Yamit

JPost is carrying a timeline of the rise and fall of Yamit, the Jewish community built in Sinai, and destroyed as part of the peace agreements with Egypt. It includes a quote from one Ariel Sharon, justifying the destruction of Yamit:

"The ruins of Yamit will bear eternal proof that we have done over and above human imagination to meet (our obligations) under the peace treaty so that our children will not point an accusing finger at us and tell us we have missed the opportunity. No Arab army has succeeded - and never will succeed - in demolishing an Israeli town. Only we, with our own hands, were forced to destroy Yamit. We were compelled to erase her from the face of the earth to implement the peace agreement on time without spilling Jewish blood."

I think that arguments could be made either way about whether the destruction of Yamit, and the peace treaty in general, were a good idea or a bad idea. But, I have to questions Sharon's claim that the ruins bear witness of how far we went for peace. I really never hear anyone, Jew or non-Jew, saying, "Look how much Israel has done for peace - they even gave up Yamit." Instead, the ruins of Yamit set a precedence for Israel's willingness to destroy what it has built, in return for promises of non-belligerence. The destruction is permanent, and leaves an emotional scar on everyone involved, and many who were only bystanders. The promises of non-belligerence, on the other hand, are far from our utopian visions of peace, and may not even be recognizable years later. Egypt continues to foment anti-Semitism, and does nothing to stop the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. We may still be better off with the peace treaty, but the precedence of the destruction of Jewish towns by the Jewish state will not be easily overcome.

This destruction is the exact opposite of the Zionist goal of building a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael. If you think that we only have a right to the pre-1967 areas of Israel because Jews form the vast majority of people there, then you need to justify the early Zionist goal of building settlements in the land, when Jews were only a small minority of the population. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the goal was clearly to get hundreds of thousands of Jews to move to a land dominated by Arabs, buy land, build communities, and establish a Jewish majority. This was justifiable because we were returning to our land, not conquering new land. The settlements build in Yesha were merely a logical continuation of this goal. If we state now that Jews have returned to historical Israel to stay, and that we will continue the Zionist mission of bringing more Jews from the Diaspora to settle the land, then we will be able to defend and continue the return to Zion with strength and a sense of purpose. However, if we continually send the message that no community is permanent, and we are ready, willing, or even eager to expel hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes that were built as part of the Zionist project, then we call the whole project into question.

Of course, we need to take this into consideration before building the community in the first place. Will this be a community that is sustainable, and is this a location which we want to include in our Zionist project? But once we make that decision, we need to support it with continued funding and encouragement of new development, not by constantly announcing our willingness to destroy the community. The places in which we have built in Yesha and the Golan are sustainable, and could be strengthened if we wouldn't falter in our commitment to them. Now that these communities have been built and are thriving, we need to consider the devastating effect that expelling Jews from them will have. It will encourage the Arab population to continue pressing us to destroy more of our own communities, and it will send the message to the Jews of Israel and the world that the Zionist project is over, and may never have been legitimate.

The outposts that the government is now talking about dismantling are all small, and most of them are very close to existing larger communities. The goal of destroying them is not so much practical as it is emotional. It is meant to send the message to the world that Israel is willing to make "painful concessions,," (didn't Sharon say that Yamit accomplished that?), and it tells Israeli Jews that we have firmly entered the period of post-Zionism, and further Zionist activity will not be tolerated. Maybe you think these are worthwhile goals, but even if they are, the consequences and long-term effects on our own national consciousness needs to be considered.