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Geoffrey Alderman

ByGeoffrey Alderman, Geoffrey Alderman

Opinion

Plan for settlers that's naive and dumb

January 3, 2014 08:51
3 min read

Dr Alexander Yakobson teaches ancient history at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. His specialities are democracy, politics and electioneering in the late Roman Republic. In common with other Israeli academics on the left he has, however, sought to broaden his areas of specialism in the light of contemporary peace-making (so-called) in the Middle East.

His academic interests are now said to include “democracy, national identity, nation-state and the rights of national minorities — in Israel and in Western democracies.” It was on the basis, I take it, of this more recently acquired status that Yakobson took it upon himself, earlier in December, to publish in the Jerusalem Post an essay entitled “How to deflate the settlements as an issue.” It makes for chilling reading.

Yakobson starts from the reasonable premise that the Palestinian leadership will have to agree, as part of a final settlement of all outstanding disputes with the Jewish state, that some territory in Judea and Samaria is ceded in perpetuity to Israel.

He also recognises that existing Jewish communities on the West Bank are far too numerous to permit a forcible evacuation. So what of those Jewish townships that are not ceded in perpetuity? Yakobson has a cunning plan: “Let us assume that they are now too numerous to be removed; does this fact also give them the right to determine forever the political status of the areas where they live? By what title can they lay claim to this, the mother of all unprecedented privileges? And if we are talking about real peace, why can’t there be a Jewish minority in a Palestinian state?”