As Israel
continues its quest to find a solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict, Jimmy
Carter and others are pressing Israel
to leave parts of Judea and Samaria .
Before even considering such a move, which would repeat the disaster of Gush
Katif, Israeli leaders might learn from the experiences of former Israeli
leaders.
On March 1, 1920, Joseph Trumpeldor, a political activist,
along with five of his men from the Tel-Hai settlement, was killed in a fight
with Arabs from a nearby village.
Historian Anita Shapiro notes that two months before the encounter, Aharon Sher, a settler, wrote an
article in which he asked for help to defend the settlements in this lawless
and remote northern region. One sentence
became a rallying cry to battle: “A place once settled is not to be abandoned.”
In subsequent discussions
about whether to defend or desert these communities, leaders of the Labor
movement essentially adopted Sher’s view. Yitzhak Tabenkin, a leader of
the kibbutz movement, argued that if the Arabs terrorized the Jews enough to
leave a few settlements, they would not stop until the Jews were forced out
everywhere. Only by taking an “obstinate, desperate stand, without looking
back,” could the Jews guarantee their right to the land.
The
moderate-left-of center Ha-Poel ha-Tzair party paper asserted that their work in
settling the land was based on “mutual understanding and amicable relations”
with their neighbors. “Yet
wherever Hebrew soil is drenched with the sweat of Hebrew workers, and with
their blood, that place is holy to us, and we have no right to abandon it.”
In the 1930’s, when the Arabs rioted in Palestine over
increased Jewish immigration, David Ben-Gurion thought the Arabs might be more
receptive to Jewish settlement if he could demonstrate how it would benefit
them economically. In 1934, he went to see Musa Alami, a young “moderate” Arab
lawyer, who served as the Private Secretary to Arthur Wauchope, High
Commissioner for Palestine .
Alami’s response to Ben Gurion was quite telling: “That’s
true,” he said, “but we don’t want your blessing. We prefer the land to remain
impoverished, barren and empty until we ourselves are capable of doing what you
are doing. And if it takes another century, then we will wait a hundred years.”
Shortly after the Arab Rebellion began on April 19, 1936,
Ben Gurion didn’t even bother trying to convince the Arabs of the morality of
Zionism or about the economic advantages that would accrue to them from
increased Jewish settlement, according to Shapiro. “It would be extremely naïve
to assume that the Arabs would determine their attitude toward us from the
standpoint of abstract justice,” Ben Gurion declared. “The Arabs are adamant
that “this country is an Arab country, and they wish it to remain so. That is
quite elementary!”
Arthur Ruppin, the foremost authority on Jewish efforts to
settle the land, explained the difficulty of reaching an accord with the Arabs.
On February 21, 1931, he wrote in his diary, “We are not offered what we need,
and what we are offered is of no use to us.”
Ruppin, who was chairman of Brit Shalom, which advocated a
bi-national state, recognized that the “conciliatory tone” the group took
toward the Arabs was “interpreted by the Arabs as weakness.”
In November 1929, German Zionist members of Brit Shalom
suggested that an appeal for a reprieve be made to the British for the Arabs
convicted of killing Jews in Hebron
and Safed. On Friday August 23, 1929 the Arabs began
a week of rioting, killing and looting. More than 400 Jews were murdered or
wounded. In Hebron
eight American Jews were killed and 15 wounded. The dead were students at the
Slobodka yeshiva, who were not Zionists and not involved in the Jewish national
movement. Neither were those attacked in Safed.
Although “in principle” Ruppin opposed the death penalty, he
felt in this case it would be too dangerous to stop the practice. Prisons don’t
“frighten the Arabs,” he said, “since they are relatively better off in jail
than they were at home.” Furthermore, “they would not regard a prison
sentence—with the hope of amnesty after a few years—as a serious punishment,
and thus might encourage others to slaughter Jews.”
The lessons learned by early Jewish leaders should not be
lost on those in power today. The Arabs have not yet accepted the Jewish right
to live in the Land
of Israel Jerusalem ]
and Palestinian land."
Israeli leaders would
do well to heed the words of Edmund
Burke who said: “The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.” Appeasement has a place in resolving disputes
but not in dealing with aggression.
