Settlements have ruined the Zionist dream of a two-state solution in the Middle East

GlobalPost

OWL’S HEAD, Maine – With the Russian take-over of the Crimea and the bizarre Malaysian flight mystery, it takes more than the third anniversary of the start of Syria's civil war or Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visiting the White House to re-focus anyone's attention back to the Middle East.

Fair enough: a miscalculation or two in the eastern Ukraine could create the kind of international crisis for which the world is unprepared.

Assuming diplomacy eventually quiets the eastern front, the real ticking time bomb, as leftist Israeli journalist Avi Shavit shows in his provocative, masterful book, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, is the future of Israel.

Shavit, whose English great-grandfather, the Rt. Honorable Herbert Bentwich, first went to the future land of Israel in 1897, convincingly describes the triumph of the Zionists who settled in this remote part of the collapsing Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century.

They created a progressive modern state out of whole cloth: "The founding fathers and mothers of Zionism realized" the challenge they were facing. “That's why they were so demanding of themselves and of others. That's why they acted in such a shrewd and resourceful and disciplined manner. They knew their mission was superhuman, as was the responsibility thrust upon them."

The tragedy begins, ironically, as a result of Israel's overwhelming victory in its six-day war in 1967 against the combined forces of the neighboring Arab countries, and its resulting takeover of the West Bank.

Israel's confidence was to be destroyed overnight in the 1973 war.

Shavit writes that "the almost instantaneous shift from an imperial state of mind to cowering despondency was followed by a deep crisis of leadership. The nation was filled with despair, self-doubt, and existential fear. The two diametrically opposed war experiences threw the Israeli psyche out of balance. The incredible contrast between them gave birth to the settlement."

Shavit was a 23-year old student in 1980 when he first realized "the settlements were a calamity in the making."
Thirty years later, he visits Ofra, which he calls “the mother of all settlements.”

He wants to understand how the settlements turned from rightist fantasy to historical fact. He wants to understand what the forces were that impelled late-twentieth century Israel to erect a futile, anachronistic colonialist project."

The settlements, he concludes, "have placed Israel's neck in a noose."

Confronting Pinchas Wallerstein, one of two key principals behind the Ofra settlement, Shavit denounces the "innocence and blindness" of the original settlement movement:

"After 1967, and after 1973, the self-discipline and historical insight that characterized the nation's first years began to fade. You settlers took advantage of the feebleness and of the political vacuum created by the wars…You were wrong to think that a sovereign state could do in occupied territories what a revolutionary movement could do in an undefined land…you endangered everything. Your energy was remarkable, but on everything that matters you were utterly wrong. Out of an understandable yearning for the Zionist past and Zionist glory, you contradicted Zionist logic and undermined Zionist interests. You brought disaster upon us, Wallerstein. On our behalf, you committed an act of historic suicide."

Rhetorically, Shavit asks himself the book's fundamental question: "Will the Jewish state dismantle the Jewish settlements, or will the Jewish settlements dismantle the Jewish state?"

Though the settlements are the key problem facing Israel's future, there are additional reasons for Shavit's pessimism: the gradual disappearance of Diaspora Jewry, the looming demographic problem for Israel as it continues its occupation of the West Bank, and, finally, the new Arab Awakening.

He points out that in England, his cousins are, through intermarriage and "a gradual loss of interest in Jewish life and Jewish identity in Britain," no longer Jewish. The situation, he adds, is much the same in America, with low Jewish birthrates and high intermarriage rates.

Today, Palestinians make up 46 percent of all of the inhabitants of greater Israel; they will be 50 percent at the end of this decade and 55 percent by 2040. "The future of Zion will be non-Zionist."

Even more problematic, Israel's extensive settlement of the occupied territories has now met head on with the radicalization of the Arab world.

Shavit warns that "if Israel does not retreat from the West Bank, it will be politically and morally doomed, but if it does retreat, it might face an Iranian-backed and Islamic Brotherhood-inspired West Bank regime whose missiles could endanger Israel's security."

Perhaps the most tragic insight comes in his description of an evening with a Palestinian he has known for years.

In 1993, Shavit’s friend Mohammed was persuaded that the only viable solution was two separate states. But by 2000, with the settlements in high gear, Mohammed had come to believe that was hopeless. His preferred solution, which would shatter the Zionist dream, was a one-state democracy uniting Israel and the occupied territories.

"I love Mohammed. He is smart, direct, warm, and devilishly talented. He is as Israeli as any Israeli I know. We share a city, a state, a homeland. We hold common values and beliefs. And yet,” Shavit concludes, “there is a terrible schism between us. What will become of us, Mohammed? What will happen to my Land, your Land?"

He finds today's Israel to be "dysfunctional," its "politics dire."
So how to get out of the dilemma Shavit is surely correct in foreseeing? Does his friend Mohammed have the right idea -- a one-state democracy, Jews and Palestinians?

It certainly would not be the Israel of the Zionists’ original dreams. Those early Zionists were, though, secular Jews, drawing on ideas from the European Enlightenment. What could be more secular, and more enlightened, than a state of Jews and Arabs, living harmoniously, intermarrying and forging a 21st-century Israel with real staying power?

States are constantly changing, coming and going, metamorphosing beyond recognition. Who knows what the future, anywhere, will bring? But what's to say a multi-ethnic, multi-religious Israel couldn't become an anchor of stability in the future Middle East, a beacon to emulate, with the great great grandchildren of the Zionist founders once again driving up to Beirut for the weekend.

That certainly wouldn't be the dream of Shavit's Zionist forbears.

It's a long shot, to be sure. But as Shavit says at one point, "What is needed to make peace between the two peoples of this land is probably more than humans can summon."

Mac Deford is retired after a career as a Foreign Service officer, an international banker, and a museum director. He lives at Owls Head, Maine and still travels frequently to the Middle East.

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