Middle East This Land Is Whose Land?

By Johanna McGeary/the West Bank

"We don't want to be conquerors," says Shmuel Goren, Israel's Defense Ministry coordinator for the occupied territories. Most of his fellow citizens no doubt share that sentiment. But Israel remains a conqueror, a country of 3.5 million Jews and 740,000 non-Jews that gained a quarter of its current territory by war in 1967 and ever since has ruled 1.4 million Palestinian Arabs by force. In just six days of fighting, Israel occupied 2,270 sq. mi. of land on the West Bank of the Jordan River, as well as the Golan Heights and the finger of Mediterranean seacoast known as the Gaza Strip. Last week, as Israelis prepared to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Six-Day War, they seemed as determined as ever to hold on to the West Bank.

For some people in Israel the issue is primarily religious, a fulfillment of God's gift of Judea and Samaria to the Jews as his chosen people. For the majority of Israelis, however, the motivation for continued possession of the West Bank is fear. Before 1967, Egyptian troops sat 35 miles from Tel Aviv; today Israel is protected by a peace treaty with Egypt and a wide stretch of desert between them. Before 1967, Israel's population centers were within rifle range of Jordanian troops; today 40 miles of desert and a river separate Jordan from most Israelis. Before 1967, much of northern Israel was vulnerable to Syrian fire from the Golan Heights; today Israel controls, and indeed has formally annexed, that strategic plateau.

In exchange for peace, Israel agreed in 1979 to give the captured Sinai back to Egypt. But few Israelis are prepared to relinquish much of the other occupied lands. At a minimum, Israeli defense experts would insist on retaining control of the Jordan Valley, the string of hills stretching down the spine of the West Bank, and particularly the Golan Heights. To strengthen the argument that compromise is now possible, some Israelis point out that their country is no longer in danger of imminent annihilation, as it was in 1967, and can afford to make concessions for peace.

Others are preoccupied by the fact that Israel is still besieged from within by frequent acts of random violence. A Jewish settler was killed a few weeks ago when her car was fire bombed on the road to the settlement of Alfei Menashe. In retaliation, settlers belonging to the extremist Gush Emunim movement rampaged through the nearby Arab town of Kalkilya. The West Bank's Bir Zeit University has been closed for four months, following student rioting that left one Arab dead at the hands of Israeli soldiers. Occupation authorities have shut down the school eleven times in the past ten years. Two weeks ago, an eight-year-old Jewish boy was found murdered near the West Bank settlement of Elon Moreh. Almost no one in Israel doubts that the deed was committed by a Palestinian.

At heart, the vicious circle of resistance and repression testifies to the determination of both Palestinian and Israeli to possess the same land. To maintain control, Israeli officials have deported Arab leaders and have often destroyed the houses of those suspected of security violations. Land has been appropriated for Israeli settlements. Arab youths have been interrogated, collective punishment has been exacted, and prisoners have allegedly been beaten and tortured.

Many Israelis believe that the majority of Palestinians are neither politicized nor violent but want merely to be left alone to live in peace. Yet most West Bank Arab leaders would probably argue that political grievances are what bind the Palestinians together. "What the Israelis want for themselves, we want for ourselves," says Tawfik Amer, 63, a former Jordanian diplomat. "I do not deny the Israelis their state or their way of life, and they cannot deny me the same." Indeed, there is little doubt that the younger generation of Palestinians has become increasingly radicalized, particularly the university graduates for whom there are few jobs and little opportunity.

In the first decade of occupation, only about 5,000 hardy Israelis settled in the hot, dusty Jordan Valley. But in 1977, when the right-wing Likud bloc came to power, the pace accelerated because the Likud regarded settlement as a means of holding on to the land forever. Today nearly 60,000 Jews live in the West Bank, though 80% of them are city people who have been lured by cheap housing and tax breaks to move into new developments only a few miles from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Probably few of the 12,000 residents of Ma'ale Adumim, a huge housing complex outside Jerusalem, think of themselves as living in the West Bank at all. Says one resident: "I don't feel any different here than in Tel Aviv."

For the 20,000 Jews in the more remote settlements, life is riskier. These are the communities that rub most against their Arab neighbors, partly because the Jewish residents are so aggressive in asserting their presence. Two weeks ago, hundreds of children from the hilltop settlements around Karnei Shomron marched down the road past Arab villages, chanting Israeli slogans and carrying signs heralding 20 years of settlement. To the Jewish settlers, such actions are not provocative but legitimate. Says Settlement Secretary Avner Vered: "These are religious people who believe they have the right to live all over Israel. When more Jews come here, nobody will be able to tell us to go away."

Is there a solution to the impasse? Both Arabs and Israelis are hopelessly divided at present. Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization still commands the loyalty of the vast majority of West Bank Palestinians, but Arafat has broken his strategic ties with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Hussein, the two Arab moderates with whom he might have formed a credible alliance. The two major political parties in Israel cannot agree even on whether to enter into negotiations with the Palestinians under United Nations auspices.

Many Israelis worry about the moral cost of the occupation. "There is a growing divide between religious and secular Israelis," says Amnon Rubinstein, leader of the small Shinui party. "We are already two different societies." Meron Benvenisti, head of the West Bank Data Project, believes "Israel is becoming a binational state with two systems of government, one for Jews, one for Arabs." He adds, "It is a system that partly integrates the things Israel wants to integrate, like the land, water rights and security zones, and excludes what Israel does not want, like the Arabs."

Though many Jews outside Israel endorse the occupation, others fear it might eventually harm Israel's standing in the West. Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, a liberal American Jewish magazine, is among those who note that much U.S. support for Israel is based on the perception that the country embodies the best of American moral values. "The long-term survival of the state of Israel dictates that it cease to occupy the West Bank," says Lerner. Otherwise, he warns, "the view of Israel as a moral country will be dramatically undermined in the years ahead."