Israel: The annexation nation

Paul Taylor, a contributing editor at POLITICO, writes the “Europe At Large” column.

PARIS — Too much history, not enough geography. British philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s aphorism about the plight of the Jews explains why Zionists fought to build a state on the land where their distant forebears dwelled in Biblical times.

But Israel may be about to discover that too much geography can also be a problem.

Behind our backs during the COVID-19 crisis, world powers great and small have been moving the geopolitical goalposts in ways that would normally draw widespread condemnation, but have been mostly crowded out of the headlines by stories of masks, respirators and trillion-dollar economic recovery plans.

One of those developments is taking place in Israel, where authorities have crept closer to formally annexing swaths of the occupied West Bank, with the blessing of the United States, in a move that would arguably drive a final nail into the coffin of a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

For Netanyahu, the start of annexation would provide a welcome distraction from his current trial on corruption charges.

Last month, after a prolonged deadlock and three inconclusive general elections, an emergency national unity government was formed. That coalition agreement empowers Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring forward a proposal from July 1 to apply Israeli sovereignty to Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley. That would set in motion the unilateral annexation of up to 30 percent of the West Bank.

Whether Netanyahu will actually trigger the process is still uncertain. The veteran Israeli leader has a track record of talking tough at home while acting cautiously to avoid alienating the U.S. or Europe.

His decision will depend on whether he believes Donald Trump will support him to energize his own right-wing Christian evangelical voter base before the November election, and whether he bets all his chips on the U.S. president’s uncertain reelection.

Trump, in a so-called deal of the century, proposed last year to hand the West Bank to Israel through a negotiating process supposed to lead eventually to a Palestinian state. The Palestinians rejected the plan as a violation of international law and a negation of their historic rights. There are no peace negotiations underway.

For Netanyahu, the start of annexation would provide a welcome distraction from his current trial on corruption charges and keep a promise he made before a general election in March when he was courting the votes of some 600,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Jewish control over the “whole land of Israel” has been the mantra of his Likud party ever since it opposed partition when the state was established in 1948, even though he has at times paid tactical lip service to the goal of a two-state solution.

If he goes ahead, it could be one of what British historian Ian Kershaw calls the “fateful choices” that politicians make driven by their own internal logic, but which can ultimately backfire and lead to a country’s moral or physical destruction.

Netanyahu’s plan would make a Palestinian state geographically unviable in the Swiss cheese-shaped residual West Bank territory and the Gaza Strip. It might well spark a violent third Intifada uprising despite Palestinian fatigue and demoralization.

It would be destabilizing for neighboring Jordan, with which Israel signed a peace treaty in 1994, and could reverse Israeli diplomatic and economic gains in relations with Gulf Arab states.

While Trump’s America might back such an Israeli move, despite deep unease in the U.S. Jewish community, the EU has already warned that it would not recognize any annexation. It would face accusations of double standards if it failed to act against Israel after imposing sanctions in response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Even if pro-Israel governments in Hungary and the Czech Republic vetoed a unanimous EU condemnation or sanctions, several EU countries might recognize a Palestinian state, and the European Commission could find ways to shut Israel out of valuable scientific and economic cooperation programs and to penalize exports from the settlements more effectively.

In Israel itself, annexation would lock in what the political scientist and former government official Aryeh Naor dubbed the Zionist trilemma: that Israel cannot be a Jewish state, be a democracy and keep the whole of Mandatory Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. It can have only two of those three.

If Israel extended its sovereignty over the whole land it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, it would be home to 12.6 million people, of whom 6.8 million are Jews and 5.8 million Palestinian Arabs, mostly Sunni Muslims. So if it were a democracy based on one-person-one-vote, it would become a bi-national state rather than the Jewish homeland to which its Zionist founders aspired.

Alternatively, denying citizenship to West Bank and Gaza Palestinians would enshrine permanently the de facto apartheid that has existed since 1967, but which Israel has justified by arguing that the final status of the territories was subject to negotiation.

To maintain a substantial Jewish majority and a democratic polity, Israel would either have to formalize apartheid or find a way of expelling more Palestinians than fled the country in either 1948 or in 1967. The impact of either option would be corrosive to the soul of Israel itself and on diaspora Jews worldwide, many of whom see their fate as linked to Israel’s.

A Palestinian protester takes cover during clashes with Israeli forces in April | Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images

That is one reason why nearly 300 retired Israeli military commanders and former heads of the security services formed an organization last year to campaign against partial or full annexation, warning that it would cost Israeli lives, prevent security cooperation with the Palestinian Authority and Jordan and change forever the Jewish, democratic character of the state.

Commanders for Israeli Security has run broadcast and billboard campaigns featuring a map showing a patchwork of 169 Palestinian “islands” with a 1,800-kilometer defense line if Israel were to annex the so-called Area C containing Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley. These are not starry-eyed pacifists, but the hard men who fought Israel’s wars and ran its occupation, its spies and its fabled covert action. They are right to fear for their country’s future.

Netanyahu has sought with some success to rebrand Israel as “the innovation nation” — a thriving ecosystem of startups, tech geeks, world-class universities and cutting-edge medicine and science. Do Israelis really want to become known instead as “the annexation nation”?