Settlers demonstrate power of a religiously driven minority

By Ira Sharkansky

JERUSALEM–Israel’s limited, 10-month settlement freeze is not working like a well oiled Swiss watch, assuming that metaphor still has validity in the digital age. Settlers have massed to demonstrate against what they call the abominable anti-Jewish doctrines of the prime minister many of them had supported, and they are sending their teen age sons and daughters to wrestle with the inspectors who come to the settlements with orders to stop building.

The settlers do not govern the country. At least one of their threats–to block key junctions throughout the country during a morning rush hour–did not work. There were more police to keep the junctions open than settlers and their supporters who came to block them. Israeli officials are familiar with mass demonstration. It will take a lot more than the 10,000 estimated to have gathered near the prime minister’s residence to change policy.

However, the settlers and their supporters are a significant minority. Their efforts parallel all those Americans who oppose abortion. In both cases there is religious doctrine capable of exciting opposition to what a government might do. Government can move against such sentiment. Abortions do happen in the United States, but officials are chary in the extreme about supporting them with public money. In the case of the Israeli settlements, most likely there will be a damper on construction, at least in the smaller and most isolated settlements, and some of the smallest ones recognized as illegal are being dismantled. However, the prime minister has promised increased public funding for the largest of the settlements, i.e., those that function as suburbs for the major cities, and have wide support as areas that should not be traded away to the Palestinians.

Rather than accusing Israel of violating one symbol of good government, i.e., the efficient administration of government policy, what we are seeing is another symbol of good government, i.e., the flexible enforcement of a policy opposed by a substantial element of the population. The rabbis of the Talmud said in several contexts that even the laws proclaimed by the Highest Authority are subject to dispute as to their meaning for concrete cases; that one should respect local practice; and not seek to implement a measure that goes against the capacity of the community to accept it.

It is not clear what will come of this messy situation.

On the one hand, those feeling that settlements are indeed a blockage in the way of an accord might blame Barack Obama for what is happening. By raising the specter of a sweeping freeze, he mobilized the settler community to demand the freedom to build. The fervor generated might recruit more Jews to settle in forbidden lands than it persuades those already living there to leave for  housing more acceptable to the White House.

It is most likely that the whole bluster is irrelevant, except for the headaches provided to several clusters of Israeli officials and activists. We can read the behavior of the Palestinians for some years now–at least since they have been negotiating with Israelis–to indicate that the settlements are not the major problem. Moreover, the independent and feisty people in charge of Gaza have signed on to a no recognition, no concession posture toward Israel whose roots are in the Khartoum Resolution of 1967. Would a Palestinian state without Gaza be practical? It might end up being in the size range of Delaware or Rhode Island, surrounded by Israel, without direct access to the sea or to another country. And should Israel negotiate the possibility of Palestine in the West Bank while the nay sayers of Gaza remain intent on continuing the fight?

It is easier to ask these questions than to answer them.

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Sharkansky is professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University