When will they get a clue?

It took me a long time to figure out why the latest round of Israeli political idiocy was particularly difficult for me to digest. Obama came with a relatively simple request: put a freeze on construction and settlement in the west bank. Which is a move I strongly support.

It's clear to most people here (70% in the last pole), that there will be a Palestinian state in the near future. It's merely a question of when and what the final agreement will look like. It's also clear that the future Palestine will be in the West Bank and Gaza. No one talks about Jordan as ceding territory to the new Palestinian state, so Palestine is pretty much going to be where the territories are now. If that's the case, then it's just a question of positioning ourselves to get a good bargain when it comes to the terms of the deal.

Friends who are more centrist say that freezing settlements gives in to Arab demands and would show weakness. Friends on the right say that it's really Jewish land, so we'll build where we want. For myself, I think that it's a bad investment. If you are building something that you know is going to be either destroyed or given away in a few years, or perhaps you will be compensated, at a fraction of your invested cost, for abandoning it, then why build it at all. It's not good business. This is a poor country - people regularly argue over a price difference of 1-2 shekels (about 25-5o cents) and walk away from deals for minute sums. Yet this country insists on throwing away money on settlements that are sure to be dismantled in a few years. And people wonder why the economy here is not great.

In all of Natanyahu's politicking about this issue, and his basic statements that he will never freeze the settlements, there runs a thread which I can't stomach. When I was in college and fighting the campus battle over Israel, one of the main pro-Palestinian points was that Israel was an imperialistic country, intent on capturing as much land as possible. I fought this point then, but I can't fight it any longer. The rhetoric about it being "Jewish" land and that there is a religious prohibition against giving up one small part of the land of Israel is just a smoke screen for the simple language of: we want more land.

Yes, there is an Historic tie to the West Bank. Much of the bible happens there and the ancient land of Israel did encompass the West Bank, but Be'er Sheva was Abraham's home and I don't see the settlers flocking to the Negev. During our long exile from Israel, Jews became champions of Human rights and humane behavior. It's only taken us 60 short years to forget most of that and turn back to who we used to be in biblical times. The bible is full of infighting and civil war. When the Jews arrived in Canaan, God instructed them to kill off all of the peoples who were living there at the time. Is that what the right wing is really looking for? Is that what they want to turn this country into?

I live in Jerusalem. It's a modern city and I enjoy all the comforts of modern life. It's a safe city where I have very little worry for violent crime. But 20 minutes away in Bethlehem life holds a very different flavor. I'm shielded from all the pain of the occupation. The comparison to South Africa is flawed on so many levels it's not worth even mentioning, but the important lesson for us is that South Africa did something that world found abhorrent and the world rose up against her. Israel's actions are now viewed that way by most of the world outside of the US.

How long will it take for the government here to realize that it can't continue on this path? We used to say that Israel was just waiting for a partner to make peace with. Daily reading of Israeli papers for the past two years has convinced me otherwise. I don't think the Palestinians want peace with us, but Israel sure as hell doesn't want peace with them and is completely unwilling to take any steps that might make resolution and peace easier to achieve.

I don't understand the right. I have yet to talk to anyone on the right who can say that building more settlements will lead to anything other than a permanent occupation where the Palestinians are second class citizens forever (for political reasons, not racial reasons for anyone who missed my earlier point about the flawed South African comparison). And those same people seem to be ok with Israel becoming a pariah state who has no support anywhere. It's already starting: look at the calls for a boycott on Israeli products. However little sense a boycott makes, it's indicative of a world in which the occupation is no long acceptable.

As for me, I can't really defend Israel anymore. The blatant imperialism and prejudice that confronts me daily in the ideology of saving the Jewish people is indefensible. We still live here, and I still love Israel. The situation is complicated, but in this case, what our enemies said years ago is turning out to be true. And that's a really hard betrayal to stomach.