Even among people who
recognize that Israeli-Palestinian peace is currently impossible, a growing
number think that Israel must nevertheless quit the West Bank. Israel has a
right to defend itself, their argument goes, but not by controlling another
people for decades. Instead, it should withdraw to the “internationally
recognized border” and protect itself from there, like other countries do.
Forget for a moment that
the “internationally recognized border” is an arrant fiction.
Forget as well that Israel remains in the West Bank precisely because defending
itself from the 1949 armistice lines (the above mentioned fictional border)
hasn’t worked very well
in either the West Bank—from which Israel partially withdrew in the 1990s
before returning the following decade—or the Gaza Strip.
That still leaves another
uncomfortable fact: As long as genuine peace remains impossible, Israeli
control of the West Bank, despite the undeniable hardships it causes
Palestinians, remains the least bad alternative for the Palestinians
themselves. As evidence, just compare the Israeli-controlled West Bank to Gaza,
which has been free of both settlers and soldiers since August 2005. By almost
any parameter, life in the former is far better.
Take, for instance,
casualties. According to B’Tselem’s statistics,
Israeli security forces killed 5,706 Palestinians in Gaza from September 2005
through August 2019. That’s almost eight times the 756 killed by Israeli
security personnel and settlers combined in the West Bank during this period
(no Gazans were killed by settlers since there are no settlers there).
Nor is this surprising.
Israel’s control of the West Bank means that suspected terrorists can often be
arrested rather than killed, though shootouts (with attendant collateral
damage) do occur. But in Gaza, where Israel has no troops, it can’t arrest
terrorists. Thus the only way to fight terror is through military action, which
naturally produces many more casualties among both combatants and civilians.
Seemingly more surprising
is that the number of Palestinians killed by other Palestinians is also much
higher in Gaza. According to B’Tselem, there have been 520 such deaths in Gaza
since September 2005, more than 20 times the number in the West Bank (25). But
this isn’t surprising either because the same terrorists who kill Israelis
often turn on Palestinians from rival organizations. Thus Israel’s arrest of
terrorists in the West Bank has the side effect of reducing internecine
Palestinian violence there.
No less dramatic is the
economic difference between the territories. The first-quarter unemployment
rate in Gaza was 46 percent, almost triple the West Bank’s rate of 16 percent.
One contributing factor is that while one-sixth of employed West Bankers work
in Israel or the settlements, almost no Gazans do. Moreover, Gaza’s median
daily wage was just 42 shekels ($12), less than half the West Bank median of
100 shekels ($28) and less than a fifth of the median earned by Palestinians in
Israel and the settlements at 250 shekels ($71.50). Thus it’s no surprise that
fully three-quarters
of Gazans wish Israel would provide them with more jobs.
These two factors,
combined with fewer wars and greater access to the Israeli market, have also
helped boost the West Bank’s per capita gross domestic product
to three times Gaza’s ($1,025 versus $343 in the second quarter). And, of course,
Gaza has astronomically higher poverty rates: In 2017, the last year for which
the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics published poverty data, Gaza’s poverty rate
of 53 percent was more than triple the West Bank’s 14 percent.
But while Israel is a
major cause of these differences, it isn’t the only one. So would its departure
really turn the West Bank into another Gaza? Unfortunately, the answer is
yes—for many of the same reasons that Gaza looks like it does today.
First, the most likely
scenario is that Hamas would take over the West Bank just as it took over Gaza.
That’s the Israeli defense establishment’s assessment, and it’s also
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’s assessment, which is precisely why
he has continued security cooperation with Israel despite its unpopularity
among the Palestinian public. Ever since Hamas ousted him from Gaza in a
one-week civil war in 2007, Abbas has recognized both that the Islamist
organization is the greatest threat to his rule and that the Israel Defense Forces
are his main protection against it.
Yet even if Hamas didn’t
take power, an Israeli pullout would almost certainly produce a significant
upsurge of terror from the West Bank. First, as noted, the IDF does most of the
counterterrorism work, and there’s no evidence that P.A. forces would be
capable of suppressing Hamas without Israel’s help.
Second, while Abbas does
fight Hamas and Islamic Jihad, he has shown little interest in fighting
non-Islamist terrorists, including elements of his own Fatah party and smaller
groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Moreover, many
of his likely successors in Fatah are even more supportive of terror than the
83-year-old Abbas (who both funds and incites
it). Thus without the IDF, terror from non-Islamist groups would also rise.
Israel would obviously
treat escalating terror from the West Bank no differently than it treats terror
from Gaza. That means periodic military operations, with all the attendant
casualties. It also means restrictions on dual-use imports, exports to Israel,
Palestinians working in Israel, use of Israeli ports and airports, etc., which
would have the same devastating effect on the West Bank’s economy as they have
had on Gaza.
Granted, a post-pullout
West Bank could presumably develop greater economic ties with other countries.
But its only other neighbor, Jordan, is a poor substitute for Israel, which
currently buys 80
percent of the P.A.’s exports. With an economy one-ninth the
size of Israel’s and an unemployment
rate of 19 percent, Jordan simply lacks the capacity to absorb the quantity of
Palestinian exports and workers that Israel does.
In short, an Israeli pullout from the West
Bank under current conditions would lead to much higher Palestinian casualties
and a devastated Palestinian economy, just as the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza
did. As unsatisfying as the status quo is, it’s hard to see how turning the
West Bank into a second Gaza would be an improvement.
