Editor’s note: This op-ed by Barrie Dunsmore first appeared in the Sunday Rutland Herald and Times Argus. Dunsmore is a former ABC correspondent.
I remember having dinner one night at the home of a Jewish-American journalist friend in Tel Aviv. It would have been in the 1970s. He was a New Yorker who had gone to Israel to cover the Adolf Eichmann trial in 1961 and decided to stay. I often visited with him when I was in Israel but this particular conversation has stuck with me. That night my friend was grumpy. His children were getting older and his apartment, while pleasant, was quite tiny. But rents were high, he was a freelancer and he couldn’t afford a larger place, which was the source of his unhappiness that night. At one point he announced, “I’m thinking of becoming a settler,” He added that he could then get a great new apartment on the West Bank near Jerusalem for a third of what he was paying in Tel Aviv. That’s because then as now, the government was substantially subsidizing settlements to create, as officials openly admitted at the time, “facts on the ground.” In other words, there has long been a deliberate effort to colonize parts of the occupied Arab territories which would ultimately make returning the land very difficult if not impossible.
My friend actually never had any intention of becoming a settler because he really didn’t approve of them. And I specifically recall how he went on that night to explain Israel ’s settlement policy. As he told it, the Israelis were taking a page from America ’s 19th century history: Washington would encourage settlers or pioneers to go out West. The Indians would then attack the settlers. And the government would respond by sending in the U.S. cavalry to kill the Indians. “That’s how the West was won,” he said with an ironic chuckle. Well, that wasn’t exactly what happened in this country nor is it exactly what Israel has been doing. But there are certainly similarities in the questionable morality of the expansionist policies of both – albeit a century apart, which is an important distinction.
In Israel’s case, I got the feeling the settlements issue had come full circle when I heard Prime Minister Netanyahu vehemently oppose President Obama’s suggestion that the pre-June 1967 War boundaries be a starting point for border negotiations between Israel and Palestine. Deliberately ignoring Obama’s key qualifier that there should also be “mutually agreed swaps” of land – a formula accepted by both parties for at least a decade – Netanyahu claimed that Israel couldn’t possibly return to the ‘67 borders, which were “indefensible.” The real issue of course is that there are now nearly half a million Israeli “settlers” living on substantial pieces of occupied Palestinian territory and the land swaps required to include most of them as part of Israel, may now be unacceptable to both sides. So just as every American president since Jimmy Carter warned – and successive Israeli governments actually planned – the settlements are indeed “obstacles to peace.” In fact, they are now a greater impediment than ever.
I couldn’t write this column without noting the unseemly behavior of the United States Congress in its sycophantic response to Prime Minister Netanyahu and his speech last Tuesday. It is one thing to give a warm welcome to the leader of a close and important ally. It is quite another to jump to your feet 29 times to cheer a speech that was a provocative reiteration of every hard line position of the current Israeli government – a speech that did not contain one ray of hope for the future or a single crumb for the Palestinians.
President Obama ought not to be the only American leader who recognizes that the failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict represents a threat to American troops in the Middle East region- and to a range of American interests. Obama did not, as would-be Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney put it, “throw Israel under the bus,” (demonstrating once again that Romney will say anything to get elected – regardless of the facts or his previous positions.) Obama is concerned, as are many of Israel ’s true friends, that the status quo, based on the military occupation of Palestine is not sustainable and thus, not in Israel ’s long term interestsI leave you with the thoughts of some important Israelis, who very much share that concern. Prior to Obama’s controversial Mideast speech and Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, a group that includes 18 retired generals and 27 winners of the prestigious Israel Prize, purchased this ad (in Hebrew or English) in major Israeli newspapers:
RECOGNIZING A PALESTINIAN STATE BASED ON THE 1967 BORDERS IS VITAL FOR ISRAEL’S EXISTENCE
(The same ad was placed last week in the New York Times by J Street, the liberal Jewish- American pro Israel, pro-peace group that claims about 200,000 members.)
Perhaps even more significant was this development noted by J. J. Goldberg in a recent column in the Jewish Forward. Since Israel ’s inception in 1948 only 18 men now living have headed the main security services: the Israeli Defense Forces, the Mossad intelligence agency and the Shin Bet internal security service. Four are old and inactive. But in recent weeks 12 of the remaining 14 have challenged Netanyahu’s policies as a threat to Israel ’s future. This vigorous new policy debate, apparently inspired by the historic political changes now under way in the Arab World, is led by those who feel Netanyahu is seriously miscalculating both the meaning of these changes and what Israel should do about them.
Once again, I regret that the healthy discussion that takes place among Israelis critical of the policies of their government is rarely noted or joined here in this country. If it were, we might see fewer sorry spectacles in the Congress as occurred this past week. Also perhaps, such uninformed political pressure would have less impact in reducing the options of the president of the United States in pursuing Middle East policies that are in America’s best interests, and I would argue, Israel’s as well.
