I think it's fundamentally dishonest to one the one hand claim that the land in the West Bank and Gaza belongs to the Palestinians, and on the other hand allow militant Jewish religious groups to settle there. Period.
Well, Israeli politics is certainly divided. Even now, the government cannot express a single opinion concerning its own actions, the PM Sharon says one thing, FM Peres says another, DM Ben Eliezer says a third. The Left and and the Gush Emonim (the religious settler's bloc) say the nastiest things about each other. (Of course the Left has been pretty dispirited lately)
But one thing the Israelis have never said, that the land in the territories 'belonged' to the Palestinians. They said the land was in dispute, and its final borders must be settled by negotiations per UN 242.
The great PR triumph of Palestinians during the Oslo period was introducing the general use of the word 'occupation', which they are careful to use every 5 seconds. Think about the implication of the word: that you have two countries, Country A and Country B, with long-existing historical borders, and that during war Country A invaded and occupied Country B. So we speak of the German 'occupation' of France during WWII.
These implications are false in Palestine. First, the borders of Palestine are not of long historical duration; the British Foreign Office drew them in 1917. The British were influenced by their knowledge of the ancient borders of Judea, as the Jews were. There were no such borders in the Ottoman Empire nor was there any Ottoman vileyat of Palestine; if you had asked the inhabitants of Palestine what country they lived in, they would have said, Syria.
Second, after the creation of the Mandate of Palestine, the issue became one of partition, a border struggle. The internationally recognized borders of Israel are the truce lines of 1949. The borders of the occupied territories are the truce lines of 1973. The final eastern border of Israel remains a matter of dispute.
Israel has never said that the territories all 'belong' to the Palestinians; they cannot afford to. If the West Bank really 'belongs' to the Palestinians, what is different about Israel inside the Green Line? it would imply that Israel does really not 'belong' to them either, they just hold the land by force of arms. |
