Palestinian Security: The Arab-Israeli War of 1967

Third in an ongo­ing series

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?