Amidst the last couple weeks of violence in Israel, there’s been much discussion about how calm can be achieved. And while Israel’s security forces have had their eyes and ears inn Palestinian communities throughout the country in the forms of digital and human sources, the government has offered no longterm solutions.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz (Blue & White) pressured Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to issue a weak condemnation of the attacks that is unlikely to sway any opinions. So too, all the statements of condemnation from Western nations are likewise not expected to have any material impact – especially given the fact that those nations hope to see the partition of our land into two separate states.
But one very simple political strategy that could actually answer Israel’s security needs is the application of full Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria.
Aside from the obvious strategic benefits that greater geographic girth and holding the mountains overlooking our densest population centers would bring Israel in any conventional war against other nations, applying official Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank would also benefit our internal security far better than the current oppressive structures in place that not only increase Palestinian motivations to attack Israelis but also cause us to appear like foreign colonizers in our own land.
Much of the violence Israel faces today from Palestinians results directly and indirectly from the oppressive structures and exploitative arrangements institutionalized by the Oslo Accords. The Western-imposed agreement created a reality in which “occupation” took on real concrete meaning to the Palestinians living in the West Bank.
Take for example Diaa Hamarsheh, the Palestinian assailant who murdered five people in Bnei Brak last week. Born in 1995, he never knew a life other than one controlled by a military bureaucracy and surrounded by a concrete wall. While this doesn’t excuse his actions, it demonstrates just how desperate life can be for Palestinians living under Israeli military control with no democratic ability to influence or change the structures they live under.
Israeli annexation of the territories would accomplish two important objectives.
First of all, it would apply full Jewish sovereignty to the parts of our homeland that Israel liberated in 1967. While Areas C, B, and even A inn the West Bank are still directly or indirectly controlled by Israel today, legal annexation would be make the true facts on the ground official and begin a process of offering citizenship and democratic rights to Palestinians.
It’s been frequently argued at Vision Magazine that asserting full Israeli sovereignty to the territories while addressing the core grievances of the Palestinian people is the most just and responsible way to resolve the conflict.
Secondly, annexation would enhance the security apparatus already in place while shifting the issue of Palestinian violence from one of national defense to one of law enforcement. While Israel has a good general grasp on what happens on the Palestinian street, surely a situation in which police officers rather than young soldiers in a people’s army take responsibility for maintaining security would be more professional. And if the Judea and Samaria regions are officially part of the Israeli state, security forces could better keep a finger on the pulse of Palestinian society without having to behave as an occupation army on foreign soil. This would make arrests and weapons confiscations less risky while helping to repair overall relations between Jews and Palestinians (annexation into the State of Israel would also allow Palestinian civil servants to earn wages in line with their Israeli counterparts).
One thing is certain: the status quo is not sustainable. It is neither practical nor desirable for the current reality of military occupation and terror attacks to remain. As the Palestinian population grows and tensions rise, maintaining the status quo would only lead to an eventual scenario of full-scale war, undoubtedly resulting in many deaths.
For annexation to be possible, however, Israel’s leaders must break free from Washington’s oppressive hold on our sovereign decision-making. We must realize that while many in the West may not be our enemies, they are also not necessarily entirely our friends.
From the perspective of the United States and its allies, their regional interests will always trump Israel’s security needs. We can look no further than former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s own words: “It was clear from the start that the application of sovereignty would be done only with agreement from the United States. Otherwise, I would have already done it a while ago.”
Why should any foreign power dictate Israel’s policies if it is in our best interests to ignore them? No other nation would accept that. And Israel’s security is too precarious to gamble on the benevolence of an empire in decline with its own regional interests.
The Jewish people will be safer in the entirety of our land. We know that “land for peace” is a flawed policy that only ends in blood. Let us work to undo the disaster that was Oslo and assert full control over Judea and Samaria.
The sooner we do this, the safer we (and the Palestinians) will be.
