The Moral Case For Israel Annexing The West Bank—And Beyond

T. Belman. He got a lot of flak for making this case.

Israel has the moral right to annex all of the West Bank, for a plethora of reasons. Israel’s right to exist is non-negotiable and it has a right to unilaterally apply Israeli law over its nation-state.

By Jason HIll, FEDERALIST

The April 2019 election victory for Benjamin Netanyahu will see him serve a record fifth term as Israeli prime minister and form a new right-wing coalition government. It also brings the promise of a commitment Netanyahu made to the nation during his campaign: That he would annex Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.

Vowing to extend sovereignty without distinguishing between settlement blocks and the isolated settlements, Netanyahu promised not to transfer any sovereignty to the Palestinians. His victory in the elections will, hopefully, see the enactment of Netanyahu’s promise.

Israel has the moral right to annex all of the West Bank (even Area C) for a plethora of reasons.

Israel’s Mistake Was Allowing the Palestinian Pretense

Israel made an altruistic mistake toward the Palestinian people after the 1967 defensive war with Jordan. Rather than regard them as “war settlers” or refugees or, after legally occupying conquered territory, as “illegal occupants,” they made the Palestinian people their political and moral problem.

After victory, the “war settlers” could have been seen as enemies of the state: supporters of the Fatah (Palestine Liberation Organization) Charter, which basically calls for the end of Jewry in the region. Under a malevolent and illiberal regime, they would have been regarded and treated as such, not as Israel did treat them: as human beings with specific, inalienable rights.

Under a different set of political sensibilities, the Palestinian people would have been militarily removed from the area because, morally speaking, after the 1967 war, they never belonged there. The proper response from Israel should have been to immediately annex the land and make the people there the responsibility of their original political homeland: Jordan.

There can be no such thing as legitimate “Palestinian Territory” in a geographic region legally seized in a defensive war instigated by a foreign aggressor. The purpose of war is always to vanquish the enemy. The losers of the war cannot make demands on the victors that the victors themselves would not have been put in the position of meeting had the adversary or enemy not forced the victors into making it in the first place.

Israel was forced into a war, which it won. It was then expected to renounce and repudiate the consequences of its fairly won war by capitulating to the conditions of its vanquished enemy, which included, among other self-sacrificially undertaken goals, granting statehood, autonomy, right of return, and the ultimate elimination of Jewry from the region.

The Palestinian Authority Is a Terrible Government

Since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) have enjoyed joint rule by Israeli military government and the Palestinian Authority with around 98 percent of the Palestinians living in areas under jurisdiction of the PA. In such areas, the PA has destroyed the freedom Palestinians enjoyed under Israeli rule and their economy through kleptocracy, corruption, nepotism, and authoritarian forms of governance subject to none of the checks and balances that characterize Israel’s Knesset.

Jewish exceptionalism and the exceptionalist nature of Jewish civilization require an unconditional space for the continued evolution of their civilization. What’s good for Jewish civilization is good for humanity at large. Jewish civilization is an international treasure trove that must be protected.

Not all cultures are indeed equal. Some are abysmally inferior and regressive based on their comprehensive philosophy and fundamental principles—or lack thereof—that guide or fail to protect the inalienable rights of their citizens.

Given the voting patterns of Palestinians—towards Islamicism and terrorist organizations for the most part—that openly advocate and work for Israeli and Jewish destruction and annihilation, a strong argument can and ought to be made to strip Palestinians of their right to vote—period. The regional hostilities towards Israel in the Middle East are such that Israel must take those threats seriously. It must work for a coalition of forces to neutralize them.

Israel Has Every Right to Defeat Terrorists

The Israeli left should abandon its agonistic handwringing over so-called Palestinian occupation and realize that applying Israeli law in Judea and Samaria, meaning the wholesale destruction of Hamas in Gaza—Hamas being a terrorist organization that can claim no rights as a group and no right to any square inch of land in the region—is an application of democratic law protecting the rights of the individuals who rightfully belong there.
Speaking of Gaza, although the strip was unilaterally relinquished, when one considers the reign of terror executed by the Hamas terrorists and the unadulterated illiberality of the movement itself, Israel has every moral right to wage a ruthless and unrelenting war against Hamas and to re-settle the land if it ever so desires.

America must also admit that it owes Israel political and financial reparations for America’s many decades of support of the PLO and the PA, which have pledged destruction to Israel, and have rejected all plausible peace offerings from Israel, preferring instead war and destruction.

This political and economic reparation would see the United States supplying Israel even more advanced military capabilities, and funding Israel’s military defense in any manner Israel deems necessary for its survival and unrivaled military status in the Middle East. Some may ask why this is necessary. The answer is two-fold.

Should a regional conflict between Israel and her Arab neighbors emerge, Israel will need to demonstrate extraordinary, excessive, and unprecedented military might in a manner that can act as a deterrent and, if necessary, to irrevocably destroy her offensive enemies.

Additional U.S. militarization of Israel is also moral in its execution. It sends a univocally clear message to the world that in any conflict between Israel and her adversaries, the United States stands willing and ready—along with her ally—to destroy any political agent that attacks the sovereignty of Israel. This is because Israel’s right to exist is non-negotiable and it has a right to unilaterally apply Israeli law over its nation-state.

Why Palestinians Have No Moral Authority

Continued militarization of Israel comprises protracted support of our political and moral alter-ego in the Middle East. The decline of the Palestinian people is narrated by their willful ideological malfeasance. They have never come into their own as a people largely because they have never explicitly held a philosophy that can support freedom, the basic liberal principles of individual rights, and a free market economy.

Given Fatah and Hamas’s genocidal aspirations toward Israel and universal Jewry and, in the case of Hamas, of a global caliphate, a moral goal would be to reverse the potential sovereignty of every Palestinian movement in the region. It ought to force Jordan to re-revoke its citizenship status of the Palestinian majority in Jordan.

A people that overwhelmingly approves of their terrorist leaders cannot be made to become citizens of any civilized country such as Israel.

The Palestinian terror war Fatah launched after the 2000 Camp David Peace Summit and unilaterally accepted by the Palestinian people places them in a precarious position. Whatever actions Israel or any of her allies take against them in a war against terror are their responsibility, and are moral. A people that overwhelmingly approves of their terrorist leaders cannot be made to become citizens of any civilized country such as Israel. No moral or political distinctions must be made between Fatah, Hamas, and the people who elect and or support them. No constituted people responsible for the election and appointment of terrorist actors can or should be entrusted with the responsibility of voting.

They constitute a national security threat to Israel because a core feature of their identity is a commitment to destroying Israel as a Jewish state. Therefore, only a policy of radical containment or expulsion remains a viable option. No state can obstruct the case for the achievement of its own justice and territorial safety by aiding and abetting its own destroyers. By making strategic alliances with ISIS, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations—should political expediency dictate such a move—we will witness the destruction of Jewish secularism in the region and religious militarization of the entire region.

One cannot admit anti-Semitics devoted to the destruction of Israel into the domain of Jewish civilization. There has to be some semblance of re-shaping the political sensibilities of those outside the historic process. If this is not possible, then we have to admit to their intrinsic humanity, but also, nevertheless, confess to their tragic status as political ballasts.

Jason D. Hill is honors distinguished professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. His areas of specialization include ethics, social and political philosophy, American foreign policy, cosmopolitanism and race theory. He is the author of several books, including “We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People” (Bombardier Books/Post Hill Press). Follow him on Twitter @JasonDhill6.