Can Religious Settlers Scuttle an Israeli-Palestinian Peace?

By Dr. Israel Shahak

Israeli opposition to any land-for-peace agreement is spearheaded by Jewish religious and secular settlers in the occupied territories. Though very different, these two kinds of settlers are backed, in turn, by the right-wing and religious parties, which hold 53 out of 120 Knesset seats.

Voting patterns of the secular settlers are not too different from those in Israel as a whole, who in 1992 gave Labor 34.6 percent of the vote, Likud 24.9 percent and Meretz 9.5 percent of the vote.

By contrast, in the religious Kiryat Arba settlement, Likud got 2.5 percent, Labor 0.9 percent and Meretz no votes. All of the remaining votes in Kiryat Arba went to the religious parties and to right-wing parties more extreme than Likud, such as the Moledet Party, which favors expulsion of all non-Jews from Israel and the occupied territories.

In order to understand how the religious settlers influence Israeli politics, it is necessary to go back only two years. On April 12, 1991, the chief political correspondent of Ha'aretz, Uzi Benziman, reported that then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker "opened his conversation with David Levy [then Israeli foreign minister] by saying that Sharon must be stopped" from building settlements wherever he wished to on the West Bank.

As Benziman made clear, Baker wanted only to stop provocative settlements. As a quid pro quo, he offered $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees and eight concessions to demands by the Israeli government of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Among the concessions, according to Benziman, were the following: "It is agreed that a Palestinian state is not to be a subject of negotiations [between Israel and the Palestinians]; it is agreed that the Palestinian delegation is to be selected rather than elected; it is agreed that [U.N. Security Council] Resolutions 242 and 338 are subject to two different interpretations, each as valid as the other," etc.

The religious settlers, however, were adamant in rejecting any concessions to the U.S. at all, eventually forcing Shamir to renege on his deal with the U.S. When it turned out that a tacit agreement linking together the [Israeli] government, the leadership of [Jewish] settlers and the American administration proved unreachable,'' according to Benziman, the U.S. began threatening Israel that the guarantees would be withheld. The settlers, however, would not budge.

"The leaders of the religious settlers are convinced that they have been chosen by "the grace of God," Benziman wrote in Ha'aretz of June 28, 1991. "They firmly believe that they are in a better position than others to decode the inner laws governing the march of history . . . The recipe of the religious settlers in the territories for obtaining the guarantees is simple: 'Determination, strong nerves, national pride, and guarding the [Israeli] ability to make sovereign decisions. The rest will come of itself, with God's help."'

A Well-Recognized Analogy

Clearly, the Jewish religious settlers have a religious fanatic mentality closely resembling that of the Muslim extremists of Hamas. The analogy is well recognized by the Hebrew press, but never mentioned by the British or American media. For the mainstream U.S. press in particular, the very possibility of Jewish religious fanaticism is unmentionable.

Nevertheless, the religious settlers have no hesitation in laying out publicly their objections to the Palestinian autonomy plan as envisaged by both the Shamir and Rabin governments. According to Nadav Shraggay, writing in Ha'aretz of April 23, 1992, the religious settlers long ago drafted a letter to the chief Israeli delegate to the Washington peace talks with Jordanians and Palestinians, Elyakim Rubinstein, who is religious himself.

The letter, signed by all settler rabbis in addition to 38 other rabbis, solemnly warned Rubinstein that "a Jew who lends his hand to the traitorous act of delivering the clearly Jewish lands of Judea and Samaria into the hands of Gentiles cannot be considered religious." They quoted Rabbi Harlap, who before 1947 had ruled "that there can be no doubt" that if a religious Jewish official "is within the framework of his duties asked to sign an international treaty ceding any rights over no matter how tiny a chunk of the land of Israel to the Gentiles, he should cut off his thumbs in order to avoid signing such a treaty." To date, Rubinstein, who still heads the Israeli delegation, hasn't cut off his thumbs.

The settlers next applied to one of their leaders, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, and to several other rabbis, for help in defining their position. From Rabbi Aviner they obtained a definitive response, according to Shraggay:

"In the first place, [Aviner] determined that there is no difference between a Palestinian state and autonomy, except in the name," Shraggay wrote. "The autonomy is a new ploy of our Gentile enemies to ruin a part of the Land of Israel. This is the customary way of the Gentiles. Sometimes they fight us overtly, but sometimes they rely on clever and intricate schemes, using their habitual hypocrisy and their false morality in order to swallow a part of our own country."'

The settlers also were able to quote rabbis more extremist than Rabbi Aviner. Rabbi Ya'akov Navon from the Shilo settlement opined that "autonomy cannot but lead to transgressions of a number of religious prohibitions." The first is "the prohibition against allowing the Gentiles to live in the Land of Israel, except on condition of agreeing to serve the king of Israel [whom Rabbi Navon equates with the state of Israel], and refraining from behaving impudently to the Jews.'' Any kind of autonomy, argues Rabbi Navon, perhaps not without good reasons, might encourage the Gentiles to be more rather than less "impudent to the Jews."

The now-deceased founder and leader of Gush Emunim, Rabbi Yehuda Zvi Kook, declared that autonomy's greatest evil is that the Jews willing to grant it considered themselves weak, instead of putting their trust in God. Had they done so, God would have been certain to reward them by endowing them with unrivaled strength.

The religious settlers and their closest allies in the National Religious Party have remained true to those principles. But their supporters in the major right-wing parties, Likud and Tzomet, already speak a different language. They talk of Israeli security and they fail to recognize the Arabs as Gentiles. Thus, the Likud Party admits Arabs as members. One of its MKs, As'ad As'ad, is a Druze, on close terms with Netanyahu. Tzomet also enjoys significant Druze support. The alliance of the religious settlers with their secular supporters, close as it may seem, must be regarded as potentially fragile.

Since the religious settlers adamantly oppose autonomy, and already have succeeded in quashing the agreement Israel had reached with the Bush administration, some Hebrew press commentators predict that they would not shrink from launching a civil war. On March 26, 1993, Israeli commentator Ran Edelist addressed the religious settlers in an open letter:

"You have administered for 25 years a racist regime of conquest, haughtiness and fraudulent heroism.. .I will ignore your claim that God is on your side. Permit me to say that I surely hold your God in low repute.

"I assume that by now even an utter fool would recognize that all your displays of cheap grandiosity could have no effect other than building a wall of hostility around you, which in turn begot the terror.

"I can spare you a burst of indignation at me by admitting my own erstwhile complicity in your crimes. Yet, unlike you, I can recognize when a precipice or a wall stops me from moving forward, and I intend to utilize my firm grasp on reality . . .

"I have something to tell you which presumably cannot be a great secret even to you. The Israeli army and the Security Branches [i.e., Shabak and Mossad] are preparing for the peace process. The preparations include measures against two kinds of provocations: those of extremist Arabs and of extremist Jews. For me, you and the knife-wielders of Hamas pose the same degree of threat. But since I hope that the Hamas' threat will be taken care of by its [ethnic] brethren, I have no choice but to neutralize you as a threat. I have no choice because you are my brother.

"It is apparent that we are both moving toward a violent confrontation which may be Jewish-Arab, but may also be internecine Jewish. . . in either case I will not be on your side. This time I am not going to be impressed by your sanctimonious habit of raising your eyes up to the heavens and invoking Jewish brotherhood. I will not let myself be dragged into a religious war or racist gang warfare. From now on, there will be a complete separation between one belligerent, you, and another, me. Until one of us is defeated."

Government Fear of Settlers

By the end of April the Hebrew press recognized that, as Benziman put it in Ha'aretz of April 30, the government was afraid of the settlers. "Among members of the government there are some who believe that current Israeli positions cannot avoid a fratricidal shedding of Jewish blood," Benziman wrote. "In personal conversations, those ministers intimate that, for the first time since formation of the state of Israel, political struggle will involve the use of firearms and attempts to assassinate politicians.

"It is not clear whether such fears are based on intelligence estimates or whether the ministers voicing them fear for themselves as possible targets. But the decision makers assume that the coming political contest in Israel will be stormy, violent and extremely sordid, necessitating special efforts by the police and Shabak to protect the lives of public figures."

The government responds to the settlers and their allies in various ways. On one hand, it reassures the public that the autonomy agreement envisages no essential changes. As Benziman puts it, "The government, at least for the time being, keeps reassuring everybody that no withdrawal from Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District is being contemplated, and therefore that all the settlers' claims of risks to their security are baseless."

The ploy may work, Benziman writes, because even "the leaders of the settlers recognize that the great majority of Israeli Jews are not overly concerned with the fate of Jewish settlers," in contrast to their keen concern, justified or not, about Israel's security.

On the other hand, the government appeals to the memory of Menachem Begin. Benziman writes, "The leaders of the settlers know that the idea of autonomy in its Israeli understanding enjoys a modicum of popularity in the public mind by virtue of being associated with the memory of Menachem Begin, and they recognize that this factor could make it very difficult for them to sway the public against autonomy."

In pursuit of this tactic, Begin and his policies are now extolled in the Labor Party newspaper Davar. Its political commentator, Khami Shalev, wrote on April 30 that "Rabin conducts the negotiations about the future of the territories in exact conformity with Likud's ideology. He has not relinquished the Golan Heights and he keeps the option of the formal annexation of the territories by Israel open until the very end."

Shalev acknowledges that Likud has been right in accusing Rabin of having deceived the voters, but he defends the prime minister. "Promising to stand firmly by a rigidly defined principle in order to subsequently renege on it is no deception but a mark of sophistication in policymaking. This was done by Moshe Dayan . . . This was done by Menachem Begin . . . It was Yitzhak Shamir who didn't hesitate to openly avow that 'for the sake of the Land of Israel Lying is permitted.'

"Unfortunately, Shamir himself didn't lie. Contrary to what he avowed, he prided himself in doing exactly as he said. He announced he was going to fill the territories with Jews, and he proceeded to do exactly that. He said he would concede nothing, and never conceded anything.

"True, he did deceive the Americans. But he kept telling the truth to the Israelis, and behaved accordingly. The inevitable consequence of this 'honesty' was the stalemating of the peace process, our involvement in some quite superfluous settlements and the intifada."

Remarkable as pro-Labor commentator Shalev's statement is, it doesn't mean that, unlike Shamir, Rabin tells the truth to the Americans while deceiving the Israelis. It can be seen that Rabin deceives everybody, his closest associates included.

Along with other pro-Labor journalists, Shalev advises the government to lash out at Likud for being unable to deceive its own followers intelligently. In conclusion, Shalev says that "if Rabin succeeds in delivering peace, people will soon forget all his 'deceptions'; and in case there will be no peace, the prime minister's 'honesty' will offer us no consolation.