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Israeli Communities in the West Bank Are Neither Inherently Illegal Nor the Real Obstacle to Peace
(Jewish Chronicle-UK) Stephen Daisley - UK Prime Minister-in-waiting Andy Burnham warned he may ban settlement goods. Activists allege that 32 British charities have been donating money to Israeli communities in the West Bank. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has warned British citizens and companies that they "should not conduct any economic and financial activities in illegal Israeli settlements" - a category that presumably includes the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City, where Jews have lived continuously for centuries until they were ethnically cleansed in 1948 by the Jordanian army. When the Jews returned to their ancient neighborhood after the Six-Day War in 1967, they suddenly became "illegal settlers." Jewish settlement in the West Bank, or, to use its decolonized name, Judea and Samaria, as such is not extreme or shameful or worthy of sanction. These areas are the very heart of the Land of Israel, the cradle of Jewish civilization, places where Jewish life, worship, custom and self-determination can be traced back more than three millennia, and there are substantial arguments in international law supporting Israeli sovereignty over the territory. Why would the mere presence of Jews in the West Bank be an obstacle to peace? The Palestinians are also building in the West Bank in contravention of the Oslo Accords. Irregular construction is either an obstacle to peace or it's not; it can't be an obstacle only when one side does it. And the vast majority of Jews in the West Bank live anyway in settlements or neighborhoods of Jerusalem that would remain Israeli under any conceivable peace deal. But why would the presence of Israeli Jews even outside these blocs and neighborhoods stand in the way of Palestinian statehood? After all, Israel is home to two million Arabs, 21% of the population, all of whom enjoy citizenship and equal rights. The future State of Palestine could just do the same as Israel, right? The dirty little secret of the two-state solution is that there can be no Israeli Jewish minority in a State of Palestine because the Palestinians refuse to consider it. The Palestinians are not content to have a state unless it first had all its Israeli Jewish residents expelled. There is a term for the uprooting of a racial or religious group from a territory but it's not "peacemaking." A government that applies its moral standards and interpretation of international law consistently ought to prohibit British NGOs from funding Palestinian entities which do not recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. If Israelis living over the Green Line pose an obstacle to peace, Palestinians who refuse to accept Israelis living on either side of the Green Line also stand in the way of peace.