Settling the Settlers

By JEROME RICHARD

“God wrote the Torah, spelling errors and all.” That’s what an orthodox rabbi once told me. He wasn’t kidding. If you concede that any word of the Torah did not come directly from God, or even that any word might have been transcribed incorrectly, then you open the entire Pentateuch to interpretation. Never mind that we still have to make certain assumptions about what God meant. That’s how we get the injunction don’t have a milk shake with your hamburger. For the orthodox, those assumptions, sanctioned by rabbis, can be no more than extensions of the literal meaning of the words in the Holy Book.

One should sympathize then with those zealous settlers and their allies who fervently believed that by taking over the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza they were fulfilling God’s promise. Even if you believe that justice, or the security of the state requires sharing the land, how do you ask someone to disobey what they see as God’s wish?

Some try to do it by pointing out the ambiguity in the promises of the Promised Land. It is promised six different times (Genesis 12:7, 13:15, 15:18, 17:8; Numbers 34:1-12; Deuteronomy 1:7-8) and the land promised is not always the same. In some cases, it is not specified at all. Others point out that securing the land conflicts with higher commandments regarding the sanctity of life and respect for one’s neighbors. Even the argument that if God wanted Jews to occupy the West Bank and Gaza He could arrange it without bloodshed does not convince those who believe it is up to them to carry out His will. And it is probably too late to suggest that God can be relieved of the promise, that one can decline a gift with a polite “No, thank you.”

All such arguments fail because when reason and faith disagree, one will never convince the other. It comes down to a wager. The faith camp, Messianic fundamentalists and their temporary Evangelical Christian allies, are betting that fulfilling what they believe is the will of God by occupying all of Biblical Israel is better in the long run than the short run consequences of yielding land to the Palestinians. The reason camp is gambling there may not be a long run if an accommodation to the present reality of two peoples occupying the same land is not found. Faith does not have an answer to terror and the aspirations of a people for their own country other than prayer, which does not seem to have worked, or repression, which is unsustainable. Reason cannot prove that the fundamentalist interpretation is wrong.

I don’t mean to suggest that reason and faith are mutually exclusive. Reasonable people can and do have faith, and believers employ reason. The sticking point here is the belief in a literal understanding of the Torah above all other considerations against a calculation that such a course is likely to lead to disaster for Israel.

Events, however, could be persuasive. Many of the most orthodox settlers prayed for a miracle that would prevent their removal from Gaza. If one prays for a miracle and it doesn’t happen, should one not draw some conclusion? Perhaps as Jimmy Carter once said, God answers all prayers. Sometimes the answer is no.

In a bizarre step, but one in keeping with a devotion to faith, 20 settlers performed a ritual called pulsa denura which called upon the Angels of Destruction to kill Sharon. Putting God to the test, Michael Ben-Horin, a settler in the Golan Heights and a leader of the group, said “Either Sharon will die or I will.” The ritual was performed July 21. So far, God seems to have ignored Ben-Horin.

The disengagement from Gaza went more smoothly than almost everyone predicted. Will withdrawal from the West Bank be as easy? Perhaps, if settlers find a message in the lack of Divine Intervention in the Gaza departure. If not, the greater number of settlers and the last stand mentality could prove a much greater challenge than Gaza presented. Judea and Samaria contain some of the most ideologically religious settlements.

Is there a peaceful way to respect the beliefs of the settlers without jeopardizing the state of Israel? I think there is.

There were approximately 192,000 settlers in the West Bank and Gaza according to the CIA’s World Factbook. The Arab population of that area is about 3,761,904. Not all of the settlers are there for religious reasons. Some took advantage of subsidized housing; some are religious but not zealots. If settlers were provided with an alternative within Israel proper with an attractive financial inducement, as the Gaza settlers have been offered, probably half of them would relocate. That would leave fewer than 100,000 Messianic settlers, or about two and a half percent of the Arab population. If the Palestinians can live with that, then any settlers not willing to relocate into Israel could be left where they are provided that the Palestinians agree not to harm them. Arabs live in Israel, and Jews live as a minority in many countries, so why not Jews in Palestine? There they could be a light unto the nation. Just not a blinding light.