Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel 14 

 

Israel is the world’s most contractionist state

 

In the course of an otherwise sober discussion about Iran’s politicidal threats against Israel on BBC radio’s Today programme, former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw startled listeners with a Tourette-like outburst: “When will Israel stop stealing Palestinian land?” he snarled. Straw knew that he was way off-topic but his anger was clearly so intense that he just couldn’t help himself.

Straw wasn’t the first and won’t be the last to hurl an allegation at Israel that is based on a false premise but I have a sneaking sympathy for him. Underlying his outrage lies a powerful belief system. Many millions of people around the world accept the following as gospel truth: that Israel is always continuously extending its borders through a combination of illegal foreign conquest, blatant theft of Palestinian territory and ethnic cleansing. Many also believe that this reflects its underlying Zionist, colonialist nature that is infinitely, ravenously hungry for more and more real estate. That none of the above is true is neither here nor there as their opinions are more akin to religious conviction than to political judgement.

Spare a thought for the faithful, for they must be more than a little perplexed by recent developments.

In August 2020, Israel’s government reversed its policy decision of some months earlier to extend its sovereignty into just under a third of the West Bank (half of area C where about 400,000 Israelis live) in exchange for signing a peace treaty with a relatively small, if wealthy, Gulf state, the United Arab Emirates. Why would Israel, a country allegedly hell-bent on expansion, desist from the opportunity presented by an unprecedentedly friendly White House, to absorb into Israel all the major settlements plus a slice of strategically important acreage in the Jordan Valley?

To find an answer, I suggest that we look at a few key facts.

Although Israel is one of the smallest countries in the word (1/600th of the size of the Arab world), she once held or aspired to hold a much larger land mass. The Herut movement, founded by Menachem Begin in 1948 and forerunner of Netanyahu’s Likud, trumpeted the slogan Both Sides of The Jordan – meaning that Israel should extend its borders eastwards into today’s Hashemite Kingdom to try to match those of its ancestral homeland. It didn’t happen, and not only because Begin was rejected by the Israeli electorate for three decades, but because Zionist and Israeli leaders (including Begin himself) have always sought territorial compromise in their efforts to achieve peace.

Few realise that these early Herut activists, widely denounced as fanatics by their socialist Zionist colleagues, weren’t merely spouting messianic fantasies of a return to biblical boundaries. The original Jewish National Home, as embodied in international law by the San Remo Resolution of 1920 and confirmed by the Treaties of Sèvres and Lausanne (that disposed of the Ottoman empire), comprised two of today’s countries, Israel and Jordan. In 1922, the British unilaterally carved Transjordan [1] out of 78% of the Mandate (east of the Jordan river) to which mainstream Zionist leaders promptly (if reluctantly) renounced claims.

So Mandatory Palestine was partitioned into a prospective Jewish state and a much larger Arab state – and the Jewish leadership accepted it. The future Jewish state had contracted to 22% of the Jewish National Home.

In 1937, the British Peel Commission proposed a further partition, in which the Jews would have been granted a derisory 20% of Western Palestine [1] or under 5% of the original Jewish National Home. Unsurprisingly, the Jewish leadership was unhappy with the idea but accepted it as a basis for negotiation if it would lead to peace.

In 1947, the UN Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) offered the Yishuv a more reasonable 55% of Western Palestine. This was denounced as unfair by the Arabs on demographic grounds. But that’s nonsense: based on their population in the former Ottoman Empire, the Jews should have been granted seven times that offered by UNSCOP [2]. Nevertheless, the Jewish leadership accepted a plan that would have deprived them of their historical heartlands of Judea and Samaria and of Jerusalem, their most sacred city and the focus of two millennia of yearning.

Following the 1967 Six Day War (the declared aim of which was to destroy Israel), Israel gave up vast swathes of territory (much of which was strategically important and in which she had invested substantial resources), dismantled hundreds of settlements – in Sinai, Gaza and West Bank – and offered to relinquish even more in an attempt to achieve peace. In returning the whole of Sinai to Egypt, Israel (under the arch-expansionist Menachem Begin) relinquished close to 90% of the land she captured in 1967. This was equivalent to almost three times Israel’s pre-1967 land mass. And she did it in exchange for nothing more than a paper agreement. The “cold peace” between Israel and Egypt has held – just – but relations between the two countries have never approached the level that most Israelis had hoped (and had been promised).

Such a move was unprecedented. All countries that take territory in the course of a defensive war have been permitted to retain a substantial part of it – except Israel. Even the Temple Mount – the holiest site to Jews – is not under Israeli jurisdiction today, despite being located in the country’s capital city, but remains under the supervision of the Jordanian-Islamic Waqf. Moreover, for the sake of promoting peace, Israel has agreed to the Arab demand that only Muslims should be permitted to pray there.

In 1994, Israel withdrew from parts of the northern West Bank to clinch a peace treaty with Jordan. Again, peaceful relations have been uneasily maintained. The Jewish state had contracted again, this time giving up historically and militarily important territory that had been part of the Jewish National Home, as enshrined in international law. 

In 2000, prime minister Ehud Barak ordered the withdrawal of the IDF from all of South Lebanon in 2000, since re-occupied by Hezbollah, an organisation sworn to the obliteration of Israel. Barak also offered to trade the Golan (that was also part of the original Mandate) for peace with Syria, and East Jerusalem (from which Jews were ethnically cleansed in 1948) for peace with the Palestinians. 

In 2005, prime minister Ariel Sharon – in a breathtaking reversal of his hawkish political past – pulled all Israeli troops, along with 9,000 civilian settlers, out of the Gaza Strip, instantly creating a power vacuum. It was gratefully filled by Hamas, the genocidal Iranian-backed terrorist organisation, that has been attacking Israeli civilians ever since with a panoply of lethal weapons including rockets, tunnels, and incendiary balloons.

Fast-forward to 2020: the suspension of the “annexation” moves in the West Bank (by a supposedly hard-right government) to secure a peace treaty with UAE was another example of Israel’s willingness to concede territorial claims for the sake of peace.

But the issue of Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank will return to the agenda at some point as there is a consensus across the mainstream Israeli political spectrum that it is vital to Israel’s security, a view endorsed as long ago as 1967 by the UN Security Council. Let’s assume that Israel’s maximalist claim today, under a nationalistically inclined Likud-led government, is as follows: pre-1967 Israel or 20,796 sq km plus 30% of the West Bank or 1,696 sq km equals a total of 22,492 sq km. This is 19.4% of the original Mandate (115,766 sq km).

Even that rump state on less than a fifth of the Jewish National Home isn’t contraction enough for Israel’s enemies.

Why were these repeated and severe territorial shrinkages, both actual and potential, met with continued hostility by most of Israel’s neighbours? The answer is simple. Israel’s enemies have never wanted the hated “Zionist entity” to relinquish territory or to minimise her territorial claims; they want Israel to disappear. Abba Eban memorably said that this was the only conflict in which “the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.” He was being polite. In this context, unconditional surrender required Israel to commit national suicide.

History reveals that Israel is the opposite of expansionist. The reality, as opposed to the fevered imaginations of her many critics – Jack Straw amongst them – is that Israel, far from being expansionist, is the world’s most contractionist state.

But there’s a limit to her willingness to cede territory indefinitely. She won’t, under any circumstances, agree to her own demise. And Israel’s enemies won’t agree to anything less. That’s why the conflict remains unresolved after a century of bloodshed.

Israel’s disappearance would nevertheless yield one outcome that many would welcome. A Middle East without Israel would, finally, be enough for Israel’s enemies.

 

1. Laqueur W, Rubin B. The Israel-Arab Reader. New York, Penguin, 2008

2. Wilf E, Schwartz A. The War of Return. New York, All Points Books, 2020