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Tehiya are less sure that their effort to "secure Judea and Samaria"
and to "close options" has been successful.) In the absence of an Arab
testing of Israeli intentions, columnists like William Safire of the
New York Times
were able to defend the settlements as precisely the
pressure necessary to convince the Arabs they had better bargain in
earnest. His colleague, Anthony Lewis, decried the settlements, but
similarly accepted the Benvenisti conclusion that Israel is but "five
minutes to (the) midnight" of de facto annexation, in order to per–
suade the Arabs to enter peace talks with Israel. But the pace of
change Benvenisti reports has undoubtedly put pressure on moder–
ates in the West Bank and Jordan to move progress towards a so–
lution.
No one can argue that the increased pace and the more diverse
location of settlements under the Likud has not dramatically changed
the situation. But there is little agreement on how to understand the
change. A senior State Department official, in an unreported con–
versation while flying in a helicopter over the West Bank, snapped at
a junior colleague for a remark critical of the settlements below
them, "Think about U.S . history and remember 'manifest destiny'."
Some friends obviously support the process and privately advise
Israeli leaders to "tough it out."
Most Israeli journalists covering the West Bank agree with
Benvenisti that the changes introduced are massive and that they
will be exceedingly difficult to reverse. David Richardson, of the
Jerusalem Post,
when reviewing Benvenisti's research, concluded that,
"if one examines (his) findings with a mind to withdrawal, it becomes
clear that, at least in terms of the populations involved, much of the
West Bank
can be given
up."
Israel has become a society which rules over a large disenfran–
chised minority-with a different set of national, religious, histori–
cal, cultural, and political symbols and aspirations. Above all , they
reject the perpetuation of what is to them an alien hegemony , and
want to participate in an Arab political experience of one sort or
another. The fact that no Arab country is a democracy misses the
point: for the Arabs the key issue is the right to link up to an Arab
(Jordanian-Palestinian) fate; for the Jews, the question addresses
the very core of Israel's political identity . "What characterizes the
Israeli
situation today?" is a question challenging the fundamental
concerns of all Israeli democrats. As Rubenstein has argued, the
Arab states abandoned the Palestinian question, while Israel inter-
