Letter From Israel: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

JERUSALEM – In the Holy City, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict always occupies the minds of Jews and Arabs here, but it is rarely discussed in public. After all, no one wants to risk a fight on the street if the wrong person happens to overhear a conversation.

But people are always eager to speak their minds during loud arguments in living rooms and hushed discussions over lunch in a restaurant. Everyone in Jerusalem has a different solution to the decades-old conflict. (In contrast, most people I have met in secular Tel Aviv are bored with the issue and rarely want to discuss it all. I think it is because they rarely encounter Arabs, while people here live and work with them everyday – for better and for worse.)

In my prior letters, I’ve addressed some of the religious and cultural issues that are occurring inside Israeli society. Now I wish to present the complex subject with which most Westerners are familiar: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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The Background

After Israel declared independence in 1948, the country was attacked by the surrounding Arab countries. In the resulting war, many of the Arabs who had lived in the region known as Palestine went to the West Bank (which was then part of Jordan) and the Gaza Strip (which was then part of Egypt).

These people eventually became known as Palestinians (and the people who remained in Israel became Israeli Arabs, whom I have discussed earlier). The reasons for their departure are controversial: pro-Israel historians state that the Arabs left to avoid getting caught in the middle of a war, but pro-Palestinian historians believe that the Arabs were forced to leave at gunpoint by the Israeli army in order to make way for a Jewish state. (According to the most recent research, it seems to have been a little of both, depending on the exact time, place, and circumstances.)

In 1967, several Arab countries attacked Israel again. Israel won the conflict and took East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, as well as the Gaza Strip from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria. Israel took these pieces of land for both pragmatic and idealistic reasons: Increasing the size of the country gave Israel more security, and possessing Jerusalem and more of the ancient land of Israel inspired religious Jews in the country and around the world.

However, there was a not-so-slight problem: East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza were inhabited by millions of Palestinians, and they continued to fight Israel themselves. At the same time, the Israeli government encouraged Israelis to move to the West Bank and Gaza and build settlements (whose legality under international law is questionable). Religious Zionists wanted to claim the occupied lands for Israel because of its historical significance, and the military and civilian presences there provided additional security for the Jewish state.

This, in a nutshell, is where things stand. And now it gets complicated. I’ll try to be brief.

The Palestinian Authority ostensibly wants peace and an independent country in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, but various Palestinian factions (like the terrorist group Hamas) continue to attack Israel. Israel officially wants the Palestinians to have their own state, but the Jewish state continues to build settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

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The Real Issue

I cannot speak on the Palestinian side of the issue because I am not very familiar with their society. However, I can write about the Israeli viewpoint.

If Israel’s actions (building additional settlements in the West Bank while negotiating to create a Palestinian state there) seem contradictory, that is because they are. In terms of the Palestinian conflict, the main problem on Israel’s side is that it has yet to answer the question: What kind of country do we want to be?

There’s another old joke among Israels: “We want a Jewish state, a democratic state, and a country in all of the ancient land of Israel. But we can only pick two of the three.”

In other words, Israel must eventually choose one of the following options:

1. Democratic and in all of the land — but not Jewish
2. Jewish and in all of the land — but not democratic
3. Jewish and democratic — but not in all of the land

Here’s why. Israel cannot remain a Jewish state, a democracy, and a country in all of the ancient land of Israel forever because of demographic trends. As a result of their higher birth rates, Palestinians are projected to outnumber Jews within the next couple of years in the total area encompassing Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.

If Israel wants to be a Jewish state that exists in all of the ancient land of Israel, then it will no longer be a democracy because a minority (the Jews) will control the majority (the Palestinians) and not give them equal rights. If Israel wants to be a democracy in all of the ancient land of Israel, then it will no longer be a Jewish state once Palestinians outnumber Jews. If Israel wants to be a Jewish and democratic country, then it must give up the West Bank and Gaza.

Which of these options would you choose? Yeah, it’s hard – and Israelis have yet to agree amongst themselves. In the United States, people define themselves as liberals or conservatives based on a wide rage of social issues (like abortion and gay marriage) and economic ones (like taxation and government spending). However, Israelis divide themselves as “left” or “right” based mainly on how they would resolve this fundamental issue. All other issues are secondary.

The extreme left: Liberals generally prefer to have a single, bi-national state in all of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza in which one person – whether Jew or Arab – would have one vote. These people place a higher importance on being a democratic state in all of the land of Israel than on the country remaining a Jewish country. Liberals believe that a country based on ethnicity or religion is outdated at best and immoral at worst.

The extreme right: Religious conservatives generally place a higher importance on having a Jewish state in all of the ancient land of Israel than on granting democratic rights to those who are not Jews. After all, the Bible commands Jews to have a Jewish state in all of the land. The Bible does not mention anything about democracy. The most extreme of the extreme want to annex all of the land, expel the Arabs, and reinstitute a monarchy (because ancient Israel was ruled by kings).

The center: Moderates generally place a higher importance on Israel remaining a Jewish and democratic state than on remaining in all of the land of ancient Israel. They want to see a two-state solution in which Israel gives the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem to the Palestinians so that they can have their own country. These are the most pragmatic people.

However, even the center is split. The center-left believes that the Palestinians will stop attacking Israel once the Jewish state no longer occupies their land and they have their own state. The center-right believes that Israel should give these areas to the Palestinians only after they stop attacking Israel.

A few moderates want Jordan to annex the West Bank and Egypt to take the Gaza Strip, but this is extremely unlikely. These countries do not want a sudden influx of millions of radicalized, impoverished Palestinians coming into their countries because they are already dealing with their own Islamic insurgents and economic troubles as well. (Israel, by the way, is now at peace with Egypt and Jordan.)

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The Options

Each of the proposed solutions has its drawbacks. A single, democratic state comprised of Jews and Arabs may seem ideal to many people, but such a country would probably implode into civil war like in the Balkans in southeastern Europe in the 1990s. A single, Jewish state in which Arabs are either expelled or not granted democratic rights would quickly be condemned as immoral and similar to the apartheid regime that existed in South Africa. A two-state solution in which Israel gives away the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza would surrender many areas that are religiously important to Jews and leave a smaller Israel that is more vulnerable to attack.

Everyone in Israel knows that these are the only three options. But the Israeli government has yet to choose one. This is why the government is paradoxically negotiating a return of the West Bank to the Palestinians while building settlements there at the same time. (Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did withdraw from Gaza, but Hamas took control of the territory and started firing rockets into Israeli towns.)

The Israeli government has yet to decide which of the three options to choose because the government itself – just like the society as a whole – is fractured, divided, and paralyzed. The government is unable to function because of one issue: Israel’s broken electoral system. But that’s the topic for my next letter.

Next letter: The Great Religious Divide; Prior letter: What is Israel, Anyway?