Geachte heer Klok,
Ik las het interview waarin Rob Vreeken de Israëlische politicus Aryeh Eldad typeert als vertegenwoordiger van de radicaal-rechtse flank wiens ideeën steeds breder ingang zouden vinden. Daarbij lijkt het alsof Eldads afwijzing van een Palestijnse staat en zijn pleidooi voor Israël “van de rivier tot de zee” een recente verschuiving markeren.
Historisch gezien zijn deze standpunten echter allesbehalve marginaal. Al in de jaren dertig beschouwde David Ben-Gurion het voorstel van de Peel-commissie tot tweestatenoplossing als een “stap in de geleidelijke verovering van Palestina als geheel”, en hield hij de staatsgrenzen bewust onbepaald in de Onafhankelijkheidsverklaring van 1948.
Shlaim schrijft in “The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World” dat toen de Britten en Fransen Ben-Gurion benaderden om Egypte binnen te vallen, reageerde hij:
“Instead, [Ben-Gurion] presented a comprehensive plan, which he himself called ‘fantastic,’ for the reorganization of the Middle East. Jordan, he observed, was not viable as an independent state and should therefore be divided. Iraq would get the East Bank in return for a promise to settle the Palestinian refugees there and to make peace with Israel, while the West Bank would be attached to Israel as a semi-autonomous region. Lebanon suffered from having a large Muslim population, which was concentrated in the south. The problem could be solved by Israel’s expansion up to the Litani River, thereby helping turn Lebanon into a Christian state. The Suez Canal area should be given international status, while the Straits of Tiran in the Gulf of Aqaba should come under Israeli control to ensure freedom of navigation. A prior condition for realizing this plan was the elimination of Nasser and his replacement with a pro-Western leader who would also be prepared to make peace with Israel.”
En over de invasie van Libanon schrijft Shlaim:
“The real driving force behind Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, however, was Ariel Sharon, whose aims were much more ambitious and far-reaching. From his first day at the Defense Ministry, Sharon started planning the invasion of Lebanon. He developed what came to be known as the “big plan” for using Israel’s military power to establish political hegemony in the Middle East. The first aim of Sharon’s plan was to destroy the PLO’s military infrastructure in Lebanon and to undermine it as a political organization. The second aim was to establish a new political order in Lebanon by helping Israel’s Maronite friends, headed by Bashir Gemayel, to form a government that would proceed to sign a peace treaty with Israel. For this to be possible, it was necessary, third, to expel the Syrian forces from Lebanon or at least to weaken seriously the Syrian presence there. In Sharon’s big plan, the war in Lebanon was intended to transform the situation not only in Lebanon but in the whole Middle East. The destruction of the PLO would break the backbone of Palestinian nationalism and facilitate the absorption of the West Bank into Greater Israel. The resulting influx of Palestinians from Lebanon and the West Bank into Jordan would eventually sweep away the Hashemite monarchy and transform the East Bank into a Palestinian state. Sharon reasoned that Jordan’s conversion into a Palestinian state would end international pressures on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank.”
Al voor de Zesdaagse Oorlog werd territoriale uitbreiding een expliciet strategisch doel, bevestigd door IDF-plannen als Whip en Bnei Or.
Na de Zesdaagse Oorlog begon de Israëlische regering nederzettingen te bouwen om de oprichting van een Palestijnse staat te verhinderen.
Netanyahu hield Hamas aan de macht met hetzelfde doel.
David Friedman schrijft in “Sledgehammer”:
“Prime Minister Rabin explained to the Knesset where he thought the Oslo Accords would lead: The agreement, he predicted, would result in the creation of a ‘Palestinian entity’ that would be ‘less than a state,’ with Israel retaining a substantial portion of Judea and Samaria.”
Opeenvolgende regeringen—zowel links als rechts—hebben via nederzettingenpolitiek voorkomen dat er ooit een levensvatbare Palestijnse staat kon ontstaan.
In oktober 2004 legde de senior adviseur van premier Ariel Sharon, Dov Weissglass, de betekenis van Sharon’s disengagement uit Gaza:
“The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. That is exactly what happened. You know, the term ‘peace process’ is a bundle of concepts and commitments. The peace process is the establishment of a Palestinian state with all the security risks that entails. The peace process is the evacuation of settlements, it’s the return of refugees, it’s the partition of Jerusalem. And all that has now been frozen…. what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns.”
Recente uitspraken van onder anderen Tzipi Hotovely (“World should recognise Israel’s historic claim to land from river to sea”) passen in deze lange lijn en bevestigen dat het verwerpen van Palestijnse soevereiniteit de mainstream is gebleven. Shlomo Karhi (Likud) de Minister of Communications tweette in 2023: “There will be no Palestinian state here. We will never allow another state to be established between the Jordan and the sea. We will never go back to Oslo.”
Eldads opvattingen vertegenwoordigen eerder een continuïteit dan een radicale breuk. Het is dus structureel beleid, geen nieuwe radicalisering. Vreeken’s analyse is misleidend omdat lezers zullen denken dat het afzetten van Netanyahu’s regering voldoende is om een ‘normaal’ Israël te bereiken.
Ik vertrouw erop dat deze context van waarde is voor toekomstige berichtgeving.
Met vriendelijke groet,
Mihai