Israeli National Avoidance

It seems that like it or not we are finally coming down to the nitty-gritty, to the real question before the Israeli people: are settlements a national priority? For decades we have managed to dance around this ultimate issue. Even as the left opposed settlement expansion and the right supported it, the Israeli body politic never took a hard national look at what this means in black and white: not in terms of budgetary costs to the taxpayer and not in terms of international standing of the nation. Now along comes Mr. Obama and sets this very complex fundamental question so squarely on the table that Mr. Netanyahu cannot find a way to avoid it and neither can we, the Israelis who kept thinking this whole enterprise would simply go away one day, or else the whole world would just get used to it. Well, judgment day has finally come, and every one of us will now have to take a stand.

Avoidance is a very potent human tendency and all along we have used it to allow a minority to set the national agenda and divvy up the national pie. In spite of the heroic efforts of those who did make their voices of protest heard, who consistently called on the rest of us to wake up and take action against the expanding expropriation of precious space, the average Israeli was asleep at the wheel, couldn’t be bothered. Most, in fact, couldn’t tell you how many settlements there are (127) or how many settlers (295,000 not counting East Jerusalem); how much settlements enhance our security or dangerously detract from it. Certainly we were not asking ourselves or each other if the settlements are worth pariah status in the international community; are worth postponing progress on peace for another 40 years; are worth development at the expense of other national priorities like a fast train to Israel’s capital city. We were not questioning whether the values that represent the settlement enterprise are consistent with our own values and those we are teaching our youth, and for which we send them to defend this land? Easier to avoid than to question.

No matter how this government tries to spin President Obama’s audacious determination to freeze the settlements and jumpstart the peace process, no matter how strongly we will be told that this is a sign of anti-Israel sentiment or pro-Palestinian favoritism - - this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to tackle the one issue that more than any other has come to define us as a nation and a people. This is the time to confront the big picture, to ask ourselves who we really want to be and what kind of a future we choose to bequeath our children. With or without the urging of President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary Clinton, or Israel’s stalwart friends in Congress, we simply cannot avoid it any longer.