Meron Benvenisti has appeared many times on this weblog. While he is a brilliant analyst and an excellent speaker, his writing is often quite convoluted. In general, Benvinisti believes that there are two facts Israelis consistently ignore: 1. the settlement project has so intertwined Jews and Arabs, that a two-state solution is no longer possible. 2. no solution is possible without taking into consideration Palestinian aspirations and demands. In the following piece, Benvinisti mocks supporters, on the right and left, of Sharon’s “disengagement” plan, because they ignore those two concrete facts and continue to live in an illusion (which is a core principle of Zionist ideology) that Jews can unilaterally create irreversable facts on the ground without regard for the Palestinians.
Reversing the theory of non-reversibility
By Meron Benvenisti
There is something touching, albeit expected, in the enthusiastic reactions and the rosy forecasts being voiced by spokesmen of the left-wing camp with regard to the disengagement and the day after. Touching, because the need to celebrate the fall of the right wing and prove that the settlements and occupation are reversible is so great that caution and skepticism are thrown to the winds and in their stead comes infectious optimism. As yesterday’s editorial on these pages stated, giving expression to wishful thinking disguised as a realistic forecast: “The cumulative accounting shows that this was only the first evacuation, which will be followed by more.”
The congratulations heaped on Ariel Sharon by spokesmen of the left are mere echoes of those heaped by them upon Yitzhak Shamir, who in 1991 went to the Madrid Conference, as if he were being frog-marched. “Do it your way, with your own tactics; the authority is all yours. Just bring peace now,” they told him. Indications that the disengagement from Gaza might bring about the expansion of settlements and the institutionalization of the Israeli control over the West Bank are all swept under the carpet as irrelevant.
The belief that the national instinct is activated whenever something appears to be wrong leads to the conclusion that the disengagement plan was conceived to shatter the theory of non-reversibility – that theory which 25 years ago foresaw the durability of the geopolitical status quo in the Land of Israel and the de facto strengthening of a binational apartheid-like entity. A quarter century has elapsed and there are still pronouncements that it will be shattered.
In 1983, it was decided that nothing is irreversible and therefore the settlements are “facts on paper.” In 1987, it was decided that non-reversibility had collapsed as soon as a Palestinian youth began throwing stones. In 1991, the peace conference in Madrid served as absolute proof of the theory’s bankruptcy since the “historic day of the division of the land” had arrived.
The Oslo accords “totally” refuted the pessimistic non-reversibility that plays into the hands of the right and the Yesha Council of settlements, since the Palestinian state was about to come into being and the future of the settlements had become past tense. When the number of settlers topped a quarter of a million, when more than 100 outposts had been established, when the fence had been built deep in Palestinian territory and when the “border crossings” had been set up near Nablus, Bethlehem and Ramallah, the number of voices finally trying to relate to the quasi-permanent reality created by the settlements and the facts that emerged after the shattering of the occupied territories into besieged and isolated cantons started to grow.
President Bush’s letter, which recognizes the new reality “that includes large concentrations of Israeli population,” appears to ratify the theory of non-reversibility and proves that facts on the ground become perceived facts. It is no surprise that the evacuation of the settlements in the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria is conceived of as earth-shattering; after all, everything is reversible but not so reversible that it can undermine the facts that have been created in the West Bank. These do not contradict the optimistic feeling that the evacuation process, and the peace process in its wake, are once again proceeding on an inevitable course with Ariel Sharon at the helm, moving along with “his own tactics.”
To feel convinced that there is indeed reason for this infectious optimism, the Algerian model is mentioned – Algeria against the mother-country, as if there is a sea that divides the two territories, the Gaza Strip and Israel. Where does the border between the colony and the mother-country run? Has Israel at any time defined the borders of the mother-country? What happens when, in the capital of the mother-country, the seat of its government, namely Jerusalem, part (East Jerusalem) is a colony and part is the mother-country? And how do those who recall the Algerian model define Ma’aleh Adumim, Gush Etzion and Ariel, which are part of the consensus – as an annexed colony or as the mother-country?
The Algierian model cannot serve as an analytical tool but rather as a crutch for those who seek optimistic precedents saying that, just as the French occupation ended there, the occupation will also end here. In fact, there is a consensus that unites most of the Israeli public except for the fringes on the right and left: After 120 years of Zionism, the Israelis have recognized the existence of millions of Palestinians who cannot be ignored or exiled. That is why they decided to mark the borders of their territorial expansion with a fence and to return to the Palestinians those territories that can undermine the demographic balance and to place on their shoulders responsibility for the fate of millions of people.
In return, the Israelis are demanding that the nations of the world appreciate their generosity and approve an arrangement according to which the remaining area of the Land of Israel, which Israel has no desire for, will become a Palestinian state without the power of sustaining itself.
No one is asking the Palestinians; everything, after all, falls under the doctrine of unilateralism, which is also part of the consensus. Gaza is the precedent for this vision and its realization at the expense of destroying the settlements appears to be a good deal. What a shame that, in the not-too-distant future, they will once again have to declare the shattering of the theory of non-reversibility.
