The Settlements Don't Make Me Safer

In a previous post, I said that I would eventually write about my own view of the settlements. Here it is:

Over 2 million Palestinians live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. They can't vote in Israeli elections and don't receive Israeli social benefits, plus they lack other rights in Israeli law that I'm somewhat fuzzy on. This has been going on for more than 40 years. Doesn't seem fair, does it? Can anyone with any intellectual honesty call Israel a democracy?

Why has Israel adopted this policy of indefinite occupation? Why doesn't Israel return to its democratic roots by withdrawing from the West Bank and allowing the Palestinians to establish an independent country there?

Zionists such as myself would like to believe that Israel does not withdraw because it fears that a withdrawal from the West Bank -- especially an unconditional withdrawal -- would endanger the security of Israel and its citizens. Israel fears that an independent Palestine would become a base for terror and a client of scary Iran. A popular poster during the recent campaign said, "A Palestinian State Puts You In the Crosshairs."

I would like to believe that Israel is occupying the West Bank in self-defense, but I can't.

Because if Israel is occupying the West Bank in self-defense, what are all of those Jewish settlements doing there?

Believe me, the Israeli army could protect me quite well if there were not a single Jewish settler in the West Bank. The settlers do not contribute anything to the army's ability to protect me. Every Jewish settler in the West Bank is living proof that the Israeli Army is occupying the territory not to protect Israeli citizens, but so that Israeli Jews (who, of course, vote in Israeli elections and enjoy Israeli social benefits) can live there. Proof that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is for Jewish domination of Greater Israel, or, as we say in Hebrew, Eretz Yisrael Hashlema.

So would a peace treaty with Fatah, which of course is only possible if it includes Palestinian statehood, bring real peace, or would it just put me in the crosshairs? Maybe even the Palestinians would be worse off in a war-torn, eventually Hamas-controlled Palestinian state. I don't know.

I do know one thing, though: the settlements don't make me safer.