Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking Monday to his Likud faction, said that the issue – so hot just a month ago, but hardly on the public agenda since then – is still on the table.
By HERB KEINONSigns abour annexation with pictures of US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are displayed in Israel(photo credit: COURTESY YESHA COUNCIL)
The decision of whether or not to extend Israeli sovereignty to parts of the West Bank is an extremely weighty one that will have huge ramifications – domestic and international – for Israel for generations.So who should make it?Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking Monday to his Likud faction, said that the issue – so hot just a month ago, but hardly on the public agenda since then – is still on the table.“The issue of applying sovereignty is in Washington,” he said.But just a little more than a month earlier, in late June, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, when asked in Washington about the annexation issue, said that “decisions about Israelis extending sovereignty to those places are decisions for the Israelis to make.”So which is it? Is the decision to be made in Washington, or in Jerusalem? By the Americans or the Israelis?Asked in that manner, the answer would appear to be obvious. The question of applying sovereignty is essentially one of finally setting the country’s eastern border. Who, other than the state whose boundary is being set, should make that decision?Netanyahu’s comment that it is essentially up to Washington, therefore, is symptomatic of a problem Israel has faced regarding the territories since it took control of them in 1967. It can’t decide.Israel has never decided for itself what it wants to do with Judea and Samaria. Partly because Israelis cannot reach a consensus among themselves on the matter, and partly because the matter always depends on other factors.Regarding the inability to reach a consensus, Israelis are no closer now to agreeing on whether it should retain Judea and Samaria than they were 53 years ago, with some people passionate about the need to keep the West Bank and settle it for security and religious/historical reasons, while others equally passionate that it should be ceded, in the belief this will bring peace.
And regarding those other factors, Israel has been unable to decide what to do with Judea and Samaria because it is always concerned about how the Palestinians will react, what the Arab world will say, what the Europeans will do, what the UN thinks, and – most of all – what the Americans will allow. Which is to say that on this issue, Israeli is perpetually in a situation of “it depends.”And while it is completely legitimate to factor all those considerations into a decision, a decision still needs to be made. Depends is not policy. Israel needs to decide for itself what it wants to do, and then do it – letting the chips fall where they may and dealing with the geopolitical aftermath the best it can.A chronic inability to decide on this matter has, over the years, been one of Israel’s dilemmas in explaining itself to the world.While the Palestinians have been on message for decades in saying they want a state based on the 1967 lines, with east Jerusalem as its capital, Israel waffles, goes back and forth. One government establishes new settlements, another uproots them. One government freezes settlement construction, another allows it to continue.The net result is that the perception is that Israel does not know what it wants – which, in this case, is not just a perception. And if you don’t know what you want, if you never state clearly what you want, then not only are you never going to get it, but you also open yourself up to all kinds of pressure from different actors trying to sway your decision one way or the other.If the government – after taking into account all the pros and cons of annexation – believes it is in the country;’s long term interests to extend its sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria, it should do so. This should not be a question of what Israel thinks it can get away with, but rather what it believes it needs for its own vital interests.And just as no government since the Six Day War has been able to make that decision, the current corona emergency government – which has difficulty deciding whether or not gyms should be open during the pandemic – can’t decide either. So what has it done, what did Netanyahu essentially do when he said that the issue is now in Washington? He shifted the decision elsewhere, placing it in the hands of the US.But the question of where Israel’s eastern border should run is not an American decision, rather a quintessentially Israeli one.Jerusalem needs to decide for itself, not parcel out that decision to Washington – regardless of who is sitting in the White House. To do so is to abdicate responsibility and to cede decision making sovereignty over a most critical issue – quite a paradox when what is on the table is whether to extend even further the country’s territorial sovereignty.
