Settling the Question: Unpacking the History and Controversy of Israeli Settlements (Part 1)
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Join host Noam Weissman as he dives into the complex history and heated debates surrounding Israeli settlements. The first installment of a special two-part series explores the immediate aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967 to the ideological motivations of the Gush Emunim movement. Noam discusses how the terms “occupied,” “disputed,” and “liberated” each carry profound political and historical weight. Learn about key players who shaped the settlement enterprise, including religious visionaries inspired by the belief that Judea and Samaria are integral to the Jewish destiny. Whether you view these areas as ancestral homelands or illegally occupied territories, this conversation offers a detailed, balanced approach to one of the most contentious topics in the Middle East.
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The early 2010s were rough for me.
I was in my mid-20s, which is simultaneously a great time and a nightmare. (On the one hand, enjoy the last few social years you have before your idea of a wild night becomes “bed by nine o’clock.” On the other, enjoy the weekly panic spiral about whether or not your life is headed in the right direction!) I was juggling a full-time job and grad school and family life, including a new baby. Newspaper headlines kept trying to make the phrase the naughty aughties happen. But all that was a walk in the park compared to the real reason that the 2010s stunk so much for me.
Which is that for a solid five year period, every single one of my friends was obsessed with the Settlers of Catan. Or Settlers, as they call it.
For those of you lucky enough to be unfamiliar, Settlers of Catan is…a board game. And I hate board games. I’ve always hated them. Sorry if that makes me sound like a curmudgeon, but I don’t get the point. I have no interest in being a real estate mogul, a la Monopoly, or conquering continents, a la Risk or Domination. Do not talk to me about surviving a pandemic, a la Pandemic. Do not ask me to play Life, or Boggle, or Scrabble, or Exploding Kittens, and please, do not even try to explain to me what Exploding Kittens is about, because I don’t care.
So when the entire world and its brother got obsessed with Settlers of Catan, losing endless Shabbat afternoons to this freaking game, I realized I either had to get new friends, or else accept that I’m a miserable curmudgeon, like I said. (To those unfamiliar, board games in the observant world is a thing because, you know, no electricity.)
Anywho, guess which one I did.
Come on. You can’t be The Israel Education Guy, trademark pending, and not have Thoughts and Feelings about a game called Settlers of Catan. Thoughts like, why did they rebrandfrom “Settlers of Catan” to simply “Catan”? Is it because “settlers” is a contentious word? Is it because no one wants to associate their fun game night with ethical dilemmas like “why am I so attracted to the idea of building a community from scratch?” Is “settler” a bad word? Should we be doing land acknowledgements for the island of Catan? Maybe just call them “Communities of Catan”? I’m a sucker for good alliteration.
And, okay, yes, maybe that all sounds ridiculous. But I don’t think it is, underneath. I think the word settler is triggering to many, many people, myself included.
Because if you’re Jewish, or Israeli, or just a person who thinks or cares about Israel, “settler” is a word with baggage. Nearly half a million Jewish Israelis live in the West Bank, outside of the so-called Green Line that demarcates Israel’s pre-67 territory, and it’s hard to imagine a more vilified population.
I mean, just look at the words used to describe these West Bank communities. In 2016, the UN Security Council held a meeting titled, quote, “Illegal Israeli settlements: Obstacles to peace and a Two State Solution.” In the 1970s, when there were just a few thousand Jewish people there, former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin called these communities “a cancer” – several times! It’s growing increasingly rare to see the word “Settler” without the word “extremist” in front of it these days. I mean, even the words “settlement” and “settler” suggest “settler colonialism” and land theft. And if that’s how we’re describing West Bank communities, what are we saying about the people who live in them? Are they an “obstacle to peace,” a “cancer,” “illegal occupiers,” etc?
And if you’re going to concede the point and call them “settlers,” then where do you draw the line between a “settler,” which could maaaaybe be neutral, and a “settler colonialist,” which is very, very bad? No one’s like, oh yeah, call me a settler colonialist, i love that.
That’s a real question. Here’s why.
Our audience is all over the political map. And they’re observant. Like, scary observant. Not like religiously observant…though some may be, are that’s cool, but I mean perceptive. Some have pointed out to me that in the early days of this podcast, I was verrrry careful not to use hot-button words without first doing a lot of throat clearing. First of all, mad respect to those of you who listen so closely. Second of all, I’m a little intimidated, not gonna lie.
Anyway, those of you with supersonic ears have reflected that I seem to have conceded some territory, so to speak. (See what I did there?) In the early days of this podcast, I was very careful not to use the word occupation, again, at least without a lot of throat clearing.
And then I read Yossi Klein Halevi’s brilliant formulation, I think he really gets it right. He argues that the occupation is real, of course it’s real. But it’s an occupation, not of land, but of people. Let me say that again, there is land MORE Jewish than Judea/Samaria, AND there is a Palestinian people there, living under military control.
Some of our listeners have written to me worried that I might change my tune about other contentious labels. Am I going to accept charges like apartheid? Like settler colonialism? If I shifted on the term occupation, what’s to stop me from shifting on anything else?
So let me reassure you right now. The term occupation, as I understand it, actually fits here. (Though I caveat it with MILITARY occupation.) But the term settler colonialism is an unacceptable pejorative with no basis in reality. And so I want to take a moment to reassure our listeners that this podcast is never, ever going to adopt either term to describe Israel’s policies. Those terms are just ahistorical – which would be a little ridiculous for a history podcast, not to mention UNDULY PROVOCATIVE. The settlements are not “settler colonialism.” You cannot be a “settler” of your own land. You cannot “colonize” your own history.
As we discussed in the apartheid episode, radicalism breeds radicalism. The more extreme the language on one side, the sharper it gets on the other. The more the international community criticizes and sanctions settlers, the more fervent the defense of settlements will be on the other side – even as some settlers grow increasingly violent. (And trust me, we’ll get to that whole mess. Because I teach the full history. That’s what I do.)
But just because I am firmly in the camp of “settlements do not equal settler colonialism,” that doesn’t mean this whole situation is cut and dry. There’s still nuance here. (I mean, duh.) And we’ve gotten so much feedback over the years asking us to unpack the issue of Israeli settlements – giving history, context, and maybe even some insights along the way. So for the next two weeks, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Yup, folks, it’s another two-parter. What can I say? There’s a lot to talk about here. There was just so much to unpack here that we needed two episodes to cover it all. Hope that’s okay.
We’ll explore questions like:
Are all settlers wild-eyed religious fanatics? And
How did the settlement movement start? And
What’s life like in a settlement, anyway? And
Are there different types of settlements? And
What is the Israeli government’s policy on settlements? And
Are settlements really an obstacle to peace? And
What about Palestinians? How do they feel about all of this? And and and and and….
So this week, we’re gonna start with the basics. We’ll cover language, parsing all the LAYERS of terms like settler and settlement. We’ll cover some basic history – including the roots of the religious settlement movement, as well as early Israeli policy regarding settlements. We’ll meet a few settlers from all over the religious and political spectrum. Next episode, we’ll pick up with arguments for and against settlements. We’ll talk about their impact on Palestinians. We’ll meet even more settlers. We’ll address the issue of settler violence. And we’ll close out with our usual five fast facts and enduring lessons as I see them. And then we’ll play a game, how many times did Noam say settlement?
So let’s get ready to settle the question of Israeli settlements once and for all. (Sorry. I had to.)
Part One: There Is No Neutral
If talking about Israel is like a game of poker, we all lose.
Wow. What an analogy, huh?
But here’s what I mean. I’m told that having a good p-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face – H/T Lady gaga – is crucial to maintaining an upper hand in poker. My daughters are cringing right now. I have no idea if this is true, since I haven’t played poker since the 7th grade (no Catan, no poker, I’m really just not a games guy), but I’ll trust the conventional wisdom on this one.
The thing is, there’s absolutely no way to maintain a proverbial poker face when you’re talking about Israel. Every single term you use is loaded. All of them give away your position instantly. And so, from the jump, the team and I had a rough time deciding how we’d title this episode and even what words we would use to describe its characters.
Would we reference “the West Bank”, or “Judea and Samaria?” Would we talk about “the Palestinian territories,” or the “occupied Palestinian territories,” or even “Palestine”? So hear me out…Stretch those empathy muscles. If I use the term occupied Palestinian territories or Palestine, then people to the center-right or right typically shut down, they say, not a podcast for me, not content for me. If I use the term Judea/Samaria, then people on the left think I am a lunatic. Would we even use a term like “settlement,” with all its connotations, or the more neutral “communities”? Would we refer to Jews who live in the West Bank slash Judea and Samaria slash the Palestinian territories as “settlers”? Or would we just call them… “Israelis,” living on ancient Jewish land?
There’s just no neutral here. No matter what language we use, someone is going to get upset. So I’ve decided that I’m going to go with the most internationally-recognized terms. The terms that most of the world uses. Like I said in the episodes about apartheid (link in the show notes), I’ll refer to the area under dispute as “the West Bank,” and to the Israeli Jews who live there as “settlers,” not because they are “settler colonialists,” which they are not, and which is a term used to antagonize and delegitimize. But whether you like the language or not, I am asking you, the listener, to please, put aside your term preference – “term-gate” as we’ll call it, also trademark pending, and lean into the substance and content, which is why people come to this podcast. (I hope, anyway.)
So before you whip out your phone to write me an enraged email (though seriously, I love emails, enraged or otherwise), let me just say this.
Jewish communities have existed in this region, continuously, for thousands of years. No matter what you call this land, or what you think its boundaries should be, it is seeded with Jewish and Biblical history. To this day, you can still find coins from the time of Bar Kokhba in the Judean desert; Torah scrolls from the First Temple period secreted away in Jerusalem’s valleys, and Bronze Age pottery all over the West Bank. (By the way – we’re planning to cover all of this ancient history in depth later this season. There will be nerd corners galore. I can’t wait.)
I won’t pretend that history is apolitical. Of course it isn’t. That was a double negative…meaning, it is political. You’re talking about a story that is thousands of years old, and that remains fundamental to the way millions of people identify themselves. So I understand why many Jews bristle when they hear the term “settler.” How can you be a settler in your own land, in the place where your history began? And… what is a settler, anyway?
According to the late Australian scholar Patrick Wolfe, a settler is someone who engages in settler colonialism, which he defines as follows:
Europeans went to places like Australia, North America, or Palestine, not in order primarily to exploit the natives, though they certainly did so, but that wasn’t their primary intention. They went, rather, to replace the natives. They went to become Australians, to stay there over the generations…. The logic of settler colonialism being a project of replacement is first and foremost one of elimination. It’s not premised upon exploiting the natives, it’s premised upon removing them and taking their place.
You catch that? According to Wolfe, settler colonialism is when people show up and kick out or kill the natives, to “replace” them. And that’s exactly how some folks describe the Jewish communities in the West Bank. Like this young person on TikTok:
Israel’s attention is on settling the West Bank further, approving 3,400 new housing units to be built in the West Bank, which is the Palestinians’ land. That is not Israel’s. They are colonizing the West Bank…
The two-state solution is dead, and here’s why. Israel has systematically destroyed it with the help of the US by building illegal Israeli settlements, which are segregated Jewish-only communities built on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, which is against international law… Israel has effectively turned the West Bank into an extension of their settler colony….
Of course, there’s also the people who believe that all of Israel is a settler colony. In other words, there are people who believe that Israel – and particularly the Israeli communities in the West Bank – is one big project of European settler colonialists to expel native people from their homes and steal their indigeneity in the process. Links in the show notes for why such claims are, again, ludicrously ahistorical.
But settler is an English word. And while many of the big conversations about settlers and settlements are happening in English, we’d be very remiss if we didn’t address how Israelis refer to “settlers” or “settlements” in their native language.
There are two words for “settler” in modern Hebrew, both of which come from Biblical roots.
There’s mityashev (for a man), or mityashevet (for a woman)– words that literally mean to settle or even to sit. The pre-state Jewish community in Israel was known as the Yishuv, from the same root. It comprised all sorts of Jews: Jews who had been in the land since Biblical times; Jews who had fled to the Ottoman Empire after the Spanish Inquisition; Jews who had fled medieval pogroms and come back to their homeland; Jews who arrived in the 18 or 1900s all fired up on modern Zionism…. It has no negative connotations at all. It’s the type of “settlement” that’s entirely neutral. It’s a term much closer to “a community” than to “a settler colony.”
Then there’s the second, slightly more loaded word: mitnachel (for a man) or mitnachelet (for a woman). Depending on context, the verb “lehitnachel” can mean “to inherit” OR “to inhabit.” So when Israelis refer to settlers as mitnachelim and settlements as hitnachluyot, they’re tying together two concepts: inhabiting inherited land. (Say that ten times fast.) It’s a reminder that this land isn’t randomly chosen: it was promised as a divine inheritance.
But it gets more complicated, because of course it does. The exact same word, mitnachel, is also used in modern Hebrew to mean “an illegal squatter.” Which means that mitnachel can mean someone possessing theirinheritance… OR someone living on illegally seized land.
And that perfectly encapsulates the complexity of this issue. In English, “settler” has only negative connotations. In Hebrew, it has both negative and positive ones. So… are Israeli settlers living on divinely inherited, ancestral land? Are they squatters, illegally parked on territory that belongs to someone else? Or are they a third thing, somewhere in between the two poles I’ve just presented? Spoiler: you’ll have to come up with the answers on that one for yourself, because it all depends on where you stand.
And where exactly do these so-called settlers stand? Well, again, depends who you ask.
Some might say Yehuda and Shomron, aka Judea and Samaria – the land’s Biblical name, a reminder that Jews have been rooted here for thousands of years. A reminder that the land is theirs to settle.
Rabbi Motti Karpel, who co-founded the Israeli settlement of Bat Ayin, a relatively small and highly controversial community in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, between Hebron and Jerusalem, says:
People think, and we the Israelis say, the Land of Israel is our homeland, right? …The concept of “homeland” is European… the land of Israel isn’t our “homeland” or “birthplace.” It’s our destiny. It’s the land where we’re supposed to fulfill our destiny in world history and in all of creation.
Rabbi Motti Karpel! A man unafraid to have strong opinions.
But even within Israel, there are plenty of people who don’t use the land’s Biblical name of Yehuda v’Shomron, or Judea and Samaria. Like much of the rest of the world, many Israelis use the Hebrew translation for the rather clinical-sounding “West Bank” – a name that carries its own specific subtext. Because “the West Bank,” or in Hebrew, ha gada ha ma’aravit, refers to the territory’s location on the western bank of the Jordan River.
Remember how modern Israel came into being? (If you don’t, hey, links in the show notes!) After Israel declared independence in May of 1948, literally all the neighbors showed up for a visit – with assists from a couple of other Arab countries, like Iraq and Saudi Arabia. (And again, I must say to Iraq and Saudi Arabia, you don’t even go here!)
Anyway. Israel won the ensuing war, coming out with a lot more territory than it had originally been allotted by the UN. The West Bank and East Jerusalem, however, ended up in Jordanian hands, and in 1950, Jordan officially – and illegally – annexed the West Bank. Four years later, the king of Jordan officially offered Jordanian citizenship to the Palestinians who lived there.
But the Jordanians didn’t hold the West Bank for long. Because in 1967, Israel quadrupled its territory by capturing huge tracts of land from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. Virtually overnight, teeny tiny little Israel—which was only nine miles wide at its narrowest point—was suddenly in control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem; the Golan Heights; the Sinai desert and the Gaza Strip. Nuts.
Which brings us to…
Part Two: Choices
As you might remember from our Six Day War miniseries, many Israeli leaders assumed they’d trade most of this land in exchange for peace. Many in the relatively dovish Labor government had no intention of hanging on to the West Bank or the Sinai Peninsula forever. The finance minister worried that hanging on to the territory would lead to an overreliance on cheap labor from the 1.2 million Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank. The foreign minister warned that hanging on to the territory would be a bad move, diplomatically. (Turns out, decently prescient).
But some of the more hawkish voices in the opposition parties floated the idea of hanging on to the territories. They’d provide extra security! Plus, they were historically Jewish land – land that the State of Israel had been forced to give up during negotiations in 1947 and after the war in 1948.
But now, they argued, Israel had won that land fair and square, in a war that they had tried desperately to avoid. Egypt had been making noises for months about attacking the Jewish state. They’d massed troops along the border and restricted Israel’s access to the Straits of Tiran, which was the Jewish state’s economic lifeline. Meanwhile, the Syrians were spewing such nasty anti-Israel rhetoric that the UN had to step in and ask them to please tone it down. (Three guesses how that went.) So while it’s true that Israel attacked first, in a surprise operation that took out Egypt’s entire air force and clinched the Israeli victory, this was merely the first physical strike in a war that Egypt had started by closing shipping lanes.
Why does that matter?
Well, ever heard of “FAFO”? It’s my favorite Internet acronym for the timeless warning, eff around, find out. (Hey – children are listening!) In 1967, Egypt and Syria had effed around with Israel, dragging a reluctant Jordan with them. And then, all three countries had their hats handed to them, in a process we call finding out.
But international law no longer recognizes FAFO as the default for settling disputes. Thanks to the Geneva Conventions, there are now rules around acquiring land through war – even a defensive war won fair and square. These days, if you acquire land through war, you’re considered “an occupying power.” And that subjects you to all sorts of rules.
You can’t kick anyone out of the territory you’ve acquired, unless there’s a pressing security or military need to do so.
You can’t move your own citizens into this land, either – even if it’s uninhabited.
Because under international law, you’re not actually allowed to hold on to land acquired in war.
Any occupation is supposed to be temporary.
But after the Six Day War, Israel captured territory, which is technically prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention. It’s still holding that territory, which is also prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention. And, most relevant to our episode, it has allowed its own citizens to move into that territory – in some cases, displacing people who already lived there.
And that’s why the United Nations considers the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank to be “illegally occupied” and the Jewish communities of the West Bank to be “illegal.”
The UN Security Council has passed a resolution urging Israel to stop building settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem. It calls the settlements a flagrant violation under international law.
The UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice, has delivered an advisory opinion outlining that Israel’s settlement of Palestinian territories are in breach of international law.
Woof. So… that’s not great, right?
Not so fast.
Some scholars reject the premise that Israel is an occupying force. They argue that actually, in 1967, the West Bank didn’t really belong to anybody. The Jordanians had seized control illegally, annexing land that didn’t belong to them. When Israel took control, they were actually liberating that land from the Jordanian occupation. Under this interpretation of events, the West Bank isn’t actually occupied – which means the Fourth Geneva Convention just doesn’t apply. Instead, they argue, the West Bank is “disputed.” Sure, two different parties claim it for their own – but Israel still has a right to build there. This isn’t a widely accepted opinion, by the way. But it is an opinion held by a number of experts in international law.
Eugene Kontorovich, an expert in international law and – nerd corner alert – maritime piracy. (That’s a different episode.) explained on the Jewish Broadcasting Service, that many of the legal terms used to discuss settlements actually obfuscate the reality
The entire discussion of the legality of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria is premised on just a few words in a completely obscure provision of a very specialized treaty – words which have never been interpreted or applied to any other country in one particular treaty which does not even apply to Israel for various reasons! And in the relevant sentence, what do people mean when they say settlements are illegal? First of all what they really mean is that Israel is required by some principle of international Justice to maintain Judea and Samaria as a Jew free zone indefinitely until the Palestinians agree to take it off their hands and maintain it as a Jew free zone themselves. But pending that, Israel is obligated to ensure that the areas from which Jordan expelled the Jews in 1949 remain depopulated of Jews indefinitely. That is a fairly shocking proposition when put in those terms. That’s why people want to talk about it as the “legality” of settlements, because when it’s translated into what it means – that Israel must maintain a Jew free zone – it doesn’t sound as nice.
Which gets us to the fact that Israel has offered multiple deals to Palestinian leadership, all of which have been refused. So… what exactly should it do with this land that Palestinians themselves refuse to accept? And still others argue that there are important security considerations to bear in mind when you think about West Bank settlements.
And I promise, we’ll get to all that.
But not yet. Because right now, we’re still in 1967. (Not literally, but, in this episode.)
As the Israeli government grappled with the status of their newly captured territory, one group of private citizens was ready to set up communities on these newly acquired lands – stat. And they answered to a higher power than the UN.
Just one month before the Six Day War, on Israel’s 19th birthday, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook gave a speech that many later came to regard as prophetic. Rav Kook is one of the founders of the philosophy of “religious Zionism” – a movement that sees the establishment of the State of Israel as the first step towards the Messianic Era. That Independence Day, Rav Kook lamented his fractured country. Quote:
“…Nineteen years ago, on the night when news of the United Nations decision in favor of the resurrection of the State of Israel reached us, when the people streamed into the streets to celebrate and rejoice, I could not go out and join in the jubilation. I sat alone and silent; a burden lay upon me. During those first hours I could not resign myself to what had been done. I could not accept the fact that indeed “they have…divided My land.” (Joel 4:2)! Yes, where is our Hebron—have we forgotten her?! Where is our Shechem? Our Jericho? Where? Have we forgotten them? And what about all the land beyond the Jordan—each and every clod of earth, every region, hill, valley, every plot of land, that is part of the Land of Israel? Have we the right to give up even one grain of the Land of God? On that night, nineteen years ago, I sat trembling in every limb of my body, wounded, cut, torn to pieces—I could not rejoice.”
This speech might have disappeared into the annals of history, remembered only by Rav Kook’s students and scholars of the period, if not for the war that erupted three weeks later.
Where is our Hebron, Rav Kook had asked. Less than a month later, he got his answer: it’s right here, under Israeli control, along with our Shchem, our Jericho, our united Jerusalem. And now that this historically and religiously significant territory was in Israeli hands, many of Rav Kook’s students leapt at the chance to reestablish a Jewish presence in some of Judaism’s most storied cities.
To them, the land was not occupied at all. It was liberated. They had freed their ancestral homelands from an enemy that had barred them from their holiest places. (Nerd corner alert: here’s a not-so-fun fact! During the 19 years that the Jordanians held East Jerusalem, not a single Jew was allowed to visit any of our holy sites. Not the Western Wall, or Kotel. Not Hebron, or the tombs of Rachel and Joseph. Nice, huh?) So, quite honestly, I’m sympathetic to Jewish folks, religious or otherwise, who saw these holy sites as “liberated” rather than “occupied.” They hadn’t been free to visit these sacred spaces in 19 years. But after the Six Day War, the Israeli government ensured that these sacred sites were freely accessible to people of all religions. Links in the show notes for more on that.
This is Rabbi Moshe Levinger, one of the leaders of the newborn settlement movement, better known by its Hebrew name Gush Emunim, the bloc of the faithful, described the Jewish communities that sprang up in the West Bank after the Six Day War as follows:
Every settlement is the profusion of the Holy Light shining upon the world.
That’s heavy stuff! Heavy stuff.
Eager to fulfill their dream of settling all of Israel, the Gush Emunim movement often
operated on an “ask forgiveness, not permission” strategy. Effectively, new settlers would plant their feet in the West Bank and unilaterally declare the founding of a Jewish community. At that point, Israel’s government had a choice: forcibly remove them, or give them permission to keep on building.
Instead, the government adopted a frustratingly ambiguous policy of doing… neither. They didn’t say no, you can’t build here and send in the IDF to remove these new communities. But they also didn’t say, of course you can build here. Here’s a green light and a tax break.
At least, not at first. Not in the West Bank.
But it might surprise you to know that many of Israel’s earliest settlements weren’t built with religious motivations in mind. In fact, the settlement movement as we know it didn’t really gain mass traction until the late 1970s. Which means that the first sanctioned settlements in the West Bank sprang up at the behest of a secular, dovish Israeli administration.
Surprised to hear that? Yeah, you’re not alone. Most people associate West Bank communities with the political right – not with the left. But in 1967, things were a little different than they are now, and I’m not just talking about the fashion.
The Israeli government had just acquired a boatload of territory from three hostile neighbors. And now, it had three options. Well, three practical options.
The UN had offered its own entirely impractical solution. In November of 1967, the UN passed Resolution 242, which called on Israel to return all the territory in exchange for lasting peace. But as you’ll hear shortly, the Arab states had announced earlier that fall that they had zero interest in lasting peace, so advocating for this resolution was a bit like advocating that everyone stop taking cars everywhere and ride their pet unicorns instead. Nice to think about, and totally divorced from reality.
Which left Israel with three realistic options.
Option one: return all the territory to the Arab states unilaterally, without asking for anything in return. Not peace, not recognition – nothing.
Not to shock you too much, but this was the least popular option. In fact, I can only think of two major voices within Israel who called for it. One was David Ben Gurion, the country’s first Prime Minister, though he later changed his tune. The other was a philosopher named Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who warned, presciently, of the moral dangers of occupation.
But neither Ben Gurion nor Leibowitz had any real political power, and their calls to return the territory weren’t considered very seriously. Israel had just won a war! And it wasn’t about to make any unilateral concessions to the countries it had just trounced so thoroughly – especially considering their chilly reception to such overtures. That left…
Option Two: Most of the Israeli establishment assumed that they’d use the territory as a bargaining chip for any future negotiation. The Arab countries wanted their lands back? Great! Israel would hand it over… in exchange for peace and full diplomatic recognition. In fact, the Israelis were so confident in Option Two that they figured they’d only hang on to the territory for a couple of months before most of it went straight back to Jordan and Egypt.
But there was a tiny fly in the ointment. One teeny-tiny, insignificant, minuscule detail that threw this whole plan into chaos.
The Arab countries had no interest in negotiating. In fact, just a couple months after the war, but before the UN passed Resolution 242, the Arab League got together in Khartoum and drafted an agreement that would come to be known, informally, as The Three Nos.
No peace with Israel. No recognition of Israel. No negotiation with Israel.
As the Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban later quipped, the Six Day War was, quote: “the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.” Until the Arab world decided to negotiate, option two was out – and, as usual, the UN’s resolutions were hilariously out of touch with reality.
But there was a third option, too. What if the Israelis just… hung on to the land? What if they even annexed some of it, incorporating it into the larger state? After all, the Israelis had won the war fair and square. And much of this land was ancient Jewish territory. Hanging on to it would be a rectification of sorts – a righting of ancient wrongs.
For certain territories, option 3 was a given. There was no way Israel was handing East Jerusalem, and all its holy sites, back to the Jordanian, who – as I said before – hadn’t exactly safeguarded the Jewish people’s right to worship freely at their holiest sites. So Jerusalem was off the negotiating table. But the status of the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai, and the Golan Heights was a lot more… fluid. And as long as the Arab world was bound by the Three Nos, Israel would make the decisions that best served its own interests.
Like enhancing its own security.
Remember, Israel is small. In 1948, it was a merenine miles across at its narrowest point. It was a miracle that the Jordanians hadn’t succeeded in cutting the country in half during the War of Independence. And it was an even bigger miracle that the communities directly under the Golan Heights hadn’t taken matters into their own hands, considering that the Syrians had been shelling them for years. Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban had a name for this geographic death trap: Auschwitz borders. Edgy language, and very evocative.
But now Israel held the West Bank and the Golan Heights. If they set up a few communities in strategic locations, they’d have an excellent buffer between major Israeli population centers and the hostile neighbors who wanted nothing more than to bomb those population centers into oblivion.
So the Israeli government combined elements of option two – using the territory as a bargaining chip – and option three – hanging on to the land. They’d build a couple of Jewish communities in strategic territory to establish a new line of defense against hostile neighbors. In order to lure folks to live there, they’d provide tax incentives and subsidize the construction costs. If Arab nations ever felt like entering peace talks, this handful of Jewish communities might just sway negotiations in Israel’s favor. After all, it’s impractical to give up densely-populated, built-up territory. But, if needed, these settlements could always be uprooted in exchange for a lasting peace.
So as a few hardliners from the “Bloc of the Faithful” prepared to resettle the holy city of Hebron in the West Bank, Israel’s secular, left-wing, relatively dovish government green-lit a handful of settlements in strategic locations, mostly in the Golan Heights and around Jerusalem.
I’d be lying if I told you security was the government’s only concern. Governments, after all, are made up of people. And people are swayed by emotion. By history. By stories with a satisfying narrative arc. And there are few communities in Israel whose narrative arc is as satisfying as the Etzion Bloc.
Back in 1948, four small, vulnerable Jewish communities nestled in the Judean Hills, between the holy cities of Hebron and Jerusalem. Kfar Etzion, Masuot Yitzhak, Ein Tzurim, and Revadim were isolated, surrounded entirely by hostile neighbors. Though they’d repelled a couple of attacks, they understood just how vulnerable they were.
As I relayed in a previous episode:
“They surrendered on the same day that David Ben Gurion declared independence. And in response, Arab forces massacred 127 of Etzion’s men and women – some of whom had already surrendered, leaving their bodies to rot in a field for the next year and a half. The remaining survivors were taken prisoner by Jordan, where they would remain until their release in March 1949, as the war wound down and each side began to consider armistice agreements. But their communities were razed to the ground. For the next 19 years, Gush Etzion was in Jordanian hands.
During the 1948 War, Jordan expelled 17,000 Jews from the West Bank, and until 1967, the territory was 100% free of Jews. So when the grown-up children of Etzion’s original inhabitants coaxed the Israeli government to let them rebuild, the government said “yes.” You gotta admit… it’s hard to resist a narrative arc this satisfying.
Yossi Ron was a year old when his parents were murdered in the assault on Kfar Etzion. 20 years later, as the children of Etzion prepared to rebuild, he was a university student who took time from his studies to help with the project. Here he is, in 2014, a man in his 60s telling the Jewish Broadcasting Service how much the community means to him.
I felt, you know, proud, pride, about being part of this building….Today, I’m part of the committee of the Children of Kfar Etzion. We take care of the memorial of Kfar Etzion, so we’re investing quite a lot of time in Kfar Etzion, lots of friends there.
Kfar Etzion wasn’t the only settlement with deep emotional resonance.
Remember Rabbi Moshe Levenger, who we quoted above? In 1968, he and his wife decided to spend Passover in Hebron. Along with 30 other families, they set up shop at the Park Hotel in the center of the city. But when the holiday ended, they just… didn’t leave. For three years, these families lived in limbo in one of Judaism’s holiest cities – until the government finally allowed them to build an official community on the edge of the city, known today as Kiryat Arba.
For nearly a decade, Kfar Etzion and Kiryat Arba were the only official, government-sanctioned settlements deep in the West Bank. Even as other communities sprang up in the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Jordan Valley, the Israeli considered the West Bank as territory that would one day be returned to Jordan in exchange for peace. From 1967 to 1977, Israel built 32 settlements – many of them small, no more than a few hundred people.
All that changed with the election of 1977, which utterly upended the entire Israeli political establishment and changed the settlement movement forever.
Five years before this election, in 1972, there were 1,182 Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Six years later, in 1983, there were nearly 23,000. By 2023, there are – depending on who you ask – just under or just over half a million. Half a million. In a country of roughly seven million Jews!
So the election of 1977 changed a lot.
Next week, you’ll learn how and why.
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Unpacking Israeli History is a production of Unpacked, a division of OpenDor Media. Check out jewishunpacked.com for everything Unpacked-related, and subscribe to our other podcasts. And write to me at noam@jewishunpacked.com – your email might even get on the show, pretty cool.
This episode was produced by Rivky Stern. Our team for this episode includes Esther Baruh, Adi Elbaz, Hanser Perez, and Rob Pera, I’m your host, Noam Weissman. Thanks for joining us, see you next week!