Israel Today is a Country of Progress and Problems

By Henry Srebrnik, [Sumerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

 

In November I will be visiting Israel, a country I will barely recognize from the time I was last there, in the spring of 1977. 

I had previously been to Israel in 1967, as a volunteer on a kibbutz; in 1972, when I spent a summer at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; and 1976, while a PhD student in England.

Back then, Israel was a quasi-socialist nation; it had been governed continuously by the left-of-centre Labour Party ever since it was founded in 1948.

Ten years after the 1967 Middle East war, it ruled over a restive Arab population in the West Bank and Gaza (as well as much of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Syria’s Golan Heights). 

The first Palestinian intifada was still a decade away, and the Oslo Accords granting Palestinians a measure of autonomy a further six years down the road. 

The movement of Jewish settlers into the areas beyond the 1949 armistice lines that served as Israel’s borders was still in its infancy. 

No one talked of a “two-state” solution – indeed, it was illegal for Israelis to have any contact with the Palestine Liberation Organization, at the time headquartered in Lebanon.

Things have, of course, changed utterly, beginning that very year. On May 17, Menachem Begin’s hawkish Likud Party won the country’s election, ending Labour’s rule. 

In November, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made a surprise visit to Jerusalem, beginning the process that would eventually culminate in a peace treaty with Israel, in return for Egypt regaining the entire Sinai. 

Sadat also called for the establishment of a Palestinian state. But he would be assassinated by extremists in Egypt four years later.

Inspired by the 1967 capture of the Old City of Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank of the Jordan -- the area known in biblical times as Judea and Samaria -- Israel experienced a rise in religiously-based nationalism.

The settlement of these areas by religious Zionists, who had been marginalized in pre-1967 Israel by the secular majority, now began in earnest.

The Jewish settlements in Gaza and on the West Bank, often in close proximity to Arab villages and towns, became a point of contention between Arabs and Jews. 

Among the most powerful political voices in the movement against territorial compromise was the messianic group known as Gush Emunim (the Bloc of the Faithful). 

Successive Israeli governments seemed paralyzed as more settlers moved across the old pre-1967 boundary known as the “Green Line.” 

However, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did force the withdrawal of settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

A total of 8,000 Jewish settlers from all 21 settlements there were relocated, an action that proved quite traumatic. Hamas now rules that territory.

Today, the Labour Party is a shadow of its former self. In 2015 Israeli voters re-elected Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud for a fourth term. The public seemed to be impressed by his acceptance of expanding Jewish settlements in the disputed territories.

Three back-to-back victories of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition shows how the majority of the country has turned towards the right. 

An annual survey carried out by Israel Democracy Institute confirms this development. Some 49 per cent of young Israelis describe their political views as right-wing, while 27 per cent view themselves as centrist and about 16 per cent say they lean towards the left.

An overwhelming majority of the country’s youth is now pessimistic about the chances of success of the Israel-Palestine peace process. 

By the end of 2016, the West Bank Jewish population, living in some 130 settlements, rose to 420,000, excluding East Jerusalem, where there were more than 200,000 Jews. In addition, there are dozens more outposts that are not officially recognized by the authorities. 

Israel’s population stands at 8,680,000. Jews in the country make up 74.4 per cent of all residents, while 1.8 million Arab citizens account for 20.8 per cent. 

Altogether, approximately 13 per cent of Israel’s Jewish population of 6,484,000 now lives beyond the 1949 borders. So, of course, do some two million Palestinians.

At an event August 28 celebrating 50 years of settlements in the West Bank, Netanyahu, now Israel’s second-longest serving prime minister, pledged that his government will never evacuate another settlement. 

“We are here to stay forever. There will be no more uprooting of settlements in the land of Israel.” The prime minister told his listeners that “this is the inheritance of our ancestors. This is our land.”

Diplomats and academics still hoping to find a way to resolve the issues standing in the way of Israeli-Palestinian peace clearly have their work cut out for them.