Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 29, 1992 TAG: 9203020216
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ISRAEL NOTIFIED
SECRETARY of State Baker has laid it on the line for Israel: Either freeze Jewish settlement-building in occupied Arab lands, or give up $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees.It is a principled position, and it will be necessary to stick to it, in all likelihood, if the Arab-Israeli peace talks are to have hope of success.
The occupied territories are the chief issue in those talks. If Israel is unwilling to negotiate on the status of those lands and the millions of Arabs who live there, Israel does not want a peace treaty.
For more than 20 years, American presidents have opposed Israel's taking private property and building settlements in the predominantly Arab West Bank and Gaza Strip, taken in the 1967 war. For more than 20 years, Israel has persisted in this policy.
In 1990, the Bush administration arranged $400 million in loan guarantees for Israel to house new immigrants, provided Israel (1) use none of the money in the occupied territories and (2) report fully on what it spends there. What Israel did was (1) use the guaranteed loan money to free up other funds it spent in the territories, and (2) not provide the promised data.
Now Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir trumpets defiance, telling Jewish settlers he will not stop construction "even for a day." Housing Minister Ariel Sharon, a political zealot, says 2,000 housing units have been started and there will soon be another 1,000. They are doing their best, in other words, to derail the peace talks.
Since 1967, Israel's government has treated the West Bank and Gaza as its own - subject to settlement as well as political control - and the resident Palestinians as aliens. This is not only because possession of the territories gives Israel more defensible borders. To the government in Jerusalem, these lands are Judea and Samaria: part of the nation's patrimony from the God of the Old Testament.
Arthur Hertzberg, former president of the American Jewish Congress, has noted in a recent article that Shamir's oft-stated opposition to territorial concessions is not a bargaining position but a fundamental tenet of Likud ideology. Settlements are necessary, Shamir apparently believes, not only for security reasons but to emphasize Israel's philosophical and religious right to the territories.
How much of the Israeli public shares this ideological commitment to a greater Israel is unclear, but certainly not a majority. Polls show that "land for peace" is not anathema to most Israelis.
Many Israelis have voiced discomfort at seeing their democratic government colonize another people. Yet they have difficulty making their views heard in elections. Israel's fragmented parliamentary system gives undue representation to small conservative and religious-oriented parties.
In contrast to Likud, the Labor Party has agreed to a freeze on settlements in the territories. In Israel's coming election campaign, this could prove the central issue.
The United States has at least a humanitarian obligation to help Israel settle Russian Jews. But the Israeli government, as much as America's, has linked the two settlement issues by pressing ahead with expansion in the occupied territories at the risk of losing the loan guarantees to help house incoming Russians.
President Bush has stood fast on the matter, at some political risk domestically. At this point he deserves the backing of everyone concerned with peace and justice.