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This is a guest essay by John Matthews, a writer and author of 24 books, including two about World War II and the Holocaust.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
For many years, the clarion call of many European governments, including the UK, has been that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank) are illegal.
I must admit that this call was repeated so consistently in the media that I originally accepted this as a given fact.
But when I saw that the Israeli government constantly challenged this, naming the area Judea and Samaria rather than “West Bank,” and asserting that land claims there were “disputed” rather than “illegal,” I decided to look further into this disparity.
The label “West Bank” was in fact attached by Jordan after the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, when it occupied the area up until the 1967 Six-Day War, when it was then taken back by Israel. Before 1948, it was referred to by Jews as Judea and Samaria and a number of Jews resided there until cleared out by Jordan.
Indeed, towns such as Bethlehem were in ancient Judea, such as the birthplace of Jesus, who was of course born a Jew to a Jewish family. Many of the Jews returning to those areas were those originally expelled by Jordan and Arab forces, though those numbers have since been added to significantly. But little is said about that Jewish expulsion in historical reports.
However, if we were to then say that no Jewish People should reside in those areas, then this would completely undermine the “right of return” which Palestinian Arabs voice strongly at every opportunity. They can’t have it both ways. This Jewish “return” is seen particularly starkly in Hebron, where a hard core of only 1,100 Jews live amongst a far larger Palestinian population of 210,000, with the security barriers needed to protect that minority population splitting parts of the city.
But historically, prior to a massacre by Arabs in Hebron is 1929, which cost 67 Jewish lives, there was always a Jewish population in Hebron. The remaining 650 Jewish population then fled the city in fear, and a Jewish return is seen as warranted not only because of those Jewish historic roots, but also because Hebron is the site of the Tomb of Machpelah (also known as the Cave of the Patriarchs), where Abraham, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah are buried — making it the second holiest place for Jews worldwide.
However, while both the current Israeli government and most of its people support the right of Israeli Jews to re-settle in Judea and Samaria, some Israelis are against it, mainly on the basis of the dangers and loss of soldiers and security personnel in guarding barriers and divides amongst the Arab population. This is more or less the same rationale — too much trouble and danger — behind Israel pulling all its settlers out of Gaza in 2004.
And look how that ended: short-term risk and danger cut, but leading to far greater long-term risk and danger, allowing Hamas to build up strongly in the face of zero Israeli security presence. Supporters of maintaining Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria point to the same: Could zero presence there in fact lead to the emboldening of radical Islamic groups there and far greater future problems?
And where did this drive to have zero Jewish-Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria come from? And what on earth is the British government (and possibly other nations) thinking of in supporting it? After all, this stance to effectively remove all Jews from an area hasn’t been seen since Nazi Germany. And when we look at the situation the other side in Israel, we have a 21 percent Arab (mostly Muslim) population, totalling 2.1 million people. So why should a sixth of that (350,000 Jews) living among an Arab population of 5.5 million (only 6.35 percent) cause a problem?
Much of this stems from longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s proclamation in the 1980s:
“We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem.”
The key phrase “We will make life unbearable for Jews” has become a standard bearer for 45 years of terrorist actions since. But, of course, instead of just retreating and crumbling, Israel built up a formidable army and security force, and through a series of barriers and checkpoints managed to largely deflect this almost non-stop terrorist onslaught. All of which, in turn, was pointed to by the Palestinians as being further instruments of their suffering.
Almost as if these barriers and checkpoints were there purely to make Palestinian lives miserable rather than protect Jewish lives. You couldn’t make it up.
Still to this day, there is an average of 348 terrorist attacks a month against Israelis by Palestinians, many of these taking place in the Judea and Samaria. In contrast, the number of attacks the other way from Israeli settlers to Palestinians is a fifth of that, but these latter attacks are invariably at the forefront of the news, with attacks against Israeli Jews hardly getting a mention. Is this because terrorist attacks against Jews are so frequent that they’re hardly newsworthy anymore, or some other reason?
It does appear that at some stage, when Palestinian leaders were asked why they didn’t wish for any Jews to be present in any Palestinian territories, simply claiming “because they’re Jews” wasn’t sufficient. Worse yet, that would be viewed as racist and supporting ethnic cleansing. So, they latched onto the claim “because they’re troublesome and violent” and have since been pumping out every possible news story to support that, which Western and mainstream media have happily swallowed and repeated without question.
Deep breath.
Yes, there are some settlers who are troublesome, and the last few years, some of their actions have become increasingly and worryingly violent — almost as if they’re trying to play “catch-up” on terrorist violence against them. But these “violent settlers” number no more than 150 to 200 out of 350,000 settlers. And their violent actions, some of it indeed retaliatory, is a fifth of that taking place compared to Palestinian terror attacks against settlers and other Israelis.
While being condemned by the international community for not doing enough to curb settler violence, Israel has increased its security presence and made a number of arrests. On the other side, we see little or nothing done at all; indeed, the Palestinian Authority still has an open “pay-for-slay” policy, which rewards terrorists and their families for killing Jews. How would it be if Israel had a similar open reward system for attacking and killing Palestinians?
Given this, why on earth didn’t the UK and various other European nations, in their rush to recognize a Palestinian state, at the same time make it conditional on them dropping their “pay for slay” of Jews policy? Relinquishing murder sentences for selling land to Jews or “collaborating” with Israelis would have also been wise pre-conditions.
Which brings us full circle to why Israel currently doesn’t feel a Palestinian state is viable. What possible sane nation would entertain a state the other side which has an open policy of rewarding terrorists to kill its neighbouring citizens? Such a situation is completely unworkable.
And then comes Edward Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom, who this week announced sanctions on goods from Judea and Samaria companies. Of course, Palestinian leaders say little, because they’ve shown long ago they have little interest in the welfare of their own people. But for Palestinians in the street, Judea and Samaria companies and Judea and Samaria housing have a marked impact on their lives.
Sixty percent of the labour force in those Judea and Samaria companies are Palestinian, a number of them also in management — all at wages between 80 and 200 percent above the pay scale of Palestinian companies. And the construction of Jewish settlements also employs 80 percent Palestinian labour, again at pay rates between 80 and 200 percent above that gained in the purely Palestinian territories.
This apart from the fact that local Palestinians welcome the increased spending power in local shops that the Israeli settlers bring. All of this boosts their economy tremendously, but this voice of local Palestinians on the ground — who for the most part integrate well with Israeli settlers and benefit from their presence — is rarely heard. Partly, because if they openly proclaim this, they risk being arrested as “collaborators” by the Palestinian Authority, plus the media’s anti-Jewish narrative. So, the only line followed is that of settler aggravation and violence.
Paradoxically, Edward Miliband has come out with the statement that the settlements and settler violence equals “ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinians. He does not appreciate that the reverse is in fact true: Portraying settlers as troublesome and violent is part of a Palestinian ploy to rid the area of all Jews.
But Miliband appears to be missing a crucial point. If being troublesome and violent was seen as sufficient reason to rid an area of a population, then given the history of Palestinian terrorism to date — with Palestinian terrorist attacks against Jews amounting to 5 times the number of settler attacks — would he equally see that as a reason to rid the area of Palestinians?
As typical when the subject is Jews, the double-standards applied here are quite staggering.
I read that Saudi Arabia announced massive revenge actions for the latest attacks and devastations of Houthis on Saudi-Arabia; I expect the Miliband-Burnham-Jumble to put massive sanctions on Saudi-Arabia.
I've been asking that for ages.It's one thing for Palestinians to say they don't want Jews to live in any state of theirs (not that they want one, they just want all of Israel), another for the whole world to nod in sympathy. Two million Arab Israeli citizens but "Palestine" ,must be judenfrei.