Looming
One of the outcomes of Barack Obama’s parting shot at Israel in December—when the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2334, condemning Israeli communities built in Judea and Samaria, and the U.S. abstained from the vote—is that Israel is still in a precarious place in the international community.
Dotting the land of Israel are thousands of Jewish homes, built in the ancestral land, beginning in about 1977. The initial building phase began under the premiership of Menachem Begin, perhaps the most biblical of Israel’s prime ministers. Of Israel’s seven million Jewish residents, almost a half-million live in Judea/Samaria (“the West Bank”).
Always, American governments have taken a dim view of Israel building in the territories.
(As an aside, I am hopeful that the incoming Trump Administration will adopt a new paradigm and jettison the dangerous “land for peace” formula; however, don’t expect that Trump or his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, disagree with the two-state solution. We’ll see.)
Especially under prime ministers like Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has built in the territories and, let’s be honest, they’ve done it to minimize the possibility of a future Palestinian state. Such a state would have a Swiss-cheese topography, with one Arab town smack-dab next to a Jewish town. In other words, unworkable.
The Left rages at anyone who questions land-for-peace, but it is legitimate to ask, as I do, why the Palestinians deserve a state. They have been murdering Jews for generations and at this moment show no capacity for living in peace.
Recently, the Knesset gave initial approval for the so-called Regulation Bill, which would make legal around 2,500 “unauthorized” settlements that had been built on private Palestinian land. The government would offer compensation to the Arab land owners.
It isn’t even a foregone conclusion that the Knesset would pass such a bill; the bill will be met with real force by its opponents.
Critics allege that this amounts to an annexation of the West Bank.
I’m all for that. The time is now for bold, new thinking. A quarter-century of murder of Jews is not acceptable. To my view, the Palestinians’ numerous opportunities to behave in a civilized manner have long since passed.
All this is why the U.S. abstention from the UN vote raises the possibility that Jewish residents in Judea/Samaria could be tried as criminals in international court. The International Criminal Court looms over Israel on this point.
Coincidentally (I say that tongue-in-cheek), Netanyahu is now under a corruption investigation. By hook or crook, no pun intended, his enemies and the enemies of what might be called the Trump Doctrine.
Where this all plays out no one knows. The future will continue to be a test of wills. The evil of Obama is pitted directly against the righteous cause of the Jewish people, in the Land of Israel.
What a glorious time to be alive!