A Mean Little Empire
NYRB: What does Olmert Want?
Amos Elon, the erudite Israeli journalist and historian whose most recent book is a compelling history of German Jewry, The Pity of It All, wrote this long essay for The New York Review of Books. In it he surveys the new political landscape of Israel since the most recent elections and the formation of the Kadima-led government of Ehud Olmert. Elon's article is a review of Gershom Gorenberg's recently published (and, according to Elon, excellent) history of the Israeli settlement movement, The Accidental Empire.
Gorenberg's book is infelicitously named, it turns out, given that the Israeli colonization of the West Bank and Gaza was anything but accidental. As Gorenberg's original research demonstrates, and as Elon outlines here based on the book and on his own experience as a journalist who was present at many of the important milestones of Israeli history, the Israeli settlement project was a foolhardy and reprehensible but entirely planned endeavor. (Elon oddly elides the fact that his own reading of Israeli history views the settlement project as planned, while Gorenberg sees it as "accidental"; perhaps the common point of these two interpretations is that neither Elon nor Gorenberg believes that there was a fully articulate master plan, although Elon regards planning at each stage to have been determining.) Responsibility for the growth of the settlements rests with Israeli political parties of the left and right. Elon's article serves as a reminder of the mendacious conduct that led to the rapid growth of the settlements — likely the foremost underlying cause of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians today. But he also explains in broad strokes why the settlements have succeeded thus far, and what Olmert's next moves may be, now that Israelis have demonstrated at the polls that they no longer support the hard right turn that initially brought Ariel Sharon to power.
Had Sharon suffered his stroke weeks earlier, before inaugurating Kadima, Benjamin Netanyahu would probably now be the Israeli prime minister. Olmert, whose wife Aliza is an avowed leftist and whose son refused on political grounds to serve in the Israeli military, is more of an unknown quantity. Yet it is evident that his "Convergence" plan represents not a watershed change in Israel's efforts to appropriate land in the Territories, but rather a pragmatic shift that Sharon had already initiated and that stands to insure permanence and guarantee an American imprimatur for Israeli colonization beyond the 1967 Green Line border. The "hitkansut" (or 'return to the fold') of which Olmert and other Israeli politicians regularly speak is a euphemism for a politically palatable hardening of the major settlement blocs and the shedding of outlying settlements that are costly to defend. Even this effort will be undertaken slowly and gingerly, and the price is estimated to be $22 billion, or ten times what the Gaza withdrawal required last year. So there is little chance that Israel, under no apparent pressure from the US Administration, will move swiftly or, even less likely, any more decisively to rein in its settlements and return to internationally recognized borders.
All of this comes at a tremendous cost, Elon points out, even to Israelis who are not suffering, as Palestinians are, from the economic and physical privations that result from Israel's adamant maintenance of its "mean little empire." The costs will be born, as usual, in measures of civilian blood — Israeli and Palestinian — as the ground for radical Palestinian militants is endlessly re-watered by continuing occupation, and Israeli military responses more than match those of the militants in ferocity. This is painfully evident this week, when a family of five as well as two other Palestinian civilians were killed, apparently by Israeli artillery shelling, while they picnicked on the Gaza beach. Palestinian suicide bombers, too, will not refrain from attacking under these circumstances, as one did in April, killing 12 civilians in Israel. Meanwhile, Israel refuses to meet with the Hamas government recently elected by Palestinians, and, as in the past even when the peace-seeking Mahmoud Abbas held more power, sees isolation of the Palestinians as the best weapon (and as a self-justifying reason to do whatever it wants). In this dire but all-too-familiar situation, a thin strand of hope may be found in the extent to which public figures in Israel and abroad, and their constituencies, take seriously the restrained yet deeply dismayed voices of writers such as Gorenberg and Elon. —LS
P.S.: a full text version of the article is available in the first comment on this post.
Amos Elon, the erudite Israeli journalist and historian whose most recent book is a compelling history of German Jewry, The Pity of It All, wrote this long essay for The New York Review of Books. In it he surveys the new political landscape of Israel since the most recent elections and the formation of the Kadima-led government of Ehud Olmert. Elon's article is a review of Gershom Gorenberg's recently published (and, according to Elon, excellent) history of the Israeli settlement movement, The Accidental Empire.
Gorenberg's book is infelicitously named, it turns out, given that the Israeli colonization of the West Bank and Gaza was anything but accidental. As Gorenberg's original research demonstrates, and as Elon outlines here based on the book and on his own experience as a journalist who was present at many of the important milestones of Israeli history, the Israeli settlement project was a foolhardy and reprehensible but entirely planned endeavor. (Elon oddly elides the fact that his own reading of Israeli history views the settlement project as planned, while Gorenberg sees it as "accidental"; perhaps the common point of these two interpretations is that neither Elon nor Gorenberg believes that there was a fully articulate master plan, although Elon regards planning at each stage to have been determining.) Responsibility for the growth of the settlements rests with Israeli political parties of the left and right. Elon's article serves as a reminder of the mendacious conduct that led to the rapid growth of the settlements — likely the foremost underlying cause of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians today. But he also explains in broad strokes why the settlements have succeeded thus far, and what Olmert's next moves may be, now that Israelis have demonstrated at the polls that they no longer support the hard right turn that initially brought Ariel Sharon to power.
Had Sharon suffered his stroke weeks earlier, before inaugurating Kadima, Benjamin Netanyahu would probably now be the Israeli prime minister. Olmert, whose wife Aliza is an avowed leftist and whose son refused on political grounds to serve in the Israeli military, is more of an unknown quantity. Yet it is evident that his "Convergence" plan represents not a watershed change in Israel's efforts to appropriate land in the Territories, but rather a pragmatic shift that Sharon had already initiated and that stands to insure permanence and guarantee an American imprimatur for Israeli colonization beyond the 1967 Green Line border. The "hitkansut" (or 'return to the fold') of which Olmert and other Israeli politicians regularly speak is a euphemism for a politically palatable hardening of the major settlement blocs and the shedding of outlying settlements that are costly to defend. Even this effort will be undertaken slowly and gingerly, and the price is estimated to be $22 billion, or ten times what the Gaza withdrawal required last year. So there is little chance that Israel, under no apparent pressure from the US Administration, will move swiftly or, even less likely, any more decisively to rein in its settlements and return to internationally recognized borders.
All of this comes at a tremendous cost, Elon points out, even to Israelis who are not suffering, as Palestinians are, from the economic and physical privations that result from Israel's adamant maintenance of its "mean little empire." The costs will be born, as usual, in measures of civilian blood — Israeli and Palestinian — as the ground for radical Palestinian militants is endlessly re-watered by continuing occupation, and Israeli military responses more than match those of the militants in ferocity. This is painfully evident this week, when a family of five as well as two other Palestinian civilians were killed, apparently by Israeli artillery shelling, while they picnicked on the Gaza beach. Palestinian suicide bombers, too, will not refrain from attacking under these circumstances, as one did in April, killing 12 civilians in Israel. Meanwhile, Israel refuses to meet with the Hamas government recently elected by Palestinians, and, as in the past even when the peace-seeking Mahmoud Abbas held more power, sees isolation of the Palestinians as the best weapon (and as a self-justifying reason to do whatever it wants). In this dire but all-too-familiar situation, a thin strand of hope may be found in the extent to which public figures in Israel and abroad, and their constituencies, take seriously the restrained yet deeply dismayed voices of writers such as Gorenberg and Elon. —LS
P.S.: a full text version of the article is available in the first comment on this post.
posted by Lincoln Z. Shlensky at 11:41 AM
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