Ben Judah: Israelis need to be shaken out of their escapism

Israelis think they are realists. They are not. Israelis are escapists – in the hipster bars of Tel Aviv, in its high-tech start-up clusters, in multi-month South American backpacking. And that’s only the secular Jews. Jewish fundamentalists escape in utopian dreams, hilltop forts, in lustful looks into a dusty horizon where they glimpse a kingdom from the Jordan to the sea that only their great-great grandchildren might see.
Escapism is all about forgetting tomorrow. Political escapism is thinking that colonising the West Bank does not risk Israel’s future. Like millions of heavy smokers, Israelis are ignoring the slowly spreading threats to their survival that this activity entails.
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have resumed in Washington. Against the backdrop of the Syrian slaughter, preventing a third Palestinian intifada linking up
with the savagery over the Golan Heights is pure necessity. But you would not realise it talking to Israelis enjoying the summer as if the Arabs do not matter at all.
This is a country unplugged. There is a secular Tel Aviv bubble where the status quo feels far away. Then there is a religious Jerusalem bubble, where to fundamentalists in all their fervour the status quo seems a small price to pay. This political escapism is what is holding Israel back from uprooting its settlers from the West Bank. Most Israelis hold the simple belief that, should the current round of peace talks fail, it does not even matter.
Failed talks should terrify Israel. Each intifada has killed more than the last – because the occupation has become exponentially expensive. In the 1970s, there was no need for walls or fortifications. Today, Israel is not safe from suicide bombers without trenches and watchtowers.
The occupation has become more intensive as the Israeli demographic advantage has eroded. In the 1970s, Jews made up about 70 per cent of historic Palestine. But in the 2010s Jews add up to, at a stretch, half.
The occupation needs future conscripts Israel does not have. While the Palestinian population has boomed, the percentage of Jewish Israelis is falling – from 89 per cent in 1958 to just 75 per cent today. Who those Jews are is changing, too. By 2060, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics predicts, the ultra-orthodox (who do not serve in the army) could outnumber seculars.
Israel can only escape such state-breaking costs by retrenching now with US support. Knowing all of this makes its collective indifference to the new peace talks chilling.
This escapism has been facilitated, first, by Israel’s economic success. In 2012 the economy expanded 3.1 per cent – a figure the European Central Bank could only dream of. Israel has been a booming economy – growing from $113bn to $242bn between 2002 and 2011. The escapism is also the child of trauma. Virtually all Israeli families began as bedraggled refugees and virtually all Israeli men were shot at as conscripts.
The detachment is a natural reaction to Arab extremism – a desire to live in the moment that a suicide bomber might rip apart. Few foreigners understand that the intifada has turned Israel into a country where, every time there is a loud bang in the street, everyone freezes then laughs and moves on.
Escapism is what makes Tel Aviv such a fun place to be young – but it is now endangering Israel’s future. Convinced they are realists, the median Israeli believes the Palestinians will again reject their peace offer and that, if so, they can just collectively shrug.
Israelis also believe that, if the Israeli Defense Forces unilaterally retreat over the Green Line between them and the West Bank, those hills will immediately turn into a larger Gaza. This is a real menace – it would expose Israel’s international airport to paralysing Scud fire.
Therefore, you hear, Israel should stand firm – by doing nothing. And this is where politics escapes reality. Israel’s majority believes that, for security reasons, the military occupation cannot end. But that does not mean the colonisation of the territory of any future Palestinian state (which the Israeli government claims to want) cannot stop.
The urgency of halting this is lost on the majority, however. Israelis do not see the need to uproot the settlers. So, if these talks fail, the west should push to change the facts on the ground. On land, Israel will not compensate the Palestinians with direct withdrawals from Israeli territory; the west should demand settlements go, but let Israeli soldiers stay, before negotiations restart.
Israelis are sure to scoff at such a suggestion. This is why the EU needs to shake them out of their escapism. Brussels needs to do this with tough love and strong messages. It must go further than its recent reaffirmation that EU funding must not end up in the settlements. It must make the price tag for occupation more real. If peace talks fail, Europe will need to wake Israelis up. This should begin with a full boycott of goods made in the settlements. Sanctions would give Israel its first taste of the cost of political escapism: the economic pain of being a global outcast.

Ben Judah is the author of ‘Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin’

Fonte: FT