Peter Beinart and the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg claim that Israel must evacuate the West Bank of Jews or be faced with an inevitable scenario in which they will either be forced to accept a one-state solution that means the end of Zionism or be branded an apartheid state. As I wrote in part one of this series, this is a false choice because the settlements would not prevent a two-state solution if the Palestinians were willing to accept one in the first place. In part two, I also pointed out it is wrong to assume that Americans would ever be willing to try to force Israel to risk the creation of a new Hamasistan in the West Bank without even a dubious promise of peace. They understand the Palestinian goal is not so much independence as it is to destroy Israel. But are Beinart and Goldberg right when they assume that the continuance of a standoff will eventually destroy the pro-Israel consensus and lead to a majority of Jews and non-Jewish Americans to view Israel as an apartheid state?
The South African analogy, so popular with leftist anti-Zionists and so feared by some liberals, is utterly inapplicable for a number of reasons.
First, as I wrote earlier, the Palestinians were given autonomy and a path to statehood. Were the Palestinians devoted to peaceful coexistence and desirous only of independence alongside Israel, they would long ago have attained independence. The security restrictions in the West Bank and the presence of the Israel Defense Force there is merely a function of the terrorist campaigns the Palestinians have undertaken, not part of a grand scheme to subjugate the Arab population. If there were no suicide bombings and other terrorist threats, there would be no checkpoints or security fence about which the Palestinians complain so bitterly.
It is not logical to assert that a Palestinian Authority that is able to operate its own broadcast and print media (which spews forth hatred and incitement against Jews and Israel with impunity) or has control over the civil government of the West Bank is a new version of South Africa. Nor is the existence of Jewish communities, whose inhabitants are constantly threatened with terror, an indication of apartheid. Many of those settlements would certainly disappear if the Palestinians would only consent to accept a two-state solution the Jews appear to want more than the Arabs.
So long as the Palestinians, now divided between Hamas and Fatah but united on their refusal to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, are unwilling to accept Israel’s peace offers, they cannot play the role of South Africa’s blacks. Even at the United Nations, no bastion of support for Zionism, the PA’s bid for unilateral independence has fallen flat, because even the Europeans and much of the Third World understand that its up to the Palestinians to engage in the peace process if they truly want their own state. So long as the Israelis hold the door open to statehood, the South African analogy is untenable, especially because Arab citizens of Israel have full citizenship rights and representation in the Knesset. The Palestinian demand for a Jew-free state makes it clear it is they who are practicing racism, not the Jews.
The expectation of some observers that eventually the Palestinians will wise up and ask for Israeli citizenship so they can vote Zionism out of existence misreads the nature of Palestinian politics. While such a tactic might conceivably facilitate their fantasy about ending Israel, it also presupposes a willingness to engage in even a charade of co-existence as well as underestimating the influence of Hamas and Islamism that already rule part of the country — the Hamasistan in Gaza — without benefit of democracy or a peace deal.
Demographic predictions of Israel’s doom may or may not be exaggerated, but they are not enough by themselves to trump the fact that peace requires the Palestinians to make the choice for a two-state solution. If, as seems likely, they continue to stall while hoping eventually Israel’s friends will tire of them, they will find out that support for the Jewish state is not as superficial as they think.
Americans look at the Middle East and they can tell without a scorecard who are the democrats and who are the opponents of the values Israel and the United States share. Americans are not so simple minded as to be misled in thinking Israel can be blamed for Palestinian rejectionism. Their backing for Israel is so deeply engrained in the political DNA of this country that it cannot be destroyed by the empty rhetoric the South African analogy represents. Israel’s foes think they have time on their side, but they underestimate the patience and the intelligence of the majority of Americans who make up the pro-Israel consensus.
As difficult as the status quo may be, Israel can and must afford to wait until a sea change takes place within Palestinian society that will make peace possible. Americans will wait with them.
An excellent analysis, Jonathan, but I think you let Goldberg off too easily. He seems to be trying to influence, rather than merely reflect, American Jewish opinion on this subject.. In other words, I think he is trying to convince American Jews to reduce their support for Israel because of the bogus charges Goldberg is leveling (for example, riffing off of Hilary Clinton's charge Israel is becoming undemocratic). He must be called to account for trying to subtly undermine support for Israel by lending credence to these phony charges.
Jeffrey Goldberg does not make an understandable or cogent argument as to how settlement building will result in Israel becoming an aparatheid state. At least in my mind, if Israel can have Arab-Israeli citizens, then why cannot a future Arab state have Jewish citizens? More importantly, isn't calling for a complete Jewish-free Judea and Samaria reverse aparatheid? Finally, the common call against Israel's building in Judea and Samaria is or was based on the premise of "Israel establishing facts on the ground" or "seeking a greater Israel;" however, are not the Arab Palestinians establishing facts on the ground or seeking a greater Arab state by claiming land, especially in area c, that had never been agreed to be Arab?
yes, BUT…doesn't it seem like there are many more self-hating Jews around these days? or maybe it's just that there are more of them in the Administration than there usually are…
The obsession with bashing Israel allows for the convenient ignorance of the fact that, given enough support, the Palestinians will use any Israeli policy as reason to end the Jewish State.
Unfortunately, as indicted by the numerous Jewish drones who predictably fall in line with the Obama line of the day Israel's base of support isn't American Jewry per se, but those American Jews and Christians who back a robust and secure Jewish state. Fatah and Hamas cannot be reconciled to a Jewish state. Israel is not going to retake Ramallah or Gaza or stop construction in Jewish neighborhoods on both sides of the Green line. The PA will remain. Wiley Hamastan will continue to play its cards. Israel in Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem will remain. These arguments about apartheid are morphing into the territory of counterfactual histories so beloved by Newt. What if Lee won at Gettysburg? What if the Japanese pulled off their Pacific campaign? What if the Jews were colonial interlopers in a historic Palestine made up of social democratic followers of Martin Luther King? What if. So what.
Among other reasons the South African analogy is false: n- the blacks in South Africa have never denied the rights of whites to live in South Africa n- the ANC never targeted whites as whites . The ANC strategy was to give whites the feeling of a common interest in a common South Africa . nUntil the Palestinians accept the legitimacy of the Jewish presence in the Jewish Ancestral Home there will be no chance of peace.