http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?id=41180&mador=4&datee=2/24/99
Ha'aretz, February 24, 1999
Morality as the art of the possible
By Amira Hass
In light of the obdurate resourcefulness with which
Israel continues to expand building for Jews in the
West Bank, the impotence of the attempts to stop the
momentum of concrete, asphalt and red roof tiles is
becoming clearer.There is nothing new and nothing
astonishing about the Palestinians' impotence. The
stepped-up Israeli construction stems from a clear,
considered and very simple policy: to expand the
borders of the state as far as possible beyond those
that have been recognized by the international
community, and to lure as many Jews as possible into
hitching their fate to the territories beyond the
Green Line. The other side of this policy was and is
to ensure Israeli control over as much territory -
and over as few Palestinians - as possible.
The operator of an Israeli steam shovel that is
shaving off the top of a pastoral hill, an Israeli
engineer who is checking the foundations of a new
neighborhood and a counselor in the Education
Ministry who is supervising the expansion of a
school in a Jewish settlement, are all operating
separately. They are not necessarily partners to the
ideology of the greater land of Israel, but they are
the emissaries of a far-reaching mental construct.
Facing them are thousands of Palestinians who fear
for their future: They put up protest tents, they
sometimes clash with Israeli soldiers guarding the
expanding settlements and they try to plant olive
trees on their own lands, and are prevented from
getting there by the residents of nearby
settlements. In the Friday prayers they bewail the
fate of their vineyards, that with time - because
the settlement fence has crept right up to them -
they have ceased to cultivate.
One worry unites them all, but in the end, every
damaged village stands alone. Contrary to official
declarations produced by the weekly bulletin of the
Palestinian cabinet, the villagers are not backed by
any clear and comprehensive policy of their
leadership. Economic deals between senior
Palestinian officials and Israeli businessmen, the
obedient cooperation in the commission against
incitement, regular reports to the Israeli Shin Bet
security service, arrests of Hamas activists, trips
abroad with representatives of the peace movement
and smiling group pictures at parties in Herzliya
Pituach - the Palestinian leadership has decided
that it is too weak to condition the normalization
of its relations with Israel on an end to the
Israeli takeover of the West Bank. Its adherence to
the Wye Memorandum even prevents it from formulating
new, non-schizophrenic tactics and its fear of
losing control over its public prevents it from
supporting the transformation of sporadic episodes
into a general popular Palestinian struggle.
The Palestinian weakness sheds light on the weakness
of the opponents to the settlements in Israel and
their stunning isolation within the opposition to
the Likud which sees itself as "the peace camp" or
alternatively as "Oslo supporters." Here too there
is nothing new nor astonishing. Peace Now does
provide precise data on the extent of official and
"piratical" Jewish construction, but there is no
public sufficiently unified to formulate new tactics
of action that would attempt to put a stop to the
settlement greed. Possibly, many in the Oslo camp -
among Labor Party and Meretz supporters - have
decided that they are too weak to deal with the
Israeli legal sophistry that has transformed every
scrap of land in the West Bank that is not
registered in the land rolls into land for Jews
only. They are weak, too, in face of the constant
temptation to middle- and lower-class Israelis to
exchange a small and crowded apartment for a
spacious apartment or even a single-family home with
a bit of garden.
The verbal opposition of most of the Israeli "peace
camp" to the expansion of the settlements is based
primarily on propositions that are claimed to be to
Israel's benefit, practically speaking, but these
fail to convince the public. They say that the
settlements sabotage the peace process, but if the
Palestinian Authority is pressing on with it, it
must be a sign that the danger is not so very great.
To those who say that the settlements are contrary
to the agreements, it is all too easy to prove that
there is no explicit written stipulation that they
must not be expanded. There are those who expect
that any minute now America will intervene and stop
the construction, but even though the United States
is no longer preoccupied with impeachment trials, it
has long since abandoned the international
agreements' viewpoint that the settlements are
illegal.
In the camp of the Oslo supporters - the central
axis of which is the Labor Party, the very same
party that in its previous incarnations laid the
foundations for the perception that it is the
borders of settlement that determine sovereignty -
there is a consensus that "it is impossible to break
up the settlements." Therefore, the leadership of
half of the Israeli public is unable to formulate
tactics for action that will be effective.
It is a short way from the practical "impossible" to
the normative "immoral." It is forbidden (immoral)
to talk of evacuating (in return for reparations
that would be included in the cost of a peace
agreement, for example) 180,000 Jews. It is
forbidden (immoral) even to call for the return to
Israel of 7,000 Jews living in the Gaza Strip (where
there are 1.2 million Palestinians) who are
occupying 20 percent of the land there. Behind this
consensus lies an opposite assumption held by most
of the Jewish public: that it is permissible,
because it has been proven possible, to herd 2.5
million Palestinians into a crowded living enclave
with no horizons
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