Homesh and the ‘Two-State Solution’

Homesh is an Israeli outpost that was founded some 20 years ago on the West Bank. It had been built on land that, it later turned out, was owned by a Palestinian Arab. In 2005, when the Israelis pulled out entirely from Gaza, uprooting 25 settlements, they also pulled out of four settlements in the West Bank – Homesh, Ganm, Kadim, and SaNur — as part of the disengagement plan. Repeatedly over the years since 2005, settlers have entered the four sites, trying to rebuild outposts that, they hoped, could over time be enlarged into real settlements. Homesh was of particular interest; they built a makeshift yeshiva at the site. Efforts by the setters to maintain the structure have intensified since December 2021, when settler Yehuda Dimentman was killed by Palestinian assailants upon leaving the site. In response to terrorist attacks, Israelis often build outposts in the West Bank, or add new apartments to existing settlements. After the murder of Yehuda Dimentman, settlers tried to keep the outpost at Homesh running, despite the threat both of Arab attacks and possible attempts by the Israeli government to shut it down.

As pressure rose against the Homesh outpost, both domestically and abroad, especially from the Europeans, Israeli settlers dismantled the tents and makeshift construction that housed the Homesh yeshiva and transferred the materials just a few meters away, onto state-owned land, where the “new” outpost of Homesh, beginning with the yeshiva, was rebuilt overnight on Sunday, May 28. The move, green-lighted by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, was carried out discreetly during the night so as to avoid a possible confrontation with local Arabs. Now there can be no doubt: the outpost of Homesh has been rebuilt on state land. This is in accord with Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine, which calls for “close settlement by Jews on the land,” and explicitly includes settling Jews on “state and waste lands.” Homesh is now entirely on “state land.” It is as legal – or as illegal – a place for Jews to settle as is Haifa or Tel Aviv. The story of this move of Homesh onto state land, and the reaction to it, can be found here: “Germany, UK condemn decision to allow settler return to Homesh,” Jerusalem Post, May 30, 2023:

Germany and the UK condemned the decision by Israeli officials to allow settlers to return to Homesh in the northern West Bank on Tuesday [May 29].

Tobias Tunkel, the Middle East and North Africa director at the German Foreign Ministry, tweeted “Settlements are illegal under international law [and] threaten the viability of the two-state solution and efforts to lower tensions. Relocating the outpost a few meters doesn’t change these facts.”

No, Herr Tunkel, “settlements” are not illegal. No matter how many times that is claimed, mere repetition does not make it true. The League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine is quite clear on this. Article 6 of the Mandate tells the holder of the Mandate — Great Britain — to “encourage close settlement by Jews on the land.” What “land” is that? According to the League, all the land “from the river to the sea” was to be included in Mandatory Palestine. Jews were free to buy land, and they did. Before the 1948 war, every dunam of land — other than ‘state and waste lands” — was paid for by Jews to their Arab and Turkish landowners. According to Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine, “state and waste lands” were to be made available for settlement by Jews as well. The outpost at Homesh, now securely transferred onto state land, may offend Tobias Tunkel, the Middle East and North Africa director at the German Foreign Ministry, but that does not make it illegal. Why does he insist that “settlements are illegal under international law”? Just because that’s what others have called them, that’s what the UN, that anti-Israel kangaroo court, has deigned to call them, and the tobias-tunkels of this world long ago stopped thinking for themselves. He doesn’t tell us what “international law,” exactly, has been violated by Israel in allowing this outpost to be moved onto state land, because he can’t. Jordan was only the military occupier of the West Bank between 1949 and 1967. Israel had a pre-existing claim, based on the Mandate, to all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, but could not enforce that claim until June 1967, when by force of arms it took back Judea and Samaria (which Jordan has renamed the “West Bank” in 1950) from the Jordanians, who had seized it in the 1948 war and held onto it until the Six-Day War.

“We are also deeply troubled by the rising trend of extremist settler violence against Palestinian communities, including most recently the village of Burqa adjacent to the Homesh outpost. We unequivocally condemn all acts of extremist violence, whether Israeli or Palestinian,” added Tunkel.

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office also condemned the move, stating “The UK opposes Israel’s decision today to allow the relocation of the illegal outpost in Homesh. Israel must honour recent commitments made in Aqaba and Sharm El-Sheikh and uphold the commitments Israel itself agreed and signed in 2004.”

The U.K.’s statement does not dare to claim that the outpost in its new setting is “contrary to international law.” It carefuly refers to the “illegal outpost at Homesh” that was relocated, but does not state, as it should have, to the fact that that very relocation onto state land made the Homesh outpost no longer “illegal.” It would have behooved the U.K. not to condemn the Homesh outpost in its new setting, but to register its approval of the Israeli move. It might have issued this statement: “The UK welcomes Israel’s decision to move the outpost of Homesh from Palestinian-owned land to state land, making legal what had been an illegal outpost. As to the wisdom of such an outpost in such an area, that is not for the U.K. or any government, save that of Israel, to decide.”

Jews are being killed in the West Bank by Palestinian terrorists. The Yaniv brothers, the Dee mother and daughters, and recently Meir Tamari – every other week there is a new attack, new victims, new sadness and despair. And sometimes — not always — after the most egregious of these attacks, settlers react, and go on rampages. They throw stones at Arab houses; they vandalize Palestinian-owned cars. But they do not kill anyone, and their reaction of rage is humanly understandable. Nonetheless, they need to be arrested and punished when they behave in such a manner. What Tunkel’s remark does not make clear is that the violence begins with the Palestinians, and the “settler violence” so quickly deplored is always and everywhere a reaction to that violence. His statement emphasizes settler violence without explaining what preceded it. What he might have said is something like this: “Terrorist murders of Israeli civilians in the West Bank have led some setters to violent rampages. They must answer for their own violence, and leave it to the state to find, bring to justice, and punish, the terrorists whose acts have so unhinged them.” That’s better.

And what did the Bidenites have to say about the moving of Homesh from an illegal to a legal site? Unlike the Germans, they did not describe the outpost as “illegal.” Perhaps that’s because they know that such a claim is false, ignoring as it does the express provisions of the Mandate for Palestine. Their objection is that establishing such an outpost will “make it harder” to arrive at a “two-state solution.” Indeed, that’s part of the point of these West Bank settlements: to make it harder for Israel to be pressured into squeezing itself back within the 1949 armistice lines, with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea. There are now half a million Israelis living in the West Bank. The removal of just 9,000 Israelis from Gaza in 2005 was traumatic for the Jewish state. It would be impossible to uproot 500,000 Israelis from the West Bank, or even 50,000. Every West Bank settlement and every new outpost that might become a settlement, make that uprooting less likely.

A “two-state solution” is no solution at all; it would merely make Israel much more vulnerable to attack, both because of the surrender of territory critical to its defense, and because a Palestinian state, dedicated to Israel’s disappearance, and with all the weapons of war a sovereign state – as opposed to the P.A. — can command, would be created, extending all along Israel’s eastern flank. And from Lebanon in the north, Hezbollah, with its 150,000 rockets, would still threaten the Galilee, and from Gaza in the south, Hamas and the PIJ would threaten the rest of the Jewish state. There is no “solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict. For the Muslims, the war on Israel is a jihad, intended to recover territory that, having once been Muslim, must again become, and remain, Muslim. We have to accept the permanence of this jihad, and to help Israel maintain peace through “deterrence.” It was deterrence which kept the peace between America and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It is deterrence that will keep a major war from breaking out between Israel and its Muslim enemies. Sporadic terrorist attacks will continue, but these can be dealt with. It is a major war, a war for survival like those of 1948, 1967, and 1973, that Israel needs to prevent, and can do so, as long as it continues to be perceived as overwhelmingly stronger than its enemies.