Most of us have a number of acquaintances, but we often have very few people who are really close friends. A really good friend will come to you when you are doing something dumb or self-destructive and tell you to knock it off.
I am a pastor from Tacoma living for three months in the West Bank and working with an ecumenical church group which focuses on peace and ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank . From my perspective here on the ground, I suggest that Israel needs a really good friend, the type that intervenes and says, “What you are doing is dangerously self-destructive.”
I have had the opportunity to spend time with Meir Margalit, an Israeli Jew who served on the Jerusalem City Council. Margalit says, “Israel urgently needs someone to intervene to keep the current Israeli Government from driving off a cliff.” He believes the current government is encouraging a wave of xenophobic nationalism that will “make any peace process impossible, completely alienate Israel further from Arab countries, further isolate Israel from the rest of the world community and destroy democracy and freedom of expression within Israel.” He senses that if the current government is not pressured to change course within the next year or two then the situation will become irreversible.
What is Margalit seeing that has him so alarmed?
· In his opinion it is Israeli intransigence that killed the most recent attempts at peace talks. Israeli officials turned away as President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton begged for a measly three-month extension of a partial moratorium on settlement expansion, even when the deal was sweetened with promises of more military hardware. Israel seems intent on doing all it can, while it can, to make any future Palestinian state totally non-viable, much like the South African attempt at controllable Bantustans or homelands.
· The “Clinton formula” for a potential future division of Jerusalem is to be based on demographics, i.e. those areas that are predominately Palestinian would go to a future Palestine and those areas that are predominately Israeli would go to Israel. So the freeze is off and the rush is on to claim the demographic upper hand in as many neighborhoods as possible. Just this week the Israeli government made a bold move to tear down the old Shepherd’s Hotel to prepare the way for the construction of at least 20 new apartment units exclusively for Jewish settlers. This is property appropriated by Israel and then transferred to Irving Moskowitz, a gambling magnate who underwrites significant illegal settlement activity. This is in a neighborhood of strategic importance just north of the Old City and currently Palestinian. It exemplifies a concerted and systematic process of limiting Palestinian construction, encouraging Palestinian relocation and developing more Israeli settlements, all of which is illegal under the Geneva Convention and the International Court of Law. Nevertheless, there were 74 demolitions of Palestinian homes in 2010 in Jerusalem and 17 in the month of December. From the Palestinian point of view negotiating with Israel while Israel is building settlements is like trying to divide a pizza while one person is busy eating it.
· Israel is aggressively developing and expanding illegal settlements throughout the West Bank, devoting approximately $500 million directly to settlements with much more earmarked in other parts of the budget.
· Prime Minister Netanyahu has been pushing legislation to declare Israel an “officially Jewish” state and demanding that all citizens, be they Christian or Muslim or secular, swear allegiance to that concept, undermining the historic democratic foundations of the nation.
· A letter to the Knesset from the wives of a group of influential Rabbis in Jerusalem recently urged Jewish women to avoid any association with Arab men so as to maintain their “purity” while at the same time this group of Rabbis has introduced legislation before the Jerusalem City Council to make it illegal in West Jerusalem to rent to Arabs.
It is time for the United States to be Israel’s friend, a really good friend, by intervening and exerting pressure to turn Israel away from policies that will only bring more unrest and instability to the region and more pain and suffering among Palestinians and Israelis. Tragically, Israel’s remaining commitment to democracy and human rights is fast vanishing.
Wayne Smith has been a pastor at Praise Covenant Church in Tacoma, Washington for the past 10 years.
