NYTimes, 6.22.9: Fictions on the Ground

Tony Judt is one of the most thoughtful, and controversial, commentators on the Middle East.  Today's op-ed in the NY Times is no exception:

But the settlers are no mere marginal interest group. To appreciate their significance, spread as they are over a dispersed archipelago of urban installations protected from Arab intrusion by 600 checkpoints and barriers, consider the following: taken together, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights constitute a homogenous demographic bloc nearly the size of the District of Columbia. It exceeds the population of Tel Aviv itself by almost one third. Some “settlement.”

If Israel is drunk on settlements, the United States has long been its enabler. Were Israel not the leading beneficiary of American foreign aid — averaging $2.8 billion a year from 2003 to 2007, and scheduled to reach $3.1 billion by 2013 — houses in West Bank settlements would not be so cheap: often less than half the price of equivalent homes in Israel proper.

[Link to NYTimes story}

Comments

[Trish]

Tony Judt is controversial yes. Thoughtful, not so much. I have to object to this article here. I don't want Tony Judt representing my congregation, whether through a blog or not.
It's not the issues that I object to--they are legitimate to discuss. It's the lack of deeper context and the way that he points--in a subtle way, but there nonetheless--to Israel as the colonial villain. It's a very British thing to do, but not actually appropriate to Israel's situation.
A much more thoughtful presentation of the relationship b/n Jews and Arabs in Israel (which is part of that missing context) is found in Marc Rosenstein's Galilee Diary (latest post here: http://blogs.rj.org/reform/2009/06/galilee-diary-peace-talk-v-liv.html). He very carefully humanizes everyone in this difficult situation--unlike Judt.

[Trish]

And here's a response from someone who actually has some experience in the area. This was in the NYTimes on June 27, written by Allan Gerson, who is an international lawyer, counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations from 1981 to 1985, and author of “Israel, the West Bank and International Law.”

Tony Judt (“Fictions on the Ground,” Op-Ed, June 22) substitutes repetition for substantiation in charging no less than six times that all Israeli settlements are a blatant violation of international law. Of course, he is no international lawyer, and his analysis demonstrates that fact.
He cites Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, but this has nothing to do — implicitly or explicitly — with settlements. It is about the avoidance of the threat or use of force in international relations.
Similarly, Article 47 of the 1949 Geneva Convention merely deals with the need to preserve the status quo ante of existing “institutions or government,” and to not annex occupied territory. Israel has not annexed the West Bank in part or in whole, with the exception of East Jerusalem, which for various historical and legal reasons has been treated as a special situation.
Of course, the presumption behind Article 47 was that the ousted power here, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, would be ready to come to the negotiating table and that preservation of its institutions — whether democratic or not — would be a spur to a negotiated resolution.
In fact, in the aftermath of the 1967 war, for more than two decades, the governing pan-Arab policy was one of no recognition, no peace and no negotiations. Probably more than anything else, that climate created the incubus in which settlements could take root.
The legality of the settlement issue is much more muddled than Mr. Judt portends. And for that reason, United States administrations have repeatedly taken the position that the issue is not one of lawfulness, where there is room for different strands of opinion, but rather one of political sense.