Labels can be problematic. While having different names for different things offers homo sapiens a convenient way to organize distinct people, places, items, and ideas, these terms can also be deeply upsetting for those who disagree with their implications or feel that having one word to describe one thing oversimplifies a sophisticated issue. This is especially true when it comes to an emotionally fraught topic like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
So I propose a solution; not to the conflict, of course, but to the war of words, which is that we do away with labels altogether and instead offer longer descriptions that will do more justice to the complexity underlying those ideas.
Let’s start with the controversy du jour: “West Bank annexation.”
“Annexation,” some argue, is a misnomer for Israel’s current approach to the “West Bank,” or “Judea and Samaria,” or “the place between the Jordan River and the Green Line.” Some call it extending “sovereignty,” but “sovereignty” has been deployed politically and carries its own baggage. Others, like esteemed legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich, have posited descriptors like Israel “streamlining its administration,” which is good, but even that might not be quite enough words.
So let’s dispense with both “annexation” and “sovereignty” and just settle on “making land that is currently not officially part of Israel officially part of Israel.”
Many Palestinians live on the land that is not currently officially part of Israel that may soon officially be part of Israel. Now, the word “Palestinian” is also difficult for some folks, because something, something, something not definitively provable about the Emperor Hadrian, so let’s go with “human beings with rights, hopes, dreams, and aspirations like you and me.”
What will be the fate of these human beings, with rights, hopes, dreams, and aspirations (like you and me!) who live on the land that is currently not part of Israel that is being made a part of Israel?
Some critics charge that the outcome will mean the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and the formalization of a non-democratic regime or even an apartheid state. “Democratic,” “non-democratic” and “apartheid.” Ugly words. Can the situation in the land that is not currently officially part of Israel that may soon officially be part of Israel really be boiled down into such imprecise vocabulary?
Of course not.
In explaining this, we should follow the example of Benjamin Netanyahu, the “prime minister” or “person who is in charge of the government” of Israel, who spelled things out in greater detail in a recent interview with Yisrael Hayom. Asked whether Palestinians, excuse me, the human beings living in the land that is not part of Israel now but will soon be part of Israel, will receive citizenship after Israel makes this land part of Israel, person-in-charge-of-the-Israeli-government Netanyahu responded that they would not, and that instead “they will remain Palestinian subjects if you will. But security control also applies to these places.”
Thus, after Israel officially makes land that is not currently part of Israel a part of Israel but declines to give citizenship to the human beings living there, there will be no need to wrestle with silly words like “democracy,” “non-democracy,” and “apartheid.” To paraphrase the person in charge of the Israeli government, Israel will be a country in which many people are citizens and many people are not citizens but the lives of the people who are not citizens are still controlled by the army and government run by the person-in-charge-of-the-government who they do not have the right to vote for. This is a far more illuminating and fair description than throw-away terms like non-democracy or apartheid.
To recap, Israel is not “annexing” or even applying “sovereignty” to anything, let alone the “West Bank.” It is making land that is not officially part of Israel officially part of Israel, “streamlining its administration” as some would have it. The human beings with rights, hopes, dreams, and aspirations, who live in this land, will not receive citizenship, but will remain under Israeli security control. Israel’s system of government would then best be described as “country in which many people have rights and many people have no rights.”
Of course, there will still be a few people who are rankled by the idea of a country in which many people have rights and many people have no rights. For those individuals, let me put forth an alternative. There is an idea to let the human beings living in the land between the Jordan River and the Green Line be a part of their own separate and independent country in which they can determine for themselves who will lead their government. This idea may have a label, although it is probably not sufficiently refined. Failing this, proponents of making the land that is not officially part of Israel officially part of Israel will be hard pressed to explain why a country in which many people have rights and many people do not have rights is a more favorable outcome than a country in which every person is an equal citizen.
