Occupied Territories

her, a senior member of Barak’s team at Camp David, about the future of the territories:

“Governing another people is bad for us in every way,” said Sher. “The question is, can we heal ourselves in a way that will preserve the Jewish nation for years to come? If we just withdrew, we would then be a country seeking to protect itself with the vast support of the international community.

“You have to ask, what are the alternatives? To stay in the territories for ever? The Palestinians want this as it will mean a demographic wipeout of the Jews. Making a negotiated peace? But a reliable partner for peace is still entirely theoretical.”

In the eyes of many in Britain and Europe, Israel’s attachment to the territories is ideological. But there is a more potent reason than ideology for its reluctance to withdraw. It is fear. It believes that to withdraw would leave it strategically exposed (particularly at Israel’s original nine-mile wide waist), and would announce weakness in the face of terror.

Sher’s reply to this is that withdrawal should be accompanied by a commitment from the Americans to take responsibility for guaranteeing security in the territories. Would this not be a reasonable price for the Americans to pay to guarantee the peace?

It’s not clear to me why the US would want to undertake such a thankless policing task, or how the Palestinians would react. Isn’t this what the UN is supposed to be for? But the basic idea is still compelling:

Given that every strategy has a lethal downside, the question is: what is the worst thing Israel has to fear? Is it war? It has fought and won wars. Is it terror? It is suffering terror now, and for the foreseeable future. What is surely worst of all is to lose its belief in itself and destroy its soul.

It is not that the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza are illegal. Under international law, land seized as a consequence of self-defence in war is legitimately held while the enemy refuses to make peace. But legality is not the point. The bottom line is existential vulnerability. If Israel hangs onto the territories, the Jews will be outnumbered. It cannot and should not rule another people. It cannot wait for 20 years for negotiations to begin. It should unilaterally give up the territories.

The fear that giving them up would hand a victory to terror is a very real one. But it is possible to turn this argument on its head. For withdrawal effectively forces a state on the Palestinians. It therefore does not give terrorists victory if their goal is not a Palestinian state at all but the destruction of Israel. It is rather to frustrate their goals, call their bluff and so defeat them.