Birthright Israel and West-Bank Settlements

JERUSALEM — Hil­lel Halkin makes a not-so-modest pro­posal for peace in the Mid­dle East:

There is one obvi­ous solu­tion for Israel’s West Bank set­tle­ments that has been all but com­pletely over­looked: Let the set­tlers con­tinue liv­ing where they are, but in the state of Palestine.

As a con­cep­tion, it’s stun­ningly sim­ple. Its very obvi­ous­ness has ren­dered it invis­i­ble, like some­thing in one’s field of vision that goes unno­ticed because it has been there all the time. If over one mil­lion Pales­tin­ian Arabs can live as they do in towns and vil­lages all over Israel, why can­not a few hun­dred thou­sand Israeli Jews live, sym­met­ri­cally, in a West Bank Pales­tin­ian state?

I once made a sim­i­lar pro­posal. After all, the alter­na­tives are either impos­si­ble or dan­ger­ous. As I observed per­son­ally, the major set­tle­ments just beyond the Green Line and are too large to evac­u­ate or move. Israel would never agree to a sin­gle, bi-national state because such a coun­try would soon cease to be a Jew­ish state because of higher Palestinian-birthrates or implode into civil war.

Part of the debate has also struck me as dis­crim­i­na­tory. Arabs — Pales­tini­ans or not, depend­ing on how each chooses to define him­self — have always lived as full cit­i­zens in the State of Israel with vot­ing rights and com­plete equal­ity under the law. Why, then, is there such a demand that no Jews can live in the West Bank at all? It does not seem fair.

If there is to be a two-state solu­tion, plac­ing all set­tle­ments and out­posts under the legal juris­dic­tion and sov­er­eignty of a future State of Pales­tine would be an equi­table solu­tion (as long as Jews there would have as much rights as Arabs in Israel). Still, Jews liv­ing in those places may not want to remain under such a sce­nario. They might leave — mak­ing the entire issue moot.

If this change of juris­dic­tion will not occur, then the only other pos­si­bil­ity would be for Israel to give a future, Pales­tin­ian state pieces of land to com­pen­sate for those taken by the major settlements.

The pol­i­tics of the region are very com­pli­cated. I remem­ber when I came on Birthright Israel in 2006 before mov­ing to Israel — every­one had learned a lot about the coun­try, but lit­tle was men­tioned about the com­plex­i­ties and real­i­ties of the region. I just wish we had been bet­ter informed.