RUTHFULLY YOURS

I live in Ma’ale Adumim, Israel. Some call it a West Bank Settlement but actually it’s a beautiful municipality of about 40,000 Jews. It has a mall with typical women’s shoe stores, places to eat, jeans stores, ACE hardware and more. It’s about 30 minutes east of Jerusalem by bus.

Ma’ale Adumim was almost given away to the PA by either PM Barak or PM Ohlmert in one of the land-for-peace deals that were turned down by the Arabs because 95% of what they asked for wasn’t enough. They can get way more dollars and euros complaining about an imaginary plight than by having their own state.

Between us and Jerusalem are Palestinian villages. Actually they’re townships with 8 to 12 story residential apartment buildings. There are large signs at the entrances to these townships warning Jews not to make a wrong turn and accidentally enter them.  The signs say it’s dangerous to your life.

Israel is different than most countries; its immigrants are Jewish. First they sell their houses in America, France, South Africa, the former Soviet Union and other countries. Then many arrive with good amounts of cash. Not all have money, but enough to drive up the prices of apartments. The prices are alright for some but difficult for many children of those who’ve immigrated in the past decades and marry in their 20s.

In the Jerusalem area land is expensive and rents are high. New construction advertises luxury apartments and old buildings are constantly being renovated. But there’s lots of land around Ma’ale Adumim. It’s desolate. It’s desert. It’s comprised of rolling hills barren of vegetation.

Our mayor has been asking for permission to build on outlying land for years but the Israeli government had not given permission because of international pressure.

It’s been called Palestinian land but a Palestinian people never existed. The land was Jordanian or it was part of the Ottoman Empire. The desolate land around us never had a recognizable population. Most of today’s so-called Palestinians originally came from Jordan and Egypt for jobs. Yasser Arafat was Egyptian.

Palestine never existed beyond a map at British headquarters.

There is much written about the formation of modern Israel and how the land was bought, won or abandoned. When the British pulled out there was a war for the strategic high places, rural civilian centers and the Old City. In the end the Jews won control and the Arabs complained. Now the world objects to any change.

A book by Arthur Koestler written in 1949 describes the time civilization changed hands.

“The discussion about the problem of Palestine for the last two decades has been a classic example of semantic confusion aggravated by emotional bias.  The fact is that historic justice cannot be measured by absolute standards.

As the process of history is irreversible, all judgement becomes a function of time. Yesterday’s act of violence is to-day’s fait accompli and to-morrow’s legal status-quo.

Which, then, is the zero hour for Palestine? Its forcible conquest by the Hebrew tribes from Canaanites, Jebusites and Philistines? The expulsion of the Jews from it after Bar-Kochaba’s revolt in the second century? Its conquest by Arab nomads in the seventh, or by the Ottoman Turks in the 16th? The entry of Allenby’s troops in 1917 with the Balfour Declaration in one pocket and Wilson’s fourteen points in the other? The British White Paper of 1939, or the British recognition of Israel in 1949?”

The good news today is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently approved the construction of 560 new housing units in so-called ‘disputed areas’ around Ma’ale Adumim.  Some in the international community have already condemned the act. Nobody here cares. We want our children to live closer in a place they can afford. Still there’s one nagging thought by Koestler.

“Into this stagnant country the Jews burst like an explosion. They gained control of the land, not by force or fraud, but because they were the harbingers of the twentieth century in a country which had virtually stood still since the fifteenth.  They did not dispossess or victimize or exploit its native owners, but substituted themselves for the former by virtue of a historic fatality.  They did not come, as others Europeans had come to dark continents before them, with shotguns, glass beads and fire water; nor with missionaries either.  They meant no harm to the Arabs; nor were the benefits which the latter reaped intentional on the part of the Jews. They came pressed by persecution and by hunger for a land of their own: and though the methods of their conquest were ethically less objectionable than any previous conquest in history, this was due more to the force of circumstance than to subjective merit. They were relatively decent and humane executors of the amoral workings of history”

Ron Kean is retired and living in Israel.