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Yoaz Hendel

Settlements here to stay

Op-ed: Even if two-state solution materializes, massive settlement evacuation impossible

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Congress speech, where he declared that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria may remain beyond Israel’s borders in the future, requires new thinking on the Left and Right. The time has come to put the cards on the table.

 

Since the 1990s, Israel’s leftist camp has produced contingency plans for settlement evacuation. Every leftist politician has his dreams, and every party has its diplomatic plans and boundaries. At the end of the day, the plans are similar and all of them refer to the eviction of people from their homes.

 

Some people argue that an effective evacuation-compensation law would prompt the voluntary elimination of the settlements. Others speak of a tough decision; we have no choice but to bite our lips and carry it out. The truth is that the people who endorse both views have become detached from reality. In current-day Israel, evacuating settlements is impossible, period, regardless of the agreement to be signed.

 

Ariel Sharon’s last gift to the settlement enterprise was the fact that since 2005, any notion of massive eviction is doomed for failure. Only 8,000 people were evacuated from the Gaza Strip, and we almost experienced a national catastrophe around here. The great praise lavished at the security establishment concealed an immense rift and great chaos that persist to this day.

 

Another mass evacuation is impossible not because of the risk of a civil war, but because Israeli society and Israel’s army are incapable of doing it. As one who believes in honoring any democratic decision, even if it means shooting ourselves in the foot, I do not wish for me and my rivals to experience the eviction of 50,000 to 100,000 settlers.

 

Those who conclude that evacuations are possible, based on the eviction of small outposts in recent years, are wrong. The State of Israel will be torn apart. And we haven’t even mentioned the moral aspect: How can a State that mostly objects to the notion of transfer accept so readily liberal plans by human rights fans that call for the transfer of tens of thousands of Jews?

 

And so, even those who believe in a future agreement that will result in two states living side by side – in line with most leftist plans – must contend with the settlements.

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 06.09.11, 11:23
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