BEYOND THE NUMBERS: The occupation canard
By Ron Dermer
(November 29) For over a year, Israel's sole response to the incessant criticism of its alleged "occupation of Palestinian land" has been to say that Ehud Barak was willing to "end the occupation" at Camp David. Arafat, our spokesmen proudly declare, rejected this generosity and unleashed a terrorist war against Israel.
But in concentrating only on proving how conciliatory we were, we are neglecting to rebuff the far more serious charge of occupying Palestinian land. That a left-wing administration whose members often sounded like guilt-ridden apologists would choose to do this is bad enough. But that a government led by Ariel Sharon would take the same line of argument is a travesty.
In failing to counter this canard, we are unintentionally granting our enemies a major victory in their century old campaign to delegitimize the Jewish State. At a time when continued Palestinian violence should have strengthened our hold on Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, we are literally ceding ground to the Palestinians.
At bottom, the Palestinian argument remains what it has always been - that colonialist Jews stole Arab land. For now that argument remains focused, at least in the Western media, on the territories captured by Israel in 1967. But our enemies have long realized that from both a moral and historical perspective, our claim to the "territories" west of the "Green Line" is only as strong as our claim to territories east of that line.
Arafat's refusal at Camp David to recognize a Jewish connection to the Temple Mount - including his preposterous statement to President Clinton that a Jewish temple never stood there - must be viewed in this light.
The Palestinian tyrant correctly understood that by accepting such a connection, he would have been implicitly accepting a Jewish claim to the entire Land of Israel. Similarly, Arafat understands that if he denies Jewish claims on the Temple Mount, he effectively denies them everywhere. After all, if the core of Jewish national existence for over 1,000 years and the source of our national aspirations for another 2,000 years sits on stolen land, then what property does belong to the Jews?
It is important to understand that one does not have to be an advocate of the "Greater Land of Israel" ideology to accept the above argument. To say that Jews have a claim to the entire Land of Israel is not to say that they have the only claim. But by failing over the past year to reject the mantra that we are "occupying Palestinian land," what our spokesmen have said through their silence is that the Jews have no permanent claim to those "territories" - a perversion of both history and morality.
While those who argue that Israel can never be called an occupying power in any part of the Jews' ancestral homeland are implicitly rejecting international law, those who maintain that the Jewish State is occupying Palestinian land are doing precisely the same thing. For according to international law, the "territories" are not now, nor have they ever been, Palestinian land. At the very least, Judea, Samaria and Gaza must be considered disputed territories on which both parties have competing claims. The rights of the Jews to settle throughout the area was recognized under the League of Nations Mandate and the right of the Jewish State to retain "territories" necessary for its security has been recognized by the UN Security Council.
Those who would reject history, morality and international law and demand that Israel immediately "end the occupation" of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip should note that according to any objective legal criteria, that "occupation" is now more legitimate than ever.
Despite the negative connotation associated with an occupation, it is legitimate for a nation to occupy another when that occupation is an outgrowth of a defensive war, and when it is designed to prevent further aggression by the enemy. Such was the case in the aftermath of World War II, when both Germany and Japan were occupied by foreign powers and when no serious western statesmen would have had the chutzpah to suggest that such an occupation was illegal, much less immoral.
The legitimacy of Israel's "occupation" rests on even more solid ground. The "territories" were captured in a defensive war and held in the face of unceasing hostility to the very idea of Jewish national existence. It is hard to imagine any unbiased observer believing that Israel's "occupation" is not justified today.
Security Council resolutions that call on Israel to return "territories" in exchange for peace - and not, it should be recalled, "all the territories" - implicitly recognize Israel's right to hold on to "territories" as long as Palestinian enmity continues.
That the Palestinians have made "ending the occupation" their casus belli is only the latest scene in the theater of the absurd starring the Jewish State over the past 50 years. For it is this belli which sparked Israel's so-called occupation, and it is a continuing Palestinian belligerency that now justifies that "occupation" more than ever - that is, if you believe there was one to begin with. |
