Tag: Hobson’s Choice

Posted on

The Humanitarian Paradigm – Hobson’s Choice for Israel (Part II)

y rigorous process of elimination, we are left with the Humanitarian Paradigm, as the only possible policy prescription able to adequately address the imperatives needed to preserve Israel as the nation state of Jews.

O, who can hold a fire in his hand; By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?

Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite; By bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December snow; By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?

– William Shakespeare,  in Richard II, Act1 Scene 3, on the futility of self-deception

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.– Sherlock Holmes, “The Boscombe Valley Mystery”

Last week I began  a two-part analysis of the policy paradigms that have emerged in the public discourse for dealing with the more-than-century old dispute between Jews and Arabs over control of the Holy Land as the conflict approaches its third post-Oslo decade.

In it, I identified four such archetypical paradigms for its resolution—and one for its “management” (a.k.a. its perpetuation). Moreover, I undertook to demonstrate that only one of these alternatives, the Humanitarian Paradigm, advocating funded emigration of the Arab residents of Judea-Samaria (and eventually Gaza)—is consistent with the long-term survival of Israel as the nation-state of the Jews. Accordingly, for those dedicated to the preservation of the Zionist ideal, it is nothing less than “Hobson’s choice”.

To recap briefly

Readers will recall that I confined the analysis last week to those policy proposals that eschew full or partial Israeli annexation of territory, deferring analysis of those that endorse such annexation for this week’s discussion.

To recap briefly: In the aforementioned prior analysis I dealt with the (a) idea of “managing the conflict” and (b) the two-state formula.

As for the former, it was shown to reflect disregard for the fact that, without appropriate decisive proactive initiatives, Israel is facing a growing threat and decreasing freedom to deal with it.   Accordingly, “managing the conflict” is little more than a pretext for backing away from confrontations in which Israel can prevail, while backing into a confrontation in which Israel might not prevail—or do so only at ruinous cost.

As for the latter, it has shown to be a fatally flawed formula, devoid of any sound theoretical foundation or empirical evidence on which to base its naïve prognoses for resolving the conflict by means of Palestinian statehood. Indeed, given the past precedents, there is little reason to believe—and  two-state proponents have never provided one—that any future Palestinian state will not rapidly become a mega-Gaza on the fringes of Greater Tel Aviv, precipitating all the harrowing realities, wrought on the hapless residents of the South on those of the coastal megalopolis.

So having dealt with the policy paradigms that eschew annexation– whether full or partial–it is now time to assess those that endorse it.

One-state: Lebanonization of Israeli society

Some pundits on the Israeli “Right,” keenly aware of the infeasibility of the two-state paradigm, have in large measure adopted—albeit for very different reasons—a prescription very similar to that touted by their radical Left-wing adversaries—that of a single state stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

According to this proposal, Israel should extend its sovereignty over the entire area of Judea-Samaria and offer immediate permanent residency to all its Palestinian-Arab residents, as well as the right to apply for citizenship at some undefined date, via some undefined process to ascertain loyalty—or at least the absence of disloyalty—to Israel as the Jewish nation state.  

The rationale, allegedly underpinning this ill-conceived proposal, is the new, optimistic demographic assessments suggesting that even if Israel were to enfranchise the Muslim population of Judea-Samaria, it would still retain a more than 60% Jewish majority.

Even conceding that this may be true, such a measure is likely to herald disaster for the Zionist enterprise and the future of Israel as the nation-state of the Jews. For the initial electoral arithmetic is hardly the defining factor in assessing the prudence of this approach, but rather the devastating effect it will have on the socio-economic fabric of the country and the impact this will have on preserving Israel as a desired/desirable place of residence for Jews inside and outside the country.

It would take considerable—and unsubstantiated—faith to entertain the belief that Israel could sustain itself as a Jewish nation-state with a massive Muslim minority of almost 40% – as the societal havoc that far smaller proportions have wrought in Europe indicate.

Indeed this is a clear recipe for the Lebanonization of Israeli society with all the inter-ethnic strife that tore Israel’s unfortunate northern neighbor apart.

Lebanonization of Israel (cont.)

Any forlorn hope that life under Israeli sovereignty will somehow “domesticate” the Palestinian-Arabs into reconciling themselves to life in the Jewish nation-state should have been well and truly dashed by the behavior of Israel’s Arab citizens.

After all, despite living (and prospering) for seven decades under Israeli sovereignty—and more than  a half-century after military rule over the Arab population was abolished—they not only voted, almost en-bloc, for the vehemently anti-Zionist “Joint List” in the 2015 elections, but displayed great empathy in a mass funeral for the terrorists, from the Israeli town of Um-al Fahm, who murdered two Israeli police officers on the Temple Mount.

Once the Arab population of Judea-Samaria becomes incorporated into Israel’s permanent population, at least two crucial elements of national life are almost certain to be dramatically—and in Zionist-compliant terms, negatively –impacted.  The one is the distribution of national resources; the other is population flows into, and out of, the country.
 
With regard to the former, clearly once the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria—whether enfranchised or not—become incorporated into the country’s permanent population, Israel will not be able to afford the kind of socio-economic disparities that prevail between the pre- and post-annexation segments of the population.

Accordingly, huge budget resources will have to be diverted to reduce these disparities – siphoning off funds currently spent on the Jewish population (and Israeli Arabs) in terms of welfare, medical care, infrastructure, education and so on.

Indeed, if enfranchisement (eventual or immediate) is envisaged, the electoral potential of the Arab sector is liable to be elevated from its current 13-15 seats in parliament to 25-30.  This will not only hugely bolster its ability to demand enhanced budgetary allotments, but also make it virtually impossible to form a governing coalition without their endorsement.

Moreover, collaboration   on various ad hoc parliamentary initiatives with radical Jewish left-wing factions is likely to nullify any formal calculations of an ostensible “Jewish majority”, and lead to legislative enterprises that ultra-Zionist proponents of annexation would strongly oppose – in an ironic manifestation of unintended consequences.

Partial Annexation: The Balkanization of Israel

Thus, while full annexation of Judea-Samaria will almost inevitably result in the Lebanonization of Israel—i.e.  create a single society, so fractured by interethnic strife that it would be untenable as the nation- state of the Jewish people; proposals for the partial annexation of Judea-Samaria will result in the Balkanization of Israel –  (i.e. dividing the territory up into disconnected autonomous enclaves, which will be recalcitrant, rivalrous and rejectionist, creating an ungovernable reality for Israel.)

Proposals for partial annexation appear to be fueled by (a) concern that total annexation would be too drastic a step for the international community to “swallow”, and (b) a sense that some semblance of self-rule must be facilitated for the Arabs resident in Judea and Samaria. As will be shown, partial annexation will address neither of these issues effectively. Indeed quite the opposite is true.

Proposals for partial annexation are commonly of two types:  Those that prescribe including  selected areas of Judea-Samaria under Israeli sovereignty   (such as Area C as advanced by Education Minister Naftali Bennett) ; and those that prescribe excluding certain selected areas from Israeli sovereignty such as the large urban centers in  Judea-Samaria (such as advanced by Dr. Mordechai Kedar in his “Emirates” plan)

Sadly, neither of these paradigms will solve any of the diplomatic or security problems Israel faces today, and will in fact exacerbate many.

The Balkanization of Israel (cont)

It is hardly necessary to go into the intricate details of the individual proposals for partial annexation to grasp how impractical they really are.

For whatever the configuration of the un-annexed areas left to Arab administration –whether the disconnected enclaves of Areas A and B, or the micro-mini “city states”—they will leave the sovereign territory of Israel with dauntingly long and contorted frontiers, making it almost impossible to delineate and secure. Clearly if one cannot effectively demarcate and secure one’s sovereign territory, there is little meaning to one’s sovereign authority over that territory.  

Although Haaretz is not my preferred source of reference, I find it difficult to disagree with the following assessment of Bennett’s plan for annexing Area C:

“… Bennett’s plan is groundless from the security, diplomatic, legal and, especially, physical angles. It’s easy to discern that, contrary to what was presented in a video produced by Bennett’s…party recently, Areas A and B in the West Bank are not contiguous blocs, spreading over 40 percent of the West Bank. Instead, they consist of no less than 169 Palestinian blocs and communities, cut off from one another by innumerable Israeli corridors and unused IDF firing zones that are together defined as Area C”.

It correctly pointed out: “… in fact, Bennett is proposing to increase the length of the Israeli border from 313 kilometers to 1,800 kilometers (194 to 1,118 miles). If [one] believe[s] Bennett, he will doubtless back the dismantling of the security barrier that Israel has built to the tune of 15 billion shekels ($3.9 billion), but [one] will have to accept that annexing Area C means Israel will have to build a barrier along the new border at the cost of 27 billion shekels and allocate another 4 billion shekels per year for maintenance purposes.”

Partial Annexation: Full political price

Similar criticism can be leveled at Kedar’s proposal for setting up an array of up to eight micro-mini “emirates” or city states.  It is not difficult to envisage the problems of future expansion beyond the highly constricted confines of disconnected enclaves, and of the need to severely curtail the authority of the local administration to deal with cross border issues such as pollution (particularly the carcinogenic emissions of the wide spread charcoal industry), sewage, pollution  from  industrial effluents, agricultural run-off, transmissible diseases and so on.   

Of course, any hopes that partial annexation, which entails extending Israeli sovereignty over about 65-75% of the territory, leaving the Palestinian-Arabs with an emasculated  25-30%, in a quilted patchwork of disconnected enclaves and corridors, will in any way diminish  international censure, are utterly unfounded. The political “pain” involved in such schemes would be no less than annexing 100% of the territory—without having to deal with the attendant chronic problems associated with partial annexation (as detailed above).   

Fanciful suggestions  that Nablus and Hebron might flourish into entities like Monaco and Luxembourg are as risible as those which, in the heady days of Oslo, predicted that Gaza would become the Hong Kong of the Mid East—and would be rightfully rejected as such.

Humanitarian Paradigm: Hobson’s choice

Even from the far-from-exhaustive analysis conducted over the last two weeks, it should be clear that an indisputable picture emerges as to the Zionist-compliant feasibility of the various policy paradigms proposed for dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Thus:

– The attempt to manage the conflict is little more than a formula for backing away from confrontations in which Israel can prevail, while backing into a confrontation in which Israel might not prevail—or may do so only at ruinous cost.

– The two-state paradigm will almost inevitably result in the establishment of a yet another homophobic, misogynistic, Muslim-majority tyranny, which will rapidly become a mega-Gaza on the fringes of Greater Tel Aviv, menacing the socio-economic routine in the commercial hub of the country.

-Full annexation of Judea-Samaria together with the Arab population will result in the Lebanonization of Israeli society and thrust the country into ruinous inter-ethnic strife that will imperil it status as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

– Partial annexation of Judea-Samaria will result in the Balkanization of Israel, dividing the territory up into disconnected, rivalrous, recalcitrant and unsustainable autonomous enclaves, which will create an ungovernable reality for Israel.

Thus, by a rigorous process of deductive elimination we are left with the Humanitarian Paradigm, advocating funded emigration for non-belligerent Palestinian-Arabs to third party countries, as the only possible paradigm that can adequately address both the geographic and demographic imperatives needed to preserve Israel as the nation state of Jews.

As such, for Zionists, it is Hobson’s choice. Anything else is self-deception.

Posted on

The Humanitarian Paradigm- Hobson’s Choice for Israel (Part I)

Only one policy paradigm can sustain Israel as the nation-state of the Jews and prevent it becoming untenable either geographically or demographically—or both.

…when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, – Sherlock Holmes in “The Sign of the Four”

Hobson’s Choice: a situation in which it seems that you can choose between different things or actions, but there is really only one thing that you can take or do – Cambridge Dictionary

As the more-than– century old dispute between Jews and Arabs over control of the Holy Land nears its third post-Oslo decade , four archetypical approaches have emerged in the public discourse for its resolution—and one for its “management”(a.k.a. its perpetuation).

In this two-part series I will assess the merits (or lack thereof) of these various approaches –both those which endorse (full or partial) Israeli annexation of territory across the pre-1967 Green Line and those which eschew it.

Indeed as I will show—barring divine intervention (something only the more pious than myself can rely on as a policy input—of these five (four plus one) options, all but one are demonstrably incompatible with the long-term survival of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.  All but one—demonstrably—do not address adequately either the geographic imperatives and/or the demographic imperatives that Israel must address to avoid becoming either geographically untenable or demographically untenable (or both).  

Israel as the nation-state of the Jews

It is—or at least should be—manifestly self-evident that for Israel to endure over time as the nation-state of the Jews, it cannot (a) withdraw to geographical/topographical confines that make it impossible to maintain ongoing socio-economic routine in the country’s major commercial centers, or (b) allow the Jewish majority to be so diminished that maintenance of the Jewish nature of the state is imperiled.

Accordingly, it is in terms of their ability to contend with these undeniable imperatives that the alternative proposals for resolution/management for the conflict must be evaluated as appropriate policy prescriptions for Israel if—at the risk of appearing repetitive—it is to retain its status as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

I belabor this point of the long-term preservation of Jewish sovereignty, as a necessary precondition for the acceptability of competing policy proposals, because if one is prepared to forego it, other proposals, which are unable to ensure such an outcome, may well be acceptable—like for instance the post-Zionist call for a non-Jewish state of all its citizens.

Bearing this brief introductory clarification in mind, let’s begin the critical analysis of the proffered alternatives, which this week I shall confine to policy proposals that eschew full or partial  Israeli annexation of territory—deferring analysis of those that endorse such annexation for next week.

Managing the Conflict: Mowing the lawn won’t cut it

The conflict management  approach—as opposed to conflict resolution – is ostensibly the least proactive, least provocative—and most pessimistic—largely reflecting the recent assessment of Jared Kushner that there may well be no solution to the Arab-Israeli  confrontation.   

In a column written last August, I pointed out the grave detriments this approach entailed, detailing how, over the last two-and- half decades, the military prowess of the terrorist organizations have developed far beyond anything imagined,  and how Israel’s political positions have been drastically eroded.

Thus, when Israel left Gaza (2005), the range of the Palestinian rockets was barely 5 km., and the explosive charge they carried about 5 kg. Now, their missiles have a range of over 100 km. and warheads of around 100 kg. Likewise, when Israel left Gaza, only the sparse population in its immediate proximity was threatened by missiles. Now, well over 5 million Israelis, well beyond Tel Aviv, are menaced by them. Moreover the terror organizations have exploited periods of calm to further enhance their infrastructures and other abilities, which were barely conceivable a decade ago—including a massive tunneling enterprise and the development of naval forces, commandoes and underwater capabilities.

But it is not only in the exponential growth of the terror groups’ martial prowess that the endeavor at conflict management has been a resounding failure. The same can be said—arguably even more so–with regard to the ever-tightening political constraints Israel faces.

Mowing the lawn won’t cut it (cont.)

Perhaps one of the most dramatic and disturbing indications of just how far Israeli positions have been rolled back over the last two decades is reflected in the views articulated by Yitzhak Rabin, in his last Knesset address (October 5, 1995), a month before his assassination. In it he sought parliamentary ratification of the Oslo II Accords, then considered by much of the Israeli public as excessively dovish and dangerously concessionary.

There can be little doubt that if today, Netanyahu were to embrace, verbatim, Rabin’s 1995 prescription for a permanent accord with the Palestinian-Arabs in the “West Bank , he would be dismissed—scornfully, disparagingly and angrily—as an “unreasonable extremist”.

It of course requires little analytical acumen and a mere smidgeon of common sense to grasp that–whatever one may believe the real size of the  Arab population of Judea-Samaria to be—Israel cannot keep  an increasing and increasingly recalcitrant and irredentist population indefinitely in a state of suspended disenfranchised political limbo.  

In this regard, it should be remembered that, today, with the changing nature of Arab enmity, the major existential challenge to Israel’s existence as the Jewish nation-state is no longer repulsing invasion, but resisting attrition—both militarily and politically.

Accordingly, by eschewing decisive proactive measures to contend with a predicament that entails a mounting threat and decreasing freedom to deal with it, “conflict management” has become a prescription for avoiding immediate confrontations that can be won, thereby risking having to contend with later confrontations that cannot be won—or can be won only at ruinous cost.

Two-States: A mega-Gaza overlooking Tel Aviv?

Of course, the policy paradigm which, for decades, has dominated the discourse on how to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict  is that advocating a two-state outcome.   Bizarrely, support for this formula has always been the sine-qua-non for admission into “polite company” while opposition to it was the perceived hallmark of the uncouth and ignorant.  

Just how perverse this situation is can be gauged from the fact that there is no persuasive reason to believe –and certainly none has ever been provided by two-state proponents – that a Palestinian state will be anything other than a homophobic, misogynistic, Muslim-majority tyranny, whose hallmarks would be: gender discrimination, gay persecution, religious intolerance, and political oppression of dissidents—and which would rapidly become a bastion for Islamist terror.

After all, one might well ask, why would anyone purporting to profess to liberal values, wish to endorse the establishment of such an entity — which is clearly the utter negation of the very values invoked for its establishment?!

Readers will recall that it was in Gaza that the initial optimistic attempts to implement the two-state idea were made. So, how events unfolded there should be instructive as to how they may be expected to unfold in Judea-Samaria. For in the absence of a compelling argument to the contrary—and as mentioned, none has ever been presented—there is little reason to believe that  if Israel were to evacuate the “West Bank”  the outcome  would not be largely similar to that which followed Israel’s evacuation of Gaza.

Indeed, unsubstantiated hope aside, there is neither sound theoretical foundation nor empirical evidence on which two-state proponents can base any prognosis for the  success of their political credo.  

A mega-Gaza (cont.)

Accordingly, the prudent working assumption must be that any attempt to implement the two-state principle in Judea-Samaria will result in a “mega-Gaza”—and that measures, similar to those required to protect the Israeli population in the South, would be required as well on Israel’s eastern border.

But unlike Gaza, which abuts sparsely populated, largely rural areas, the “mega-Gaza” that almost certainly will emerge in Judea-Samaria would abut Israel’s most populous urban areas. Unlike Gaza, which has no topographic superiority over adjacent Israeli territory, the prospective “mega-Gaza” in Judea-Samaria will totally command the adjacent coastal megalopolis, in which much of Israel’s vital infrastructure (both civilian and military) is located, where 80 percent of its civilian population resides and 80% of its commercial activity takes place.

But perhaps most significantly, unlike Gaza, which has only about a 50-km. front with Israel, the envisioned “mega-Gaza” in Judea-Samaria would have a front of up to almost 500 km!

Accordingly, what might be expected to concentrate two-staters’ minds, more than anything is that, after evacuating Gaza, Israel is now undertaking what IDF Chief-of Staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisencott, called the “largest project” ever carried out in the history of the IDF—a wall along the entire Israel-Gaza border,  not only several  storeys above ground but – to contend with the tunnel threat– several storeys below it !!  Now imagine a project over ten times that scale along a “mega-Gaza” in the east…

Next week: Analyzing Annexation

As mentioned, next week I will focus attention on those approaches which advocate full or partial annexations of the territories across the 1967 Green Line. In the analysis I will demonstrate that without an operational plan for dramatically reducing the Arab presence  east of the Jordan River, the former will result in the Lebanonization of Israel, creating a single society so fractured by interethnic strife that it would be untenable as the nation- state of the Jewish people; while the latter will result in the Balkanization of Israel, dividing the territory up into disconnected autonomous enclaves, which will be recalcitrant, rivalrous and rejectionist, creating an ungovernable reality for Israel.

Accordingly, by a logical process of elimination, I will show that the Humanitarian Paradigm, advocating funded emigration of the Arab residents of Judea-Samaria (and eventually Gaza) is the only policy paradigm consistent with the long term survival of Israel as the nation-state of the Jews, and hence—for those dedicated to the preservation of the Zionist ideal—Hobson choice.