Thinking About Consequences

Yesterday, around 6 am, I was in a car in the Tel Aviv area, when I saw a mass of men sitting by the side of the highway. The following conversation took place in the car:
Father: Look at all those Arabs waiting for work. I can't believe Jews hire them.
Son: Of course Jews hire them. They'll work for cheap, even for below minimum wage, sometimes even for ten shekel an hour. (Note: This is about 3 dollars an hour.)

Israel does not have official discrimination against its Arab citizens.* Israeli Arabs are represented in Israeli universities and the Israeli parliament more proportionally than African Americans and Hispanics are in American colleges, and more proportionally than African Americans are in Congress. Yet there is much unofficial discrimination: The idea of a half-Arab Israeli prime minister is laughable. The construction and paint industries, along with other manual industries, are dominated by Arab workers, to the point where there even was a joke about it in the Oscar-winning short film, "West Bank Story".** Illegal immigration from Thailand, the Philippines and China has forced the Arab workers to become more competitive when pricing their wages - ie, to work for even less money.

For a moment, I had an image of myself unionizing the Arab workers. I had an image of myself saying, "So-and-so will only work for minimum wage." I had an image of myself trying to restore to people the sense of human dignity which backbreaking labor for little pay can often shatter. But then I realized: If I did that, the probability is that the bosses would simply not hire the Arab workers. They hire them because they can get away with illegally paying them less than minimum wage. If they had to pay minimum wage, they'd look for other workers. So the Arabs would lose their jobs and livelihoods, and going from poverty to even worse poverty.

At least, that would be the short-term consequence. But in the long term, maybe we would succeed: Maybe they would permanently unionize and wind up making it standard practice for them to be paid minimum wage, at least. Most liberation movements are bad for people in the short term, during the movement, but worth it afterwards. Think about the civil rights movement and people languishing in prison, or even the Exodus: After Pharaoh made the Jews build their own bricks as punishment for their new notions of freedom, the Jews all rose up against Moses. But he sure did help them in the long term by leading them to eternal freedom.

So how do you measure the consequences of your actions, especially when those actions can immensly impact the lives of others?

* I would like to distinguish between Israeli Arab citizens, who live in Israel proper, and Arabs who live in the territories won in 1967, who do not have Israeli citizenship.
** I highly recommend the film

Some things to keep in mind About Obama's Healthcare Plan

1. People complain about the high cost: Its true, the plan is expensive - but so is the current healthcare system. Right now, sick people go to the emergency room and receive treatments they can't pay for - treatments that wind up costing the hospitals, doctors, federal and local governments and taxpayer millions of dollars. The true cost of Obama's plan is the sticker price minus the current cost of healthcare - and that figure is not so large, especially since, unlike the current healthcare system, it will actually ensure that most people receive adequate coverage, the type that prevents them from having to go to the emergency room in the first place.
2. People complain it will be beaurocratic: It will be, but so is the current system, as anyone who's tried dealing with insurance companies knows. People say if government runs healthcare, you'll have to be on a waiting list for special surgery - but someone with insurance coverage under the current system might still have to wait a long time for special surgery, by the time they've gotten a referal from a general physician, found a specialist who is on their insurance's list of approved doctors, gotten that doctor to write to the insurance company testifying the surgery is necessary.... and at the end of the process they might find out that the surgery isn't covered by their insurance anyway, or that it's only partially covered. And we are talking about private insurance that people pay high premiums for.
3. If the government insurance plan doesn't satisfy people, they have the option of paying for private insurance. The government plan would be aimed at people who have no insurance now, or who can only afford the flimsiest insurance that pays for only basic services - and any insurance is better than no insurance, and if you're going to have a flimsy plan you at least shouldn't have to spend half your salary on it. Government plans benefit from competing with private plans, since when people buy private plans, it allows the government plans to serve less people and thus prevents them from becoming overburdened. People buying private plans still benefit from the government plan option, since it forces the private plans to keep their prices lower in order to compete with the government plan, especially if it wants to get money from the middle class. Right now, it knows it can rob the middle class because they have no other option.

Unilateral Withdrawal

Unilateral Withdrawal may now be the only way to end the Occupation. Waiting for a Palestinian government that is an acceptable "peace partner" in the eyes of Israel means waiting indefinitely, due to the stubbornness of Israel and the fact that until now, the Palestinian governments have been some combination of corrupt, extremist, powerless, and ineffectual, with the proportions of the various qualities varying, but the ingredients of the mixture remaining the same.

As long as there are settlements in the West Bank, these settlements will grow of their own accord. It is simply the nature of communities to grow, especially since many of the settlements have young religious populations, which tend to have many children. Furthermore, there is, in certain parts of the West Bank, a concentrated effort to increase the size of the settlements, in the hopes that doing so will prevent the Israeli government from ceding the land in peace negotiations. Such settlement increase only harms the settlers who move to these new settlement developments and will have to leave their homes, while if the settlements were not there they could remain in pre-67 Israel, and build homes which they will not be kicked out of. Giving up the West Bank is an inevitability; the question is merely whether we will give it up now unilaterally or in 20 years in peace agreements, so why prolong the pain, why let it affect more people than it has to?

There are three major objections to this point: 1. It does not help the Palestinians establish their own state. 2. It leaves Israel vulnerable to Qassam attacks. 3. It will not bring peace.

1. Unilateral withdrawal give the Palestinians the soveregnity necessary to establish their own state. It does not unite them with Gazans, yet to a large extent, the two cultures are separate anyway, and both areas have separate governments. When India was founded, many people were furious that Pakistan was a separate country, and not part of India. Yet today, we take it as a given fact. The same may be said of Gaza and the West Bank in 2o years. Furthermore, once the West Bank sets up its own government, should it choose to establish a diplomatic relationship with Israel, perhaps an agreement can be worked out. The Palestinians are better off under West Bank soveregnity than remaining under Occupation while waiting for some kind of deal to be struck that would unite them with Gaza. In the wake of the Israeli withdrawal, it would be up to the Palestinians to declare independence and set up a government, just as it was up to Israel to do so in 1948, in the wake of the British withdrawal. Nevertheless, in the months leading up to the evacuation, an international diplomatic team can be invited to help the Palestinians come up with a viable system of governance, an an economic team can help them come up with ways to improve the economy. Israel can have a task-force of Israeli and Palestinian academicians from around the globe come up with economic and political plans for the area, and hopefully the Palestinian Authority could start implementing those plans even before the withdrawal. This would not be a peace agreement, merely a plan aimed at improving economic and political life in the territories - something which is essential to peace. Poverty breeds violence. Once the Palestinian state is established, should it choose to engage in a diplomatic relationship with Israel, Israel can help its neighbor by establishing economic ties and lending a friendly hand. Should the Palestinians not establish a state, it is no longer Israel's problem, since Israel is no longer that factor preventing them from doing so. Should they not establish a diplomatic relationship, Israel is not obligated to help them, as she is not obligated to help any country she has no diplomatic ties with. (That being said, hopefully non-profits would go a long way in filling the vacuum.)

2. The war in Gaza has hopefully acted as a deterrent to Qassam attacks. Israel showed it is willing to retaliate in such a way that the entire population is effected. The civilians of the West Bank don't want the IDF to bomb their houses. Furthermore, without the Occupation, a major cause in the hatred of Israel and sending of Qassams will have been taken away. There may always be the extremist who will send a Qassam, just as, even after a successful peace negotiation, there may be the extremist Palestinian who will try sneaking through the border to carry out an attack, or the occasional Baruch Goldstein. If we define peace as the time when not one person on one side will want, or perhaps even attempt, to kill people on the other side, then we will be waiting for eternity. Extremists should not be allow to ruin it for the majority of the people. Hopefully, as the Palestinians spend more and more time living without Occupation, hatred of Israel will die down. This is a process however, that will take at least one generation, whether the West Bank is given away in a peace agreement, or not. So why wait?

3. Unilateral withdrawal will not bring complete, immediate peace. That will take at least one generation. Yet it will severely advance peace.  Many people doubted the peace agreements with Egypt would bring peace, yet they did. Granted, with Egypt there was a government agreement - yet peace ultimately depends not on governments, but on the will of the people.

East Jerusalem need not be withdrawn from just yet, but can be kept with the proviso that five years after the withdrawal it is to be negotiated with the West Bank Palestinian government. This gives the Palestinians ample time to have a somewhat stable government by the time negotiations are held, so any agreement about East Jerusalem can be legitimate. Giving  away East Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, as part of a unilateral evacuation that primarily effects the Jewish religious population could start a civil war or at the very least severely erode the trust of religious Jews in the state, and religious-non-religious relations. (Personally, I have long felt that keeping the Old City of Jerusalem under Israeli juristiction, while giving the rest of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians, is a fair compromise, since the Waqf has effective control over the temple mount.) Furthermore, military experts should ensure the withdrawal allows Israel territory that is defensible, adjusting the withdrawal to conform to military needs. The criteria should be "least amount of territory that's reasonably defensible". Palestinians remaining in these areas should be offered the choice of being paid to move, or of receiving Israeli citizenship and remaining. (This is not unreasonable, since Israeli settlers are being forced into compensated evacuation - one of the choices being offered the Palestinians.) Furthermore, the Israeli government must ensure the settlers are provided with new homes and given assistance finding new jobs. After the Gush Katif evacuation, most settlers, even those who had signed up for government compensation, were left in trailers for months. Many former Gaza settlers still do not have real houses or employment. This is unacceptable, and constitutes a human rights violation in its own right. Israel essentially did to settlers what it is accused of doing to the Palestinians in 1948. Many settlers were convinced God would perform a miracle and not let Gaza be evacuated, so they did not sign up for government compensation. Hopefully, the fact of the Gaza pullout will be enough to convince West Bank settlers of the inevitability of leaving, so they will sign up for the government compensation, which will help facilitate the process.

Additionally, with the withdrawal and cessation of checkpoints, more crossing between the West Bank and Israel proper borders must be made, but these must be furiously guarded, like border crossings between countries.

Bayit Echad is an organization that helps compensate settlers for relocation. It is up to those of us who support unilateral withdrawal to literally put our money where our mouths are, and ensure that  means of the cessation of one humanitarian crisis do not cause another. It is better to live in less land in peace than in more land in violence. Yet anyone who has been to the West Bank, anyone who has ever seen a sunset on a yishuv on shabbat afternoon while listening to the laughter of children dressed up for shabbat, can not help but cry.