IF ISRAEL PROCEEDS WITH ANNEXATION, ITS “SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP” WITH THE U.S. AND WITH AMERICAN JEWS MAY COME TO AN END BY ALLAN C. BROWNFELD

This article will appear in the July issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

IF ISRAEL PROCEEDS WITH ANNEXATION, ITS “SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP” WITH THE
U.S. AND WITH AMERICAN JEWS MAY COME TO AN END
                                        BY
                         ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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In the recent Israeli election, Prime Minister Netanyahu campaigned aggressively on annexing portions of the occupied West Bank while his opponent, Benny Gantz, opposed unilateral annexation.  Now, with a “unity” government with Netanyahu remaining prime minister, to be followed by  Gantz, The agreement between Netanyahu and Gantz says that annexation should proceed in a way that does not harm Israel’s interests.  

The Economist notes that, “Mr. Netanyahu will probably have the final say.  ..Annexation of territory that the Palestinians regard as part of their future state would probably kill any hope of a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict and could ignite violence.  Mr. Netanyahu will obviously want to avoid that , but he may feel he needs to move before November, when his chum Mr. Trump May be voted out of office.”

The Trump administration has viewed annexation in positive terms. Its attitude toward Israel has been described by U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman as “”an altar of holiness,”. Friedman, an ally of the settler movement and an opponent of creating a Palestinian state, referred to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem as “a shrine.”  At a ceremony in Jerusalem, he declared that Israel was “on the side of God.”  Israel and the U.S., he said, should grow even closer, which would be a sign of “holiness.”

In a historic reversal of U.S. policy, the Trump administration announced in November 2019 that it does not view Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal.  The policy change was announced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.  He declared:  “The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.”  Prime Minister Netanyahu hailed the change in U.S. policy.  He said:  “this policy reflects an historical truth—-that the Jewish people are not foreign colonialists in Judaea and Samaria.  In fact, we are exiled Jews because we are the people of Judaea.”

The dramatic change in U.S. policy was  challenged by 106 House Democrats in a letter to Pompeo, organized by Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI), who is Jewish.  They called upon him to “immediately” reverse his position.  The letter was signed by 12 committee chairs, including veteran Reps. John Lewis (D-GA) and Maxine Waters (D-cA).  

If Israel proceeds with annexation it may bring to an end its “special relationship” with the U.S. and with the American Jewish community.  It would also challenge the idea that Israel has bipartisan support  and confine its embrace to right-wing Republicans.

For Israel’s right-wing, annexation has long been a key part of its agenda.  This has been the case since the area was captured and occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War.    East Jerusalem was the first part of the West Bank to be annexed following the 1980 Jerusalem Law.  Israeli law has been applied to Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank leading to a system of “enclave law” and claims of “creeping annexation.”  Annexation of the Jordan Valley was first proposed in the 1967 Allon Plan, which was announced in September 2019 by Netanyahu as his plan.   In 2009, Netanyahu endorsed the two-state solution.  But before the April 2019 election  he stated his intention of unilaterally annexing Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

On Sept. 16, 2019, in an interview with Israeli Army Radio, Netanyahu said, “I intend to extend sovereignty on all the settlements and the settlement blocs including sites that have security importance or are important to Israel’s heritage.”  On Sept. 10, 2019, Netanyahu announced his plan to annex the Jordan Valley.  The area to be annexed is about 22% of the West Bank.  He said he had received a green light from the Trump administration .  The next day there was international condemnation of the proposal from Palestinians, the Arab League, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Kingdom, among others.  The U.N. Declared that any Israeli move to impose its administration over the Palestinian territory would “be illegal under international law.”  The EU said there will be a “strong response” if annexation proceeds.  

Liberal Zionists emphasize the damage to Israel’s international reputation if annexation takes place.  Israel will become a “pariah” says Americans for Peace Now.  J Street’s Dylan Williams says, “U.S. leaders should make clear that it’d be nearly impossible to maintain the same special relationship with an Israel that abandons a commitment to democracy.”  Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) condemns the annexation plan as the “death-knell of the two-state solution.”

An aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.-VT) calls annexation “recklessness that goes against U.S. interest in peace.”  According to the New Israel Fund, “Annexation would be an existential threat to—-and perhaps even a death-knell for Israeli democracy.”  Yair Lapid, the opposition leader in the Knesset, said that if annexation takes place, “...the peace agreement with Jordan will be canceled.  There will be irreversible damage to the relationship with the Democratic National Committee and Jewish communities in the U.S.”

Gael Patir of J Street says that Lapid’s warning that annexation will damage Israel’s relationship to the Democratic Party and American Jewry “is not a notion that is understood in Israel.”  She and Jeremy Ben-Ami, who leads J Street, called for a campaign to convince Israelis that annexation will threaten these most valuable assets.  J Street, its leaders report, is “publicly and privately” urging Joe Biden, whom it has endorsed for President, to “reiterate” and “repackage” his opposition to annexation and to make it clear that he won’t accept annexation as president.  Biden has said that, “Israel, I think, has to stop the threats of annexation and settlement activity” because they will undermine “support for Israel in the U.S., especially among young people of both political parties.”

J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami called on right-wing elements of the pro-Israel lobby to speak out against annexation.  in a Zoom briefing, he addressed the question of where AIPAC is on this question:  “For anyone who is watching us who belongs to AIPAC or supports AIPAC , I ask you to ask them.  It is notable, the silence of AIPAC. And many other right-of-center organizations, on the queastion of annexation.—-when they have tried to say through the years that they support two states.”  He said it is time to end a policy of “Israel, right or wrong.”

The Union for Reform Judaism has called on the Israeli government to refrain from unilateral actions that could hinder or thwart  the renewal of the peace process in the short and long term, especially “unilateral annexation.”  In Jeremy Ben-Ami’s view, Democrats might be able to convince Israelis by threatening to rule out any U.S. aid for annexation:  “We not think that the U.S.should foot the bill for anything that has to do with annexation.”  He suggested Israel might lose the “diplomatic immunity” the U.S. provides for its human rights violations at the U.N. and elsewhere if annexation goes through.

Israel promotes itself as a “democracy,” but by Western standards this is hardly the case.  Palestinians in the occupied territories have almost no legal rights.  Palestinians within Israel are second-class citizens.  Israel does not believe in genuine religious freedom, even for Jews.  There is an official state religion and government paid chief rabbis are ultra-Orthodox.  Reform Rabbis cannot perform weddings, conduct funerals or preside over conversions.  There is more religious freedom for Jews in any Western country than in Israel.  There is no such thing as civil marriage.  When a Jew and non-Jew wish to marry, they must leave the country to do so.

In the view of some observers, annexation would simply make clear to the world that Israel is not the kind of Democratic society it proclaims itself to be, and which many Americans of all religions think it is.  Professor Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania, in his new book “Paradigm Lost,”  calls for policy makers to give up the “false belief” in the two-state solution and acknowledge the struggle for equal rights in a one-state reality.  In his view, annexation would create a single state, which already exists.  The effort of those who believe in democracy would then properly turn to calling for equal rights for all of that state’s inhabitants.  The alternative would be apartheid.

In a talk at the Middle East Institute in December 2019, Lustick reports that he was “an avid and early supporter” of the Zionist state for nearly fifty years.  But in the last decade he came to believe that he and other two-state advocates were being misled as Israel took over the West Bank and Jerusalem, “territories no Israeli government will ever withdraw from...Netanyahu has used liberal Zionists to proclaim that a two-state solution is possible, when it is a delusion.  Entertaining that possibility is actually playing a sucker’s game into what the right wants,  which is a constant feeling of that carrot, that maybe we get two states, and meanwhile you send the whole thing into decades and decades and decades of apartheid.”

“what I want in Palestine,”:says Lustick, “is something that Jews and Arabs can live with  and that honors the principles of democracy and equality....The demographic argument is ‘racism’ that goes to the heart of Zionism.  Guess what folks, there are more Arabs than Jews west of the Jordan...Where a state dominates Arabs for the sake of Jews, you are going to subsidize the domination of the country by the clerical right.”

Some have argued for years that Israeli plans for annexation merely publicize the fact that there is only one state in Israel and Palestine, with vastly different rights for Jews and Palestinians and it’s been that way for 50 years.  The struggle should be for equal rights for all the inhabitants of this single state, according to this view.  Former White House side Dennis Ross declared on Twitter, “It’s one state.  Democracy and equal rights for all—-or apartheid.”

Many Israelis, concerned about their country’s treatment of Palestinians, lament its departure from Jewish moral and ethical values.  Prof. David Shulman of the Hebrew University, notes that, “No matter how you look at it, unless our minds have been poisoned by the ideologies of the religious right, the occupation is a crime.  It is first of all based on the permanent disenfranchisement of a huge population...In the end, it is the ongoing moral failure of the country as a whole that is most consequential, most dangerous, most unacceptable. The failure weighs heavily...on our humanity.  We are, so we claim, the children of the prophets.  Once, they say, we were slaves in Egypt.  We know all that can be known about slavery, suffering, prejudice, ghettos, hate, expulsion, exile.  I find it astonishing that we, of all people, have reinvented apartheid in the West Bank.”

If Israel annexes portions of the West Bank it is unlikely to be supported by very many American Jews. Within the Jewish community, Israel and Zionism have become increasingly divisive issues.  In his book, “Trouble In The Tribe:  The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel,” Prof. Dov Waxman of Northeastern University writes:  “A historic change has been taking place in the American Jewish relationship with Israel...Israel is fast becoming a source of division rather than unity for American Jewry...A new era of American Jewish conflict over Israel is replacing the old era of solidarity...This echoes earlier debates about Zionism that occurred before 1948.  Then, as now, there were fierce disagreements among American Jews...Classical Zionism has never had much relevance or appeal to American Jewry.  Indeed, the vast majority of American Jews reject the basic elements of classical Zionism—-that Diaspora Jews live in exile, that Jewish life in Israel is superior to life in the Diaspora...American Jews do not think that they live in exile and they don't regard Israel as their homeland...For many American Jews, America is more than just home, it is itself a kind of Zion, an ‘almost promised land.’  Zionism has never succeeded in winning over the majority of American Jews.”

Since 1948, Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance.  Since World War ll, according to the Congressional Service, the U.S. has provided Israel with $233.7 billion, adjusted for inflation.  Israel now receives $3.8 billion annually from the U.S. in military aid.  By annexing portions of the West Bank, Israel would be asking American taxpayers to subsidize an action which is clearly in violation of international law.  It could well bring its “special relationship” with both the U.S. government and with American Jews to an end.