On February 18 th , 2 Israeli visions were laid out at a UN security council meeting about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Nadav Tamir, former Israeli consul in Boston, former senior adviser to President Shimon Peres and current Executive Director at J Street Israel, defended the vision of a two-state solution based on territorial compromise with the Palestinians and Israel’s regional integration.
Gideon Saar, Israeli foreign minister, spoke about the inalienable rights of the Jewish people in Judea Samaria, the biblical name of the West Bank, to defend Israel’s right to extend its sovereignty there.
Gideon Saar is right about the Jewish people’s connection with the Land of Israel, Eretz Israel, that ridicules the argument of Zionism as colonialism. It is true that Judea Samaria are part of the biblical land of Israel, and it is indeed a « Jewish land ». But it does not justify in any way its annexation to the state of Israel. In a sense, its Jewishness does not justify its “israeliness”.
There is a famous say in Hebrew that states « Al tihie tsodek, tihie Khakham », « don’t be right, be smart ». The state of Israel, the national home of the Jewish people could be “right” to annex the West Bank from an ideological and even historical point of view, but it would not be wise to do so from a national and political one.
Annexing the West Bank today would mean absorbing in the state of Israel 2 million Palestinians and face a very clear choice: grant them the Israeli citizenship and jeopardize Israel’s Jewish character or not grant them and jeopardize its democratic one. The annexation would basically make impossible the continuation of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, the repudiation of political Zionism that made possible the creation of the state of Israel.
Israel does not have a constitution. In its founding document it states clearly that all its citizens will be granted equal rights, and Israel can claim today but it is a real democracy, in its recognized borders. Changing them today and annexing the West Bank would change that.
Annexing the West Bank is not a security imperative, as security forces can stay for many years until a solution is found, without having to expand settlements and formally annex the territory.
It is an ideological one, the realization of the national religious Zionists who have always seen democracy as an accessory to the Zionist project, not a prerequisite.
In 1947, the UN came up with an imperfect partition plan, with weird borders and the granting of the most Jewish parts of Eretz Israel to the Arabs. The Jewish Agency accepted it while the Arabs rejected it, which is something even right-wing Israelis claim today to explain (rightly so) the dire situation of the Palestinians today. They were pragmatists that understood that the realization of the Zionist project meant sacrifices about Jewish land.
The choice to make remains the same today. It is about Israeli sovereignty versus Jewish ownership, and 80 years after the partition plan it took place yet again at the UN, with this debate between Saar and Tamir
Gideon Saar is right: some coins were found recently, proving Jewish presence in Judea Samaria thousands of years ago. But Nadav Tamir’s vision is actually the only one that can guarantee the continuation and the thriving of the Zionist project and the preservation of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state.
Sebastien Levi
