‘Teaching The Controversy’ In The West Bank

Noting that Israeli Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon’s recent video claiming "The West Bank Isn’t Occupied" is simply a remake of an earlier video by the Israeli settlers’ YESHA council, the Forward’s Gal Beckerman asks, "Should we not be concerned when the foreign ministry of Israel is using the same propaganda as the settlers? Or should we just assume that their interests are one?"

Well, the fact that Israel’s current foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman is himself a settler (he lives in Nokdim, in the southern West Bank) should probably point us to the answer. (An Israeli friend once noted to me that Lieberman is the only foreign minister in the world who doesn’t actually live in his own country.)

In regard to the actual claim that Ayalon/the YESHA Council makes in regard to the status of the territories, I addressed it when Ayalon first floated this argument in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in December 2009:

Leaving aside the appeals to the authority of the British Mandate — the right of European colonial powers to carve up and give away their subjects’ land in the first place is, let’s just say, not uncontroversial — Ayalon’s quoting of Rostow is very selective. Rostow recognized in no uncertain terms (in the very same piece that Ayalon references, in fact) that the West Bank was occupied territory.

As did former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, decidedly not a Palestinian nationalist, who admirably cut through the bull in 2003 and acknowledged the bare fact: “You cannot like the word, but what is happening is an occupation — to hold 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation. I believe that is a terrible thing for Israel and for the Palestinians.” Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert, also affirmed this view, noting in reference to the resentment and hatred created by Israel’s military control of over 3 million Palestinians that “We see the occupation as problematic.”

Short version: It’s not a serious argument.

Except that, now that it’s being promulgated by the government of Israel, we have to take it seriously. So it’s important to understand the "teach the controversy" approach that the Israeli Foreign Ministry is taking here in an attempt to push back on the Quartet’s recognition of the 1967 lines as a basis for negotiations. By asserting an Israeli claim, however legally dubious, to the West Bank, they’re essentially saying that, having relinquished any claim to 75 percent of Palestine (which the PLO did in 1993 when it recognized Israel), the Palestinians must now submit to negotiations over the remaining 25 percent. Yet, in rejecting this frame-up, we’re apparently supposed to believe that it’s the Palestinians who aren’t being reasonable.