by Steven Plaut
There
seems to be a wide misconception that the Middle East conflict is
complicated. In fact it is really rather simple. Indeed, one can
basically summarize and explain the entire conflict within the context
of the words “occupation” or “occupied territories” and with respect to
beliefs about the effects of such “occupation.”
Let me explain. For most of the past 46 years (since
1967), there has been something of a universal consensus among those
agreeing that removing or eliminating the Israeli “occupation” over the
West Bank and Gaza, areas dubbed “The Occupied Palestinian Territories,”
would reduce tensions and make the region more tranquil, possibly
leading to full peace between Israel and its neighbors. Let us dub this
theory the Removal of Occupation Lowers Violence (henceforth the ROLV)
Axiom.
It would be hard to exaggerate how broad the ROLV consensus
is in the world. Outside of Israel it is essentially universal. Even
within Israel, for much of the past two generations this ROLV has been
the consensus position of the bulk of the Israeli political spectrum.
Almost all Israeli parties have long agreed, certainly since the “Oslo
Accords” of the early 1990s, that the key to reducing tensions between
Israel and the Arab world is via partial or total removal of Israeli
“occupation” of those territories. With the exception of small parties
on the Israeli Right, basically the entire Israeli political elite,
including Bibi Netanyahu and the Likud, is at least nominally committed
to the ROLV axiom. In this sense, (Israeli President) Shimon Peres’
recent pronouncement that there is near consensus in Israel behind the
so-called “two-state solution” was only partly his imagination. (The
President in Israel is little more than an honorary post like the queen
of Holland, whereas the real head of state is the Prime Minister, and so
Peres really represents no one.) While acceptance of the ROLV axiom,
holding that removal of occupation leads to reduction in violence, is
not quite the same thing as the “Two-State Solution” that Peres
advocates, its broad acceptance by so many Israeli political parties
provides a small basis for Peres’ grandstanding.
Everything needed to understand the Middle East conflict
can be grasped if one bears in mind that near-universal consensus behind
ROLV and one second fact. The second fact is that the international
consensus about removal of Israeli occupation is empirically false and
nearly all Israelis understand that it is false.
It is somewhat difficult to document exactly what Israelis
think about the “removal of occupation” and the so-called Two-State
Solution. Many of the public opinion polls in Israel are deliberated
distorted by people with an ideological axe to grind, one that precludes
asking candidly what Israelis think. An example was a recent poll
that asked what the respondent would think about a Palestinian state if
it were to be effectively demilitarized, proclaimed its friendly
intentions towards Israel, and proved its intentions over a long testing
period. The question was science fiction; it was like asking how you
would respond if friendly space aliens landed in a flying saucer on your
lawn and offered you a Starbucks. So it was not surprising when fewer
than half of Israelis said that even then they would still be opposed
to a Palestinian state.
Occasionally the truth seeps through, such as in another
recent poll in which Israeli Jews opposing the “Two State Solution”
outnumbered those who endorse it by between 6 and 10 to one.
The simple truth of the matter is that almost all Israelis
by now understand clearly that removal of Israeli occupation does not
reduce violence, but rather it escalates violence. Almost all Israelis
understand that a cut-and-paste job of the unilateral Israeli withdrawal
from Gaza applied to the West Bank, which is pretty much what the whole
world is demanding (including the Obama administration), would result
in tens of thousands of rockets and missiles fired at the Jews of Israel
by the Arabs in those “liberated territories.” And probably also
weapons of mass destruction. The universal ROLV axiom is simply wrong
and almost all Israelis realize it is wrong, even if nearly 100% of the
rest of the world thinks it is correct.
And wrong it is. The unilateral Israeli withdrawal from
Gaza proved better than any controlled laboratory experiment how invalid
ROLV is and what the real effect of “ending occupation” is. True, the
anti-Semites and their terrorist allies claim Israel never really relinquished
its occupation over the Gaza Strip, although their claim exhibits
Orwellian levels of NewThink pretense and cognitive dissonance. If
there is not a single Jew in Gaza and the Gazans enter and leave Gaza
freely and smuggle in unlimited stocks of weapons from Iran, while
running their own economy, in what way exactly can this be considered
to be Israeli occupation? It is occupation only in the sense that the
US “occupies” Castro’s Cuba, by imposing some limits and restrictions on
the trade done with the pseudo-occupied by the pseudo-occupier.
In my opinion, at least 95% of Israeli Jews and Israeli
Arabs understand perfectly that the ROLV axiom about removal of Israeli
occupation producing tranquility is fallacious. Israeli Arabs and the
Jewish Far Left (and that includes the Tenured Left) support the removal
of occupation precisely because they know – like other Israelis – that
it will produce escalation of violence and tens of thousands of rockets
and missiles landing on Israeli Jewish civilians. Unlike other
Israelis, the Radical Left and Israeli Arabs favor those
developments because they hate Israel and want it eliminated. They
understand as well as everyone else that the axiom of Removal of
Occupation Lowering Violence is incorrect.
For the rest of the Israeli public, skepticism and disbelief regarding ROLV is nearly universal, almost as widespread as belief in
the ROLV axiom outside of Israel. The only group within Israel that
still believes in ROLV is confined to one or two political parties (the
Labor Party and Meretz) of the less-extreme Left, and these parties are
expected to get less than one vote in 6 in the upcoming elections. In
my opinion, even many of those who vote for these two parties do not
really believe in ROLV, and in fact much of the remaining vote in favor
of Meretz is coming from the anti-Israel extremists who seek Israel’s
elimination.
While Israeli political parties, especially the Likud, may
still pay lip service to ROLV, almost none of their rank and file
supporters and voters believe in it. Indeed, the parties pay the price
for their superficial posturing in favor of ROLV. Some of the posturing
is to gain support (including financing) from overseas believers in
ROLV, or to curry favor with the Obama administration and other foreign
governments. But those going through the posturing are as aware as
everyone else that the ROLV is false and that almost all Israelis
understand that it is false.
There have been proposals to condition any “deal” that
removes Israeli occupation from large swaths of the West Bank on an
Israeli national referendum. The Likud and most of the establishment
Israeli parties strongly oppose this. The Israeli radical Tenured Left
opposes such a referendum with hysterical jeremiads, labeling any
proposal for such a referendum anti-democratic and fascist.
Everyone, including Israel’s treasonous Left, knows that a
referendum on ROLV would not pass because almost no one in Israel
believes in ROLV anymore.
Steven Plaut
Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/why-lifting-the-israeli-occupation-wont-stop-violence/
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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