Settlements threaten Zionism

Threats to Israeli democracy were front and center at Friday’s conversation “Settlements at 50 Years – An Obstacle to Peace and Democracy” at the Middle East Institute. Moderated by Haaretz journalist Amir Tibon and featuring Talia Sasson – president of the New Israel Fund (NIF) and former special legal advisor to then-prime minister of Israel Ariel Sharon – the talk highlighted the dangers of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s self-interested politicking, infringement upon the Palestinian right of self-determination, and the pernicious delegitimization of the Israeli left.

The dynamic playing out between far-right pro-settlement Israelis, the Israeli government, and the Trump administration is complex. After the initial euphoria in the wake of Trump’s election, the American president’s reluctance to endorse construction in the West Bank has tempered the elation of the Israeli right. Fearing a return to Obama-era restrictions and American intransigence, the right puts pressure on Netanyahu’s coalition. Netanyahu makes a show of forbidding the construction of further outposts—illegal under Israeli law—but concedes the right to continue construction around existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Finally, Netanyahu turns to Trump: look what the people want! My hands are tied.

The settlements are built.

“The whole thing is internal political theater,” Sasson said wryly. She argued that this kind of politicking poses a grave threat to Israeli democracy.

Not only does the construction of settlements push the limits of Israeli law – it compromises the very principles of national sovereignty upon which the Israeli state claims to be based. “To be a patriot of the State of Israel,” insisted Sasson, “you can’t put into that definition depriving the Palestinians of the right to have their own state.” The fundamental principle underlying the 1948 partition – a principle Sasson affirmed despite occupation and the current post-1967 boundaries – is that no party to the conflict claims all the land. Perhaps in the spirit of recognizing Palestinian nationality, Sasson called Israeli Arabs – Israeli citizens of Arab ethnicity and descent – “Palestinian citizens of Israel.”

In addition to ongoing controversies surrounding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the principle of legal and social equality for Israeli Arabs lies on a fault line between the Israeli right and the left. The right, Sasson warned, is doing its best to convince the Israeli public that there is a necessary conflict between Israel’s status as a democracy and its status as a Jewish state. Equality for all Israeli citizens—Jewish and Arab—allegedly violates Jewish primacy. For this reason, contended Sasson, those leftists and activists who demand equal rights for Jews and Arabs are painted as enemies of the state.

“I think in Israel, we have a delegitimization of the left for many years,” she explained. While figures on the right such as Prime Minister Netanyahu discredit human rights organizations with claims that they are unpatriotic, opposition leaders such as Isaac Herzog claim that radical democrats are ruining the left. To compound the issue, the end of Obama’s tenure as president signals the end of an era of American temperance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nowadays, lamented Sasson, a minority of the Israeli citizenry holds her views publicly. Most identify with the right or with the center – but Sasson believes that “many feel that something is wrong.”

For this reason, Sasson’s New Israel Fund continues to oppose the construction of settlements in the West Bank alongside its more popular, less controversial projects such as defending women’s rights and the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. According to Sasson’s emphatic brand of Israeli patriotism, the solution may lie in a return to Zionism.

“I believe in the old way of Zionism, not the settlements,” she said. The old way, she clarified, is her interpretation of the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence. It is democracy and a home for all Jews.

“Settlements,” warned Sasson, “are the death of Zionism.”