Some Arguments From an Israeli Perspective for Reanimating ithe Legitmacy of its Claims to the Territories

Here are some arguments, from an Israeli perspective, for Israel reanimating the legitimacy of its claims to the territories that are principled, practical and feasible:

1. There is case to be made for that legitimacy.

2. Legitimacy changes the paradigm from “occupied” to “disputed “and the characterization of Israel from “occupier” and “thief” to embattled claimant seeking to vindicates its rights.

3. It clothes Israel’s positions towards the territories with legitimacy and right.

4. With that change in paradigm and greater moral foundation, legitimacy attends, and is essential to, the arguments that are going on, and will go on, about East Jerusalem and the settled communities adjacent and functionally connected to Jerusalem that Israel presumes it will keep in any final resolution.

5. There is a continuum between ceding legitimacy to the “territories” and the right of Israel proper to exist. If an important reason for Israel’s own legitimacy is Jews’ deep and long historical connection to the lands, then that reason applies to the territories as well. Deny the latter, and then the former becomes more fragile. Assert the latter, then the former gains strength.

6. None of the foregoing needs to mean Israel, say, wants Gaza back, or wants back the territories it may have effectively conceded. But legitimacy can embed what Israel has done by way of its ceding and withdrawals and so on within a perspective that it is high grounded.

7. None of the foregoing need be an assertion of right that dismisses Palestinian arguments; nor need the above be an obstacle to peace.

8. Finally, and perhaps in summary, there exists a vicious and invidious dynamism whereby Israel as “occupier and thief” tends in world opinion to justify, vindicate and enable Palestinian insurrection, which can range from benign protest to outright acts of terrorism. They then beget Israeli responses ranging from policing to checkpoints to a defensive barrier to military incursions to wars themselves.

Each such response is tainted by, and in world regard hobbled by, the premise of illegitimacy.

And such is the nature of this escalating opprobrium—feeding and generating itself in its outward swelling—that the intense difficulties of fighting an asymmetric enemy, which collapses defensively and offensively the distinctions between civilian and soldier, get lost in the maelstrom.

The proof of these difficulties getting lost and of this dynamism at work includes things like the Goldstone Report, the findings of the U.N. Human Rights Council, the progress of the Report through the U.N. and other things like an arrest warrant—ultimately quashed, but no matter— being laid in England against Tzipi Livni on the theory of universal jurisdiction and causing her to cancel an attendance there.

This is a world gone quite mad. Whatever amelioration, assuaging and restoration can come from the assertion of legitimacy and right make that assertion practical and feasible. For as bad as things were before Oslo, and regardless of comparative worseness, Israel cannot damage itself further by placing its actions on the highest footing of legitimacy it can.