Opinion | Columnists
Colonists should be balanced by refugees
If Israel chooses to build in the Occupied Territories, it must be realistic about a future of increased integration
- By Eugene Rogan, Financial Times
- Published: 00:00 March 31, 2010
- Image Credit: Illustration: Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News
- Several parties in the coalition of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are committed to preserving the colonies. Any move to press Israel to abandon the colonies as part of a peace deal seems doomed to failure.
The colony issue is an old source of tension between America and Israel. For US President Barack Obama it has emerged as the greatest obstacle to his goal of resolving Israeli-Palestinian differences through meaningful negotiations. As the Obama administration ponders a new Middle East peace plan, it needs a new direction on colonies that both Israelis and Palestinians can live with.
The international community is agreed that a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict lies in a two-state land-for-peace settlement on the basis of the pre-1967 boundaries. Yet a fallacy persists, that somehow these two states should be ethnically pure: that Israel should be uniquely Jewish, and Palestine uniquely Arab.
The truth is that the population of Israel and the Occupied Territories is highly intermixed. There are 1.2 million Palestinians of Israeli citizenship — nearly 20 per cent of the population of Israel. And there are nearly 400,000 Israeli citizens living in colonies in occupied east Jerusalem and the West Bank. When at some future date Israel and the Palestinian National Authority agree to a peace deal, there is no reason to expect this trend to reverse. Peace should accelerate exchanges of goods and people in the region.
Forced displacement
Nor should peace be attempted through the expulsion of Israelis or Palestinians from each other's territories. The history of Israel and Palestine has been stained by forced displacement in the past. The exile of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967 engendered the refugee crisis and more than 60 years of misery. The removal of colonies from Sinai in 1982 and the Gaza Strip in 2005 were deeply traumatic for Israelis.
Many Israelis say they have chosen to live in the West Bank out of religious and ideological commitment to Judea and Samaria. While they do not enjoy widespread support in Israeli public opinion, they are represented by a strong lobby; several parties in the coalition of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are committed to preserving the colonies. Any move to press Israel to abandon the colonies as part of a peace deal seems doomed to failure.
The only way forward is to put a real price on colonies that might make the Israeli government pause before expanding them. One way would be a right of return of Palestinians in refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon to offset Israeli colonies.
According to Central Intelligence Agency figures, there are about 177,000 Israeli colonists in occupied east Jerusalem and 187,000 in the West Bank. The United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees says there are about 224,000 in camps in Lebanon, and another 126,000 in camps in Syria. The number of Palestinian camp refugees is nearly as large as the number of Israeli colonists in the Occupied Territories.
Right of return
Imagine that the colonists were to be allowed to remain as Israeli citizens in the state of Palestine after a peace deal, in exchange for an equal number of Palestinians in refugee camps being allowed to return to their native lands inside Israel. Palestinians exercising this right of return would be given Palestinian citizenship, and would live in Israel and respect Israeli law just as the colonists would have to respect Palestinian law. Like those Israelis who aspire to live in Judea and Samaria, there are thousands of Palestinian refugees who aspire to return to their ancestral homes. Rather than unbalancing Israel's delicate demography, the returning Palestinians would give equilibrium to the Israeli presence in occupied east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Colonies can be the leading obstacle to peace. Or they can provide a solution to the refugee question, one of the most intractable problems of the Arab-Israeli conflict. At the very least, the prospect of a one-to-one Palestinian right of return for each Israeli colonist remaining in the West Bank would put a real price on Israel's continued colony building.
Let there be no mistake: Israel builds in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank by choice, not necessity. If Israel chooses to build in the Occupied Territories, it must be realistic about a future of increased integration between Palestinians and Israelis. If it does not like that future, Israel should curb colony building.
Eugene Rogan is director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College, Oxford University, and author of The Arabs: A History.
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