The following counterargument is taken from an article by Menahem Milson titled “How not to Occupy the West Bank”.[i]
“There was no official Israeli document like the U.S. Initial
Post-surrender Policy for Japan of September 1945 defining policy in the
territories…The nearest thing to such a statement is an article by Shlomo Gazit
(who headed the Israeli Military Government (IMG) under Dayan from 1967 to
1974) entitled “The Occupied Territories: Policy and Practice,” published in
January 1970 in Ma’arachot, the monthly of the Israeli army…
According to Gazit, the Israeli military government has
presented to the Arabs in the territories “two assumptions” which they are
expected to understand and to accept.
The first is that the residents of the territories cannot change their
present fate by themselves, and certainly not by force:
Admittedly they can choose to follow a course of provocation,
disobedience, and sabotage, but they will not succeed in that way to overcome
Israel, they will only force it to apply preventive security measures and
severe penalties.
The second assumption which Gazit says the residents must
understand is that:
“Israel did not engage in the Six-Day War because of its expansionist
intentions nor from a desire to rule the Arabs. We entered the military campaign because we were faced with a
serious problem of defense which we had to solve. The territories which we occupied were occupied as essential
defense positions for Israel, not because of [a desire to rule over] the
population residing in them…”
Gazit attaches great significance to the economic situation in
the territories. In the short term he
regards economic well being and full employment as factors discouraging terrorism…
Besides economic prosperity, the other main goal of the IMG is
normalization… [Gazit wrote]
“For those [residents of the territories] who yearn for
independence, for sovereignty, for a flag, a national anthem, and all the other
paraphernalia of statehood – for those, we cannot offer any practical
solution. However, as for the other
aspect, that is, to what extent the Israeli Military Government changes or
affects the ordinary regular way of life of the Arab resdients of the
territories – here we can do a lot in order to dull the acuteness of the
problem.”
In order to help “dull the acuteness of the problem,” the IMG
intends to abide by three principles.
The first is “non-presence”: the removal of any sign of Israeli rule –
the Israeli flag, a military patrol, visible military headquarters. The second is the principle of
nonintervention: that the population should administer itself as it
wishes. The third, finally, is the
principle of open bridges,” which makes it possible for the Arab residents of
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (as well as visitors from all over the Arab
world) to move freely into and out of the area…”
Israel had a policy of non-intervention in
the territories. As Gazit put in in
1970:
It is the undisputed right of every Arab to continue to be a
nationalist Arab with national awareness, to retain his traditions, religion,
and language, to be proud of his past and of his national history…
The meaning of such an approach becomes clearer when we contrast
the Israeli policy in the territories with that of the United States in
occupied Japan. The United States
openly aimed at changing the political culture of Japan. To this end it instituted a general
censorship of all Japanese media, a comprehensive revision of educational
curricula and school texts, and a ”purge” of public figures…
By contrast, censorship of the Arabic press, which is published
in East Jerusalem and distributed in the territories as well as in Israel, is
restricted only to military and security matters…
As for education: although Jordanian school texts were replete
with anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish materials, nonetheless, according to Dayan’s
biographer Shabtain Teveth, the IMG decided “not to censor…” Hence sentences such as “I will not forget
Jaffa as long as I live,” “This is the weapon that will liberate our plundered
homeland,” or “Holy War is obligatory”… were not censored.
As the Israeli military presence was reduced in accordance with
this principle [non-intervention], armed PLO forces became active. “By the end of 1970,” writes one observer,
“the fida’iyin controlled the camps and, at night, the towns.
Grenades were lobbed into marketplaces to disrupt commerce, and at
places where people congregated who worked inside Israel, such as post offices,
banks, and buses.”
Most of the victims were Arabs…
On January 4, 1971, Arab terrorists tossed a hand grenade into
an Israeli civilian car which had stopped in one of the streets of Gaza; two
infants were killed and their mother seriously wounded. At that point Dayan was forced to order the
army back into the Gaza Strip to crack down on the terrorists.”
Verification:
Milson’s argument that Israel needs to be in the territories for its own
security is supported by a Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense by the Joint Chiefs
Of Staff of he United States which can be viewed online[ii]. According to the memorandum Israel needs:
“Control of the prominent high ground running north-south
through the middle of West Jordan generally east of the main north-south
highway along the axis Jennin-Nablus-Bira-Jerusalem and then southeast to a
junction with the Dead Sea at the Wadi el Daraja”
You don’t need to be a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to
realize the importance of Judea and Samaria for Israel’s security. One quick look at a topographic map makes it
obvious. I’ve included such a map below
which I obtained from a political advertisement[iii]
from the Hatikvah Educational Foundation[iv]. The mountaineous regions are Judea and
Samaria otherwise known as the West Bank.
Efraim Karsh[v]
also refuted the argument that the Israelis were oppressing the Palestinians in
his article. He wrote:
“During the three decades of Israel's control, far fewer
Palestinians were killed at Jewish hands than by King Hussein of Jordan in the
single month of September 1970 when, fighting off an attempt by Yasir Arafat's
PLO to destroy his monarchy, he dispatched (according to the Palestinian
scholar Yezid Sayigh) between 3,000 and 5,000 Palestinians, among them anywhere
from 1,500 to 3,500 civilians. Similarly, the number of innocent Palestinians
killed by their Kuwaiti hosts in the winter of 1991, in revenge for the PLO's
support for Saddam Hussein's brutal occupation of Kuwait, far exceeds the
number of Palestinian rioters and terrorists who lost their lives in the first
intifada against Israel during the late 1980's…”