United States Secretary of State Michael Pompeo delivered a bombshell announcement this week, stating on Monday that Jewish communities in the West Bank – communities he still chose to call by the derisive term “settlements” – are not illegal according to international law.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud), together with many local political figures and Israel-supporters abroad, lauded the US decision to revise the state department’s official legal position.
Despite recently falling out of favor with the Trump administration as he fights for his political survival, Netanyahu said the new American decision is “righting a historical wrong.”
“This policy reflects a historical truth that the Jewish people are not foreign colonialists in Judea and Samaria,” he said in a statement.
But Netanyahu and others celebrating Pompeo’s announcement should understand that US declarations don’t determine who is or isn’t “foreign” or “colonialist” here. What makes a nation colonialist has at least as much to do with that nation’s policies and actions as it does with its identity and place of origin. In fact, the issue should be distilled into two conversations that are regrettably often conflated within Zionist circles.
First, are the Jewish people foreign to the Samaria and Judea regions? The answer is no, although it’s understandable how those less familiar with our identity and history could reach such a conclusion.
The West Bank constitutes the cradle of Hebrew civilization. It’s where the most significant events of our national story took place and where our people, culture and identity developed for many centuries. Up until Israel’s dramatic return to these lands in 1967, Jews still constituted the most recent native population to enjoy self-determination in Judea and Samaria. This is historical fact. From the time the Roman Empire deprived us of political sovereignty until the Six Day War, the West Bank had been ruled by a long series of foreign invaders. The only reason Jews were away from the mountains of the West Bank for so many centuries was because Roman conquerors uprooted and displaced us. But even that didn’t stop our exiled ancestors from aspiring to return home and it didn’t prevent their descendants from eventually succeeding.
–nationalist rant over–
But not being foreign doesn’t necessarily make one indigenous in the sense of what that term means to most people today. Nor does not being foreign necessarily make one not a colonialist.
The Jewish people are radically unique in that we are the only people in history broken and scattered throughout the world that actually managed to reunite and gain independence in the homeland we had been displaced from thousands of years earlier. From this perspective, we are a native people achieving liberation in our land against all possible odds.
Yet on the other hand, much of the Jewish homecoming took place through the use of colonialist methods and practices. This has been especially true regarding Israeli policies in the West Bank where millions of Palestinians live under full Israeli control while lacking any legal means to influence the systems and structures dominating them.
So while Israelis rightly take offense to being called colonialists in our people’s ancient land – especially in the cradle of Jewish civilization – our behavior has communicated that we are in fact colonizers. And gaining public support from Washington, especially the Trump administration, doesn’t make us appear any less colonialist.
It’s also important to keep in mind that despite stating that West Bank Jewish communities aren’t illegal, Pompeo didn’t say the Jews who live there aren’t colonizers. In fact, by referring to these suddenly not-illegal communities as “settlements” he inferred that there is something inherently colonialist about them. The word “settlement” may not be so libelous coming from Pompeo, being that the United States was – and continues to be – built on the foundations of settler-colonialism, but it should sound highly problematic to Jews, as it taints and places Israel in the same category as the US.
Another crucial basic question we should ask is whether or not ” international law” really even exists beyond a selectively enforced global mechanism for powerful nations to push their interests and agendas on more vulnerable countries.
If international law is nothing more than an imperialist tool, why would the US suddenly challenge the consensus view within the international community that deems West Bank Jewish communities illegal? If Western civilization is truly threatened by the notion of Israel’s rebirth having historical significance, how could US imperial interests have shifted to the point of seeing Israeli sovereignty in the territories as beneficial?
It’s of course far more likely that Pompeo’s statement was simply based on the administration’s perception of its short term political interests than actually constituting a major long term shift in foreign policy. But regardless of what caused Pompeo’s statement or what it practically means, should Jews loyal to the homeland take advantage of an alignment – or short term perception of an alignment – between US and Israeli interests? Or should we on principle reject any cooperation with the forces of empire (the conclusion many took away from Trump’s recent abandonment of Kurdish fighters)?
At the end of the day, we need to stop behaving as slaves.
Just as Jerusalem was Israel’s capital before Donald Trump moved the US embassy to the city and will remain Israel’s capital even if he or his successor were to reverse this policy (Washington’s embassy should’ve been in Jerusalem all along – as should the embassy of any nation seeking diplomatic relations with Israel), Jewish communities in the Samaria and Judea regions are as legitimate without imperial approval as they are with. Just as Jews were wrong to behave as if Trump gave Israel Jerusalem or the legitimacy to call her our capital, we would be wrong to act as if he’s now giving us the West Bank.
In general we need to stop seeking legitimacy from Washington or any foreign power and we should continue to reiterate the truth that the most beneficial expression of friendship Trump can make is to help Israel to gradually transition towards full economic and military independence.
In terms of Pompeo’s specific statement this week, we should not share in the anger of the Palestinians or in the joy of Israel’s national camp. We should continue to work on the grassroots level to bring West Bank Jews and Palestinians together to engage each other’s narratives and create the framework of a shared struggle that frees us both from the forces of empire.
