us confident that we'll see what he saw, not what they saw: even though it's all the same pictures. Genius. One of Michael's readers then suggests another website that does something very similar: it takes official pictures of Kim Jong-Il, adds a very thin layer of ridicule, and suddenly the pictures say the opposite of what their creators intended.

Both websites use our conditioning as citizens in democracies, to turn totalitarian photographs on their head, without tampering with the photos themselves in any way. Fascinating.

Return of the Nerds

Here are a few links to articles about how Israelis are working to make their country stronger, or to withstand this onslaught or that, and in general things that demonstrate why Israel is not weakening.

The techies are convening. I was at one of these conferences last year, and was tickled to see all the translations into Chinese, and the Indians who got along fine with English. Didn't see may Egyptians, tho, nor even many Europeans. These folks are one of the many reasons why a boycott of Israel, or sanctions against it, won't work.

The lawyers are revving up. No-one in their sane mind thinks there's a pure legal case against Israel and its occupation and its borders. Clearly, most of the people who talk about what's legal and what's not don't know a thing about law, and care far less. The whole thing is and always was a political matter, not a legal one. Still, it's nice to see a group of lawyers play the game from Israel's perspective for once:

8. While the UN has maintained a persistent policy of non-recognition of
Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem pending a negotiated solution, despite
Israel's historic rights to the city, it is inconceivable that the UN would
now recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state, the borders of
which would include eastern Jerusalem. This would represent the
ultimate in hypocrisy, double standards and discrimination, as well as an
utter disregard of the rights of Israel and the Jewish People.

Danny Gordis strikes again: Danny was invited to speak to a J-Street leadership group on their recent trip to Israel. Since he's not a government official, he can meet them without any implications of any sort - so he did. And told them how odd they appear, and how arrogant, and how unfriendly. Looks to me like he washed the floor with them, though I doubt they saw it that way.

The Money printers strike again: I've already linked to this elsewhere, but it's worth pointing out again. The reason the Hamas government in Gaza still uses the Shekel for its currency isn't because of an evil Israeli occupation. It's because they've got no better alternative. (h/t Andre)

Follow-up on Leaving the West Bank

Here are a number of responses or follow-up comments to the discussion of my post yesterday, about how Israel should leave most of the West Bank, and disengage from the Palestinians. I have no way of knowing what most readers thought of all this, but the ones who commented tended to be critical of the idea.

1. It occurs to me that I didn't say explicitly what should have been obvious. The entire project of leaving the West Bank will require significant legislation on many topics, which cannot be passed by the current coalition (though it could be by a different coalition in the present Knesset). Therefore, the project will need to be sanctioned by the electorate long before it happens. Having closely watched Israeli politics for almost 40 years, since my late teens, I'm convinced such a proposition, formulated correctly, would be a winning platform for any large political party, though Kadima is currently the best positioned to run with it since it was essentially invented for this purpose. But Likud, Lieberman's party or even the almost defunct Labor party could also run with it, and were any of them to do so, they'd probably win the elections. (The formulation would be important).

Such a move wouldn't be a putsch by Leftists, it would be the expression of the Israeli will as formulated through the political process. As such, it would be accepted by a majority of the settlers.

2. An early part of the legislation, the proposition to assist settlers to move, has already been under discussion for a number of years; surprisingly - or not at all, depending how much you know about the reality - many settlers themselves are eager to have such a law passed. At the moment, many thousands of non-ideological settler families who moved to acquire cheap housing, cannot move out since their homes cannot be sold at reasonable prices. Were the government to alleviate this in some manner, they would move immediately. This piece of legislation alone would noticeably reduce the number of settlers, it would send a message to our friends abroad that we're serious, and would have no impact at all on the Palestinians' ability to harm Israelis. (On the contrary: there would be fewer Israelis on the West Bank to be harmed).

3. Water, aquifers and so on are not relevant in the mid- or long-term. As I wrote recently, Israel is already on the road to supplying its needs by desalination and purification of used water. This isn't because of the West Bank, it's because we've already exhausted the natural resources. Moreover, Israel supplies water to the Palestinians, not the other way around.

4. The line to be moved back to - I offhand said it would be the line of the security fence - is not the same as the line of 1967, though it isn't very far from it, either. So of course the state of war with the Palestinians would continue, and anyone who loves to damn us for any inch of occupation will be able to continue to do so. I never said otherwise. This is inevitable in any case, since reaching an agreed line of partition with the Palestinians is not possible, as I explained yesterday and many times previously. On the other hand, Barack Obama himself seemed in his recent speech to be suggesting the same thing, or at least something resembling it; so far as I understand the dynamics of international relations, such a move, or even merely its initial steps, would significantly improve Israel's relations with foreign politicians who are not automatically anti-Israel. Such figures would include, at the moment, people like Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozy, Silvio Berlusconi, and as I said, Barack Obama. I don't see how this would be bad for Israel.

5. Canny Israeli leaders should indeed be able to get some political gains from America and even Europe for such a policy. There is no doubt about it.

6. Palestinians and Israelis in the remaining narrow parts of Israeli-occupied West Bank: I don't know what would happen to them. Were Israel to annex the areas, the local Palestinians would be offered Israeli citizenship, and all Israeli laws would apply to anyone living there, Jew or Arab. However, I rather doubt they'd be annexed. There are good reasons why Israel hasn't ever annexed these areas, and they'd still be in place.

7. Gilad Shalit doesn't fit into this discussion. Lots of things don't. It's not a suggestion to correct the world's ills, rather to deal with a specific part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

8. Regarding the objection that I'm advocating fleeing under fire, and that the missiles will rain down on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem (where I live): Guilty as charged, only in the opposite way. Yes, I'm suggesting we leave the West Bank without any expectation of peace with the Palestinians - because such an expectation can't be fulfilled anyway. No, I'm not suggesting that Israel then live with a rain of missiles on Tel Aviv etc etc. I don't regard myself as a fool, nor will the Israeli majority that votes for this project be made up of more fools than any regular electorate. I know all about Gaza (some of you may remember that I had a son fighting there in 2009), and Southern Lebanon, and the mistakes of Oslo, and the Second Intifada, and all those things. I look at all those cases, and see general calm on all fronts, and I deduce that the calm is no coincidence. Hizballah, many West Bank Palestinians, and Hamas in Gaza all hate us as much now as they did previously, and yet over the past few years they've all decided to stop most of their violence against us for the time being. As did the Syrians, Jordanians, and Egyptians before them. At the moment, the weakest link in the chain are the settlers on the West Bank, who are the hardest to protect, just as the settlers in Gaza were effectively impossible to protect before 2005 - a matter never mentioned, somehow, in all the rhetoric about how awful it was that Israel left Gaza.

Unlike Hizballah, the Palestinians are susceptible to various types of Israeli pressure. Their economy is essentially dependent on Israel's, while Israel isn't dependent on them. They're dependent on Israel for water, electricity, and indeed their very currency (they use ours, for reasons of their own). The thing is, Israel has never had a policy of full disengagement from its control of the Palestinians, and thus has never been in the position to claim that it owes them nothing. Were there to be such a policy, the entire equation would change. True, Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians would remain part of the equation, but only one part among many. I don't see why Israel's cards in that game would be weaker than the Palestinian hand.

Anyway, as I've repeatedly written, the Israeli occupation of Palestine has become the Palestinians' worst weapon against Israel, worse than any military threat they might pose. It's time for Israel to disarm that weapon. That is the base of my position, and all the talk about missiles on Tel Aviv doesn't change it.

Dare to Leave the Palestinians Alone

Back in the 1880s, Yehuda Leib Pinsker thought the Jews could cure the non-Jews of antisemitism by rectifying the abnormality of Jewish existence as a nation without a homeland. He was an important theorist of the first wave of what would later become Zionist settlement. 15 years later Theodore Herzl had the same idea, but given his position as a prominent journalist in Vienna (an important town in those long-past days), and his indefatigable energy, he was able to launch more than a small wave of settlers.

Both men were wrong. There's nothing the Jews can do to cure the non-Jews who hate them. Yet their efforts resulted in something vastly better than a cure for Jew hatred. They contributed to the creation of a world in which the Jews can live a full national life, without having to bow scrape and grovel before their enemies. The hatred is still there, but to a certain extent, Jews needn't care any longer. They can get on with life - and they do.

Moreover, in spite of the bloody violence directed at the Jews in their homeland, it's nowhere as bad as what Pinsker and Herzl saw, not to mention what came after them, between 1918 and 1945. Remember, in the forgotten pogroms of the early 1920s vastly more Jews were murdered than have been killed in a century of war between the Zionists and their neighbors.

Israel is not going to enjoy normality with the Arab world anytime soon, nor will it have peace with the Palestinians. However, this does not preclude living a vibrant and creative national life in Israel. It hasn't so far, and won't henceforth. Nor does it necessarily mean there will be permanent violence. It's probably not a coincidence that after reaching for its nuclear sword in 1973 (according to foreign sources) no Arab army ever again attacked Israel. Instead, the Arabs moved to wars of civilians against civilians, or at least wars of irregulars embedded amongst civilians against Israeli civilians. Yet even those have not proven effective, and once Israel figured out how to beat them, they tapered off. Israel defeated the 2nd Intifada (the first, too), and it frightened both HizbAllah and Hamas, in 2006 and 2009, enough to make them mostly desist from violence. For the time being, of course, until they change their mind, obviously, but nevertheless.

In the meantime we get on with all the things we wish to do. Jewish life in the early 21 century is richer, more diverse and more vibrant than at any time since Herod the Great, and even the parts that aren't happening in Israel wouldn't be the same were it not for the return of the Jewish nation to the political realm.

None of this success is predicated on settling the West Bank, nor need it be harmed were that settlement to be dismantled (or left outside the border of Israel, which is a far less likely scenario). So why is Israel there?

Between 1967 and the beginning of the 1st Intifada 20 years later, Israeli society held a raucous conversation about the importance of settling Jews in the Biblical heartland. (It is significant that the non-Israeli part of the Jewish people didn't have much input one way or the other: Jewish national discussions, it appears, happen essentially in the Jewish national state). The positions and the arguments went back and forth, but by the end of the 1980s the Jews of Israel had decided, as a community, that settling Judea and Samaria was not important enough, and it was abandoned as a national project - if it ever had been one. No matter what might have been the case in, say, 1978 or 1980, for the past 25 years the Israeli consensus has been that someday, in the fullness of time and in the correct international context, Israel will hand over most of the West Bank so as to enable the creation of a Palestinian state.

From that moment on, every addition to the settlements, any investments and construction of infrastructures must be regarded as a strategic waste of effort, even if in some cases the creation of better roads, say, or security measures, were essential. For a while the supporters of the settlement project could tell themselves the conversation was not yet over and could yet be tilted back to their position, but not after decades.

The reason the Israeli majority never made the effort to halt the settlers was because of considerations relating to the Palestinians. There was the plausible, perhaps even correct assumption that it was the settlements alone which would eventually convince the Palestinians to start negotiating for a two state solution to the conflict, before there was no room left to have Palestine. (The Palestinians made this decision, slowly, impartially, and if they ever really made it, between 1989-1992). There was the assumption that dismantling settlements would be a major negotiation chip for which the Palestinians would play some chip of their own. There was the assumption that the decision to dismantle many settlements was going to be traumatic for Israeli society, and should happen once, in the context of an end-of-conflict peace agreement with the Palestinians, at which point it would enjoy sweeping support and be less painful than in any conceivable other context. Or, as any settler will tell you if you steer the conversation deftly: we've been repeatedly saved by the Palestinians.

Since late 2000 and the collapse of the Oslo negotiations at the latest - some would say, it should have been many years earlier - it has become obvious to a very large majority of Israelis that peace with the Palestinians is not to be had. At best, the Palestinians are willing to accept partition only if it's done in a way that leaves open the possibility of an eventual disintegration of Jewish Israel, while the Israelis insist on an end-of-conflict agreement which blocks any conceivable future Palestinian moves or claims. During the 2nd Intifada Israel  reconquered sections of the West Bank which had been handed over to the Palestinian Authority, because this was essential to militarily defeating the Palestinians.

In 2005 Ariel Sharon began the project of unilateral disengagement from the Palestinians. The strategic idea, never publicly spelled out for obvious reasons but quite explicit nonetheless, was to end the occupation even without agreement with the Palestinians. Perhaps even, some might say, precisely without agreement with the Palestinians, who had demonstrated that their terms for peace would be unacceptable to Israel. The novelty of Sharon's positions in 2004-2005 was the understanding that the occupation itself had become a millstone, a weapon the Palestinians were wielding with tremendous effectiveness against Israel so as force concessions that otherwise would not be offered.

If one assumes the Palestinians and Israelis really and profoundly understand each other, an assumption that a century of conflict and cohabitation and enmity and daily collaboration make plausible, the events of 2004-2006 take on a meaning never presented in the Western media. By 2004 both sides knew they weren't moving towards peace. Both recognized how the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians had become the main weapon against Israel. Both knew that the outcome of the unilateral Israeli departure from Gaza would determine the next step. Both knew Sharon's move was a sign of Israeli weariness, though the Palestinian side may have seen it as existential weariness, while the Israelis saw it as tactical weariness with dominating Palestinians. The Palestinian election of Hamas was therefore the result of two considerations. First, that since Israel was wearying, the Palestinian response should be to strengthen their hawkish side. Second, that post-disengagement violence would serve the Palestinian interests, by further weakening Israeli resolve but also by thwarting the next stage of Israeli disengagement, from the West Bank. The Israelis, on the other hand, elected Ehud Olmert in the Spring of 2006 on the explicit platform of continuing the disengagement.

The war in Lebanon and the violence from Gaza derailed the unilateral disengagement from the West Bank. Instead, Olmert (and his foreign minister, Zippi Livni) did their best to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, and offered them even more than previous Israeli negotiators ever had, but predictably they were rebuffed. The Palestinians have no interest in an end-of-conflict agreement.

Netanyahu, elected in 2009, tried his hand at improving the daily lives of the Palestinians by lifting much of the weight of the occupation, but this has failed: individual Palestinians may benefit, but the leadership, and the people as a nation, need the pressure on Israel to continue until someday it caves in, which is the context for the current policy of having the UN give the Palestinians a state, or - since the UN can't do that, only Israel can - having the UN lay the ground for international sanctions against Israel.

These are unlikely to work, for reasons I may write about elsewhere, but the Palestinians see no downside in trying.

Which brings us back to the Israeli control of the Palestinians. The attempt to have Greater Israel is long over. The settlements have been dismantled in Gaza, and the electorate has voted to dismantle them in the West Bank. The only reason Israel still controls the West Bank, and still blockades Gaza (ever less efficiently, since Egypt has now opened its border) is because of the Israeli assumption that it must control the Palestinians to fend off their violence. Should Israel leave the West Bank or remove the blockade of Gaza, so the logic, the Palestinians will immediately rain down destruction on Israel, as they did after the departure from Gaza.

And well they may. The Palestinians will have the motive and the means, and the international community will shield them from Israel's wrath. But only for a while. Actually, assuming they'll be aiming at Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and the airport, rather than far-away Sderot, I don't expect the Israelis to hold their wrath very long. For there's a second lesson of the past decade, and that is that in each case where Arab enemies of Israel goaded it, be it Palestinians or Hizballah, the Israelis were eventually goaded and the enemies backed off. In other words, full-blooded Israeli wrath (I use the word blooded advisedly) is not something people enjoy provoking. Moreover, since the Palestinians already provoked it once, in 2002, and watched from close up as others provoked it (2006, 2009), perhaps they might even refrain from trying, at least for a while.

My position, to be clear, is that Israel needs to end as much of the occupation as possible, by moving out of the West Bank till the security fence, so as to continue the conflict from a vastly better starting point. Before that, Israel should lift the blockade of Gaza, right now. (This is what Shlomo Avineri says in his column today). This doesn't mean major moves need to be done carelessly. Moving out of the West Bank will take a few years in any scenario, and these could be calibrated: first, stop all construction in settlements, and offer financial encouragement to individuals who wish to move (there will be many thousands of them). Then clarify to the Palestinians that the disengagement may have serious consequences for them, such as severing economic ties, or cutting off supplies of water and electricity, as part of a true end of Israeli engagement - unless the Palestinians wish to negotiate otherwise. Later on, dismantling settlements doesn't have to include pulling back IDF forces, until Israel decides it is safe to do so. Yet the overarching policy should be clear: Israel intends to leave, to let the Palestinians live their own lives, and in return expects the Palestinians to get on with their lives, not attack Israel.

Peace will come some other day. But Israel will be a better place, with better international relations. It will still need the most lethal military possible, and it will need to confront many enemies that surround it, but its fundamental situation will be healthier. Most important of all, its internal cohesion and determination will be strengthened. The whole society will know it needs to defend its existence, not an occupation many of us don't want.

Update: I've done my best to respond to the many thoughtful comments, here.

The Power of Water

The other day I was talking to a young scientist from China who's completing her PhD at one of the very best American universities, and has just spent a month in Israel. She hails from what she describes as a "middle-or-smallish-sized Chinese town" of about 8 million people, which I admit I'd never heard of. When I asked for her impressions of her first visit to Israel (pop. 7.76 million) she gushed. First, about the geographic and climatic diversity, then over the human diversity, then over the creative energy. (The first of those three isn't of our doing).

The creative energy is constantly seeking new avenues. A couple weeks ago the Economist agreed to stop kvetching over our politics long enough to look at a spot of our economics, and came up with the story of how Israel is trying to corner the international market of water technology. It may or may not work, but if it does it will significantly benefit mankind. To me, the interesting part of the story is how we're trying to repeat a model which proved extremely efficient in the 1990s: the problems that could be solved are there, the eagerness to resolve them are there, then the government steps in with significant funds, but with the intention to jump-start an industry and then get out so as not to interfere with the private innovators and investors and risk-takers. In the 1990s it was the Yozma program which jump-started the high-tech revolution; a few years ago it was a fund for water technology; five years later the government is already moving out and the innovators and entrepreneurs who made it in the 1990s are moving in.

I expect it will take another five years or so to know if this is working. During that time many of the water-tech start-ups will fail, for various reasons. If some succeed, however, especially if any of them succeed spectacularly, Israel really could be the Mecca for anyone worldwide who's got dirty water or lack of water and wishes to improve things. Which means most of the world.

Well, perhaps not a Mecca. Though the Meccans sure could use it. Also, this success or failure will happen regardless of the settlements on the West Bank, and the blockade or not of Gaza. That's a different universe.

Scots: We're not Boycotting Israel, only Israel

That seems to be what the folks in West Dunbartonshire are saying. See for yourselves, and tell me where I'm wrong.

On Changing the Dynamics of the Conflict

Aluf Benn at Haaretz comments on the Obama-Netanyahu spectacle:

Obama believes Israel will have trouble surviving if it keeps holding on to the territories, expanding settlements and suppressing the Palestinians. Ultimately, Israel will find itself facing a Palestinian majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, weapons that can crack its defensive shields and the harsh hatred of the Arab masses. That threatening combination will vanquish the Jewish state.
That is hard talk. Obama reiterated this scenario in his two speeches - at the State Department last Thursday and at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference this past Sunday. No other U.S. president has expressed more concern for Israel's future. Get out of the territories and you will gain life, Obama is saying.
Netanyahu sees this as nonsense; he believes Obama does not understand the Middle East. The prime minister is convinced Israel will be destroyed if it withdraws from the territories. He believes his mission is to face the international pressure and foil the plot to remove the Israel Defense Forces and the settlers from the West Bank and replace them with a Palestinian state.
[...]

The Arab revolutions have only deepened the dispute between Netanyahu and Obama. The demonstrators in Egypt, Yemen and Syria remind Obama of the American civil rights movement. He believes history is on their side, that the Middle East masses will smash the tyrannies and win political power and civil rights. America will set an example for them and be a beacon of liberty and democracy.
To Israeli ears, this vision sounds like an aging hippie's drug-riddled hallucination. Every Israeli cabinet minister, official, expert and intelligence authority who visited Washington in recent months has warned his or her American interlocutors that Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood are lurking behind the demonstrators. Israel is being suffocated by the Islamic octopus, which is closing in on it from all sides. Turkey is already lost. Egypt, Syria and Jordan shortly will become Iranian clones. Netanyahu believes that in the face of this threat the only recourse is entrenchment, and that any concession will bring the whole wall tumbling down. Israel must batten down the hatches and wait for the ugly wave to pass. 

Both men are partially right and partially wrong, I suspect. Obama is right that holding onto the West Bank is bad for Israel. Netanyahu is right that the Arab revolutions have almost nothing to do with the American Civil Rights Movement, or with the end of Communism in Europe. (Obama yesterday said Poland should be the model for the Arabs; the nicest thing I can say about that is that perhaps he was trying to be real nice to his Polish hosts). They join each other in being wrong, however, when they both assume Israel's existence is in danger because of this decision or that.

I've been reading a lot about Jerusalem recently, as an early stage to writing a book of my own on the subject. Since Jerusalem is a very old city, reading its history tends to give a bit of perspective. The world has changed fundamentally 7 or 8 or 9 times since the city first gained any significance beyond its own walls (it existed for about 2,000 years before that, unnoticed). The people living in each of the eras probably regarded their own age as permanent, and they were always wrong, even if sometimes the change didn't come until a few centuries later. So I'm wary of anyone who warns that not heeding him will lead to destruction, but following his advice will lead to permanent stability and peace. Some forces are beyond our ability to bend to our will (or even to foresee); on the other hand, willpower and determination are the only human agents that ensure survival no matter what the surrounding turmoil - which explains why there have been Jews in Jerusalem with very few interruptions no matter how dramatic the upheavals.

In my reading, the determination of the Jews to have their own state in this chapter of the human saga, is what will ensure it. Not this specific political decision nor that. Retaining control of the West Bank will not cause Israel's destruction, just as relinquishing control won't; in both cases the determination to persist will be more important, and will enable Israel to deal with whatever threats develop. So let's tone things down a bit. Contra both Obama and Netanyahu, Israel is not about to be overwhelmed one way or the other.

Of course, there will still be scenarios less catastrophic than the end of Israel which will play out better or worse, so there's lots of room for idiotic decisions, mistakes which later seem wise, and other internationally acclaimed events which will prove disastrous. Which is why I rather liked the interpretation suggested by David Samuels, writing in Tablet (h/ Michael).

Samuels thinks highly of Obama, and thinks his recent moves demonstrate sky-high political abilities. I'm not there yet, but am willing to accept that Obama may be moving towards a practical position which is actually quite promising: defusing the conflict of its worst excess, then hunkering down. This to be achieved by getting Israel out of most of the West Bank, enabling the Palestinians to build a state there (and in Gaza), redoubling Israel's security capabilities - and dealing with Jerusalem and the Right of Return many years later. In which context Samuels tells that the Palestinians are not going to relinquish their demand for a return. Not:

The question, then, is whether Obama believes that Jerusalem and the right of return are real issues—the core of the crisis—or not.
Having spoken with most of the leading figures in Fatah over the past decade, it is my sense that the real fantasy here is the arrogant assumption that the Palestinian leadership will abandon its most deeply held principles in exchange for what even moderates see as a shriveled slice of historic Palestine. Indeed, reviewing my notes of conversations with all of Arafat’s key political advisers and security chiefs, including Mahmoud Abbas, I can’t identify a single one who expressed any clear willingness to abandon the right of return, or recognize Israel as a Jewish state. At best, these were framed as issues for future negotiations that would need to be submitted to a vote of the entire Palestinian people—including an estimated 4 to 6 million refugees and their descendants. No Palestinian leader I’ve ever spoken with—secular moderates included—imagined Israel as a permanent feature of the political landscape in the Middle East. All saw it as a more or less unnatural creation that would be subsumed, peacefully or not, by the resurgence of Arab Palestine in 20, 50, or 100 years.

Samuels thinks Obama knows this:

What Obama has very cleverly done therefore is to appropriate the Israeli proposal to establish a Palestinian state with interim borders—albeit on terms that the Israelis don’t particularly like. Yet each side stands to gain something very real from an interim arrangement that they would be unlikely to gain from an actual peace deal: The Palestinians would receive almost all of the territory they claim for an interim state—except Jerusalem—while holding on to their national dream of one day reclaiming all of Palestine from the Zionists. The Israelis, meanwhile, get a U.S.-sponsored end to the tar-baby of occupation and boatloads of shiny new weapons while holding on to major settlement blocs and an undivided Jerusalem. Hamas doesn’t have to sign a peace deal with the Israelis, and the Israelis don’t have to sign a peace deal with Hamas. America will benefit by having followed through on its promise—made by George W. Bush and repeated by Obama—to establish a Palestinian state. The millstone of Israeli occupation will be removed from around the necks of America and Israel, both of which will presumably find it easier to make friends in the Middle East.

This scenario doesn't relate very well to the near certainty that there will be violence from the West Bank directed at Israel, and that Israel will be damned if and when it then responds with violence. Yet the story of the past decade shows that when Israel disregards the international opprobrium and does what it has to do, its neighbors - on the West Bank, in Southern Lebanon, and in Gaza (2002/4, 2006, 2009) do back down, at least for a while; the Syrian example of 1973/4 demonstrates that sometimes getting hit hard enough by Israel can convince Arab enemies to refrain from violence for quite a long time. The idea that ending Israeli control of the lives of most Palestinians might convince them to move along, is not obviously foolish.

The way I see it, the structure of the conflict is that the Palestinians reject the Jews right to a nation state, and will not accept peace unless it comes in a form which will enable them to keep striving for the end of Jewish Israel. This is why they've never agreed to anything offered to them. Israel, in the meantime, mostly does accept the Palestinians' right to a nation state, so long as it's permanently limited to the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians see a peace treaty as a step on the longer road to Israel's disappearance as the Jewish nation state; the Israelis will allow a Palestinian nation state only if it's the final stage of the conflict. These positions are irreconcilable.

What Israel needs to do - and what Obama may indeed be offering - is to break the stalemate by giving the Palestinians less than they could achieve in negotiations, i.e a state without Jerusalem. The assumption since Bill Clinton was president is that someday Israel would agree to divide Jerusalem if the Palestinians agreed to relinquish their demand for return. But they won't, so why should Israel? Better to remove the occupation - by far the most potent weapon the Palestinians have against Israel - and then continue the conflict from a position in which Israel holds all the main cards: It controls Jerusalem, and it prevents a Palestinian return. If the Palestinians can ever think of something to entice Israel to change its positions, good for them, but until then they won't be able to say that Israel must relinquish its most important positions in return for a Palestinian willingness to have sovereignty. They'll have sovereignty already. And they'll be judged - not in the court of world opinion but in the court of real life - by what they do with it.

Seen this way, the Egyptian decision to open the border with Gaza yesterday, is good for Israel, not bad. It is another step on the road to separating Israel from the Palestinians, in this case by reducing Israel's ability to intervene in Palestinian lives. If you read carefully, you'll see there are serious voices in Israel who agree on this.

Gender Separation on Public Transit

Chances are, if you read this blog you're something of a news junkie, with a focus on Israel. In which case you'll most likely have heard all about how Jim Crow is coming to Israel, as demonstrated by the Black Buses on which Haredi men sit up front, and Haredi women are segregated to the back. Of course, the Supreme Court has ruled against the practice, twice - which shows that the problem isn't about to go away, since some sections of the Haredi community feel it's important, and no court can force men and women to sit together if they choose to sit apart.

I've got no words of defense for the practice. Nor do I buy into any of the chatter about how it's a reflection of a tradition and needs to be preserved or respected or that sort of thing. It isn't. It's a brand new invention of people who are too engaged in fending off modernity to notice they've gone off the cliff, and it's a sad story about how a fervent minority can dictate to the surrounding majority: so far as I understand it, the innovation comes from the Gur Hassids, and the rest of the Haredi community is being swept along becuase they don't care enough to resist.

Still, I was interested to learn, the other day, that in Egypt they've got special compartments in the subway for women only, because women traveling in normal compartments are routinely harassed, and the authorities felt it better to segregate the women than to convince the men to respect them. I don't think I'd heard this before, in spite of all the reports about how great Egypt is about to be.