Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Israeli-built barrier that effectively seals off Israel from the demographically expanding and
impoverished Palestinian population in the West Bank. Arnon Soffer, an Israeli geographer,
calls the fence “a last desperate attempt to save the state of Israel.” But Jewish settlements
close to the Green Line in the occupied territories may, as Schwarz writes, “have roots too
deep and may well be too integral to the daily life of too many Israelis to be forsaken.”
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And then there is the basic principle and premise of Palestinian ideology, the “right of re-
turn”: which applies to the 700,000 Palestinians displaced from Israel upon its birth and
their descendants, a population that may now number five million. In 2001, 98.7 percent of
Palestinian refugees dismissed compensation in place of the right of return. Finally, there
are the Israeli Arabs to consider: those living within Israel's pre-1967 borders. While the
population growth among Israeli Jews is 1.4 percent, among Israeli Arabs it is 3.4 percent:
the median age of Jews is thirty-five; that of Arabs is fourteen.
In a rational world, one might hope for a peace treaty between Israelis and Palestinians in
which the Israelis would cede back the occupied territories and disband most settlements,
and the Palestinians would give up the right of return. In such a circumstance, a Greater
Israel, at least as an economic concept, would constitute a regional magnet on the Medi-
terranean toward which not only the West Bank and Gaza, but Jordan, southern Lebanon,
and southern Syria including Damascus would orient themselves. But few peoples seem
psychologically further apart as of this writing, and so divided amongst themselves—and,
therefore, politically immobilized—as Israelis and Palestinians. One can only hope that the
political earthquake in the Arab world in 2011 and early 2012 will prod Israel into making
pivotal territorial concessions.
The Middle East hangs on a thread of fateful human interactions, the more so because
of a closed and densely packed geography. Geography has not disappeared in the course
of the revolutions in communications and weaponry; it has simply gotten more valuable,
more precious, to more people.
In such a world, universal values must be contingent on circumstances. We pray for
the survival of a Hashemite Jordan and a united post-Assad Syria, even as we pray for
the end of the mullahs' dictatorship in Iran. In Iran, democracy is potentially our friend,
making Greater Iran from Gaza to Afghanistan a force for good rather than for evil. Thus
might the calculus in the entire Middle East be shifted; thus might Hezbollah and Hamas be
tamed, and Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects improved. But in Jordan, it is hard to ima-
gine a more moderate and pro-Western regime than the current undemocratic monarchy.
Likewise, democracy in Saudi Arabia is potentially our enemy. In Syria, democracy should
come incrementally; lest the political organization of Greater Syria be undone by Sunni ji-
hadists, as happened in Mesopotamia between 2006 and 2007.
European leaders in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth were en-
grossed by the so-called Eastern Question: that is, the eruptions of instability and nation-
