Bernie Sanders finally came to the subject his audience was most keen to hear about: Israel. Sanders first offered the usual bland pro forma reassurances, to show he was nothing if not fair-minded: “I am a strong supporter of the right of Israel to exist in independence, peace, and security.” How nice. He supports Israel’s right to exist. Should supporters of Israel be grateful? What other country has to be grateful when assured that it has a right to exist? And as an independent state? And in peace? Goodness, what more could any nation want? And security? My, what concessions.
Then came the take-away, in every sense: “But I also believe that the United States needs to engage in an even-handed approach toward that longstanding conflict which results in ending the Israeli occupation and enabling the Palestinian people to have self-determination in a sovereign, independent, economically-viable state of their own.”
What does Sanders mean by “Israeli occupation”? Not a single Israeli has been in Gaza since 2005. Almost all of them had left by 1997. Gaza isn’t “occupied.” What about the West Bank? Does Bernie Sanders know what was supposed to happen to the West Bank? It was assigned by the League of Nations to be part of the territory of the future Jewish National Home, that would eventually become the State of Israel. The Jordanian army managed to hold onto the West Bank when the guns stopped firing in 1949; that is the only reason the West Bank was not part of Israel from the very beginning of the state. Juridically, its status did not change: it was still part of the territory assigned to the Jewish National Home. The Jordanian occupation did not change that. In 1967, after the Six-Day War, Israel by force of arms came into possession of the West Bank. It could at long last enforce its preexisting claim to land that had been assigned to the Jews as part of the Mandate for Palestine.
Israel did not enforce that claim all at once. In the minds of some Israelis, even though they recognized that the state had a right to claim the entire West Bank, Israel might nonetheless want to give up some of that land if, by doing so, it could obtain a lasting peace. It soon became clear that the Arabs were not interested in anything less than a full withdrawal by Israel, back to the 1949 armistice lines. Israel then went ahead with its own plans, populating the area with Israelis, slowly building settlements that became villages that became cities, so that now there are 600,000 Jews living in what they have since Biblical times called “Judea and Samaria.” (The West Bank was a term concocted by Jordan in 1950 so as to avoid using the toponyms “Judea” and “Samaria.”) If Bernie Sanders thinks the Israeli “occupation” should “end,” then he must state clearly what that he means by that. I take it to mean that Bernie Sanders wants Israel to be forced back within the pre-1967 armistice lines, which Abba Eban famously called the “lines of Auschwitz,” with Israel only nine miles wide at its narrowest. And it means that he is willing to ignore – or he does not know — the provisions of the Mandate for Palestine itself.
Not only does Bernie Sanders likely not know the legal status of the West Bank according to the Palestine Mandate, but he likely is unaware of the other, entirely independent claim that Israel possesses to the West Bank. This claim is based on U.N. Resolution 242, which gave Israel the right to “secure and recognized boundaries.” According to the Resolution’s British author, Lord Caradon, “secure” boundaries meant borders that were “defensible.” According to Caradon, “the essential phrase which is not sufficiently recognized is that withdrawal should take place to secure and recognized boundaries, and these words were very carefully chosen: they have to be secure and they have to be recognized. They will not be secure unless they are recognized. And that is why one has to work for agreement. This is essential. I would defend absolutely what we did. It was not for us to lay down exactly where the border should be. I know the 1967 border very well. It is not a satisfactory border, it is where troops had to stop in 1947, just where they happened to be that night, that is not a permanent boundary… “
In a 1974 statement, Caradon said:
“It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of 4 June 1967. … That’s why we didn’t demand that the Israelis return to them and I think we were right not to.”
Does Bernie Sanders understand what Israel has a right to claim, based on U.N. Resolution 242? Israel was not required to withdraw from “all” the territories it won in the Six-Day War, but only from “territories” – that is, some of the territories. This was heatedly discussed at the time; Arab delegates kept trying to insert the phrase “all the territories,” but were constantly rebuffed by Lord Caradon, who continued to insist that “withdrawal from [some] territories” was all that was required. Israel has relinquished the entire Sinai to Egypt, which constituted about 95% of the territory it won in June 1967; it has been argued that Israel has given back quite enough of “the territories” already – 95% of them — and need not give up any part of the West Bank. Israel could further argue that continued possession of the West Bank is essential to its “secure” – i.e., defensible – borders. Israel has to maintain control of the Jordan Valley and the heights of Judea, if it wants to secure the invasion routes from the East.
Bernie Sanders, then, does not understand that the West Bank was always meant to be included in the territory of the Mandate for Palestine, and is not “occupied” territory insofar as Israel is concerned (from 1949 to 1967 it was, in truth, “occupied” by Jordan). The League of Nations may have closed its doors, but by Article 70 of the U.N. Charter, the Mandate’s original provisions remained in force until the State of Israel was declared. This is something Bernie Sanders appears not to understand. Nor does he seem to know about Israel’s independent claim to much of the West Bank, based on U.N. Resolution 242.
There is another kind of knowledge that Sanders also lacks: a knowledge of Islam, and especially, an understanding of the doctrine of Jihad. For the Arab and Muslim war on Israel can only be grasped as a Jihad, that Muslims must continue, using various instruments, until the defeat of the Infidel. It’s a difficult and disturbing lesson to learn. It’s certainly not what Bernie Sanders at this point would allow himself to believe. But the best way to keep the peace, in such a conflict without end, is for Israel to rely on the same principle that served the United States so well during the Cold War: the principle of deterrence. That requires that Israel not only be a formidable adversary, but that it be readily seen to be a formidable adversary. To force Israel to yield still more territory, beyond what it has already given back, to squeeze it into something like the 1949 armistice lines that Lord Caradon dismissed, would be to deprive the Israelis of the full deterrent effect of their present borders. For now, Israel can maintain its security by having its eastern border along the Jordan River, but any withdrawal from that eastern border would diminish the effectiveness of its deterrence. Furthermore, Israel has to retain the Golan, as part of its effort to keep “secure” boundaries; the Golan looms forbiddingly over the northern part of the country; when Syria possessed it, the Syrians used the Golan to rain death down on Israeli farmers below; now that Israel has the Golan — which it annexed long ago, to near-total popular approval — it can threaten all of southern Syria.
Bernie Sanders thinks that a “peace agreement” will keep the peace between Arabs and Israelis. He has never heard of the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya, which Mohammed made with the Meccans in 628 A.D. It was to have lasted ten years; after 18 months, feeling his side had grown sufficiently strong, Muhammad broke the treaty and attacked the Meccans. That Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya has ever since been taken by Muslims as an example to emulate. The principle of Western law since Roman times, that Pacta sunt servanda – “treaties are to be obeyed” – is not a principle Muslims observe in their treaties with Unbelievers. If the peace is to be kept between Israel and the Arabs, it must be through Israel’s deterrence, requiring both military superiority (of men and weapons), and control of strategic territory.
One last observation. Bernie Sanders several times mentions the “Palestinian people.” That’s something he needs to investigate. If he does, he will discover that neither before, nor during, nor for nearly twenty years after, the 1948-49 war, was there any mention of a “Palestinian people.” Nor will Sanders find any mention of them, by an Arab diplomat, in any of the U.N. records, until late in 1967. The “Palestinian people” were invented by public relations experts, with some help from the K.G.B., to make more palatable the Arab war against Israel. Instead of a conflict in which nearly 20 Arab states made war — military, economic, diplomatic — on tiny Israel, that war could be re-presented to the world as between “two tiny peoples, each struggling for a homeland.” The phrase, and the concept, caught on, and now it would be difficult to undo the widespread belief in a “Palestinian people.” But a moment’s thought might give Bernie Sanders pause: what are the features, whether of religion, language, ethnicity, or folklore, that distinguish the “Palestinian people” from the other Arabs, especially those just across the river in Jordan? There are no distinguishing characteristics to identify the “Palestinian people.” Bernie Sanders should commit to memory the famous admission by Zuheir Mohsen, in an interview he gave to the Dutch paper Trouw in 1977: “The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.” Zuheir Mohsen was no minor figure; he was the head of the Palestinian terror group As Saiqa. His words carry weight.
All we ask of Bernie Sanders is that he learn more about the history of what he calls, a tad too breezily, Israel’s “occupation.” Considering the life-and-death stakes for the Jews of Israel, Sanders can surely take the time to study the Mandate for Palestine, both its text, and the accompanying maps showing the territory included in it. Next, he should read U.N. Resolution 242 and the interpretation of it by its author, Lord Caradon. Finally, he should investigate the origin, and reason for being, of the “Palestinian people.” That’s enough homework for now.