59 Years Later, the Israeli Occupation's Appetite Only Grows More Insatiable
This week will mark 59 years of the occupation, and all its lies have been smashed to pieces. While the settlement movement dreams of Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, this election campaign must talk about what kind of country we want to live in
This week, June 5 will mark 59 years of the occupation.
Three years ago, I wrote in these pages that we aren't an occupying country, but an occupation with a country attached to it. Back then, I asked, "What do you give an occupation that already has everything?" But I never imagined the three years that would follow.
During those three years, the occupation has taken and taken and taken, and it shows no signs of being sated. We gave it our sons and daughters as sacrifices, and it wanted more. We gave it our money, our reputation and our future, and it swallowed it all and grew and swelled, but it was still as hungry as if it had eaten nothing.
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Now that it has completed its 59th year, and even though all its lies have collapsed before our very eyes, people are still marketing it to us as if it were a shiny new product. When former Prime Minister Ehud Barak warned of a "diplomatic tsunami" back in 2011, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mocked him and said we were in the midst of a "diplomatic renaissance."
Today, in this renaissance of ours, the prime minister, finance minister and former defense minister are wanted for war crimes, and if they set foot in Europe, they risk arrest. And what will happen once there's a new government in the United States? Israel is no longer a divisive issue there; it's a pariah in the eyes of both parties.
And just like the diplomatic renaissance has collapsed, so has our security. We're preoccupied with the petty issue of how many troops were diverted to the West Bank town of Hawara to protect a provocation by MK Tzvi Succot, but we forget that on Oct. 7, 2023, 10 battalions were sitting in the West Bank to protect the settlements that we were told would protect us. And since then, we have continued sinking more and more troops into this lie.
An Israeli soldier's term in the army today is longer, more dangerous and uglier than it was for soldiers three years ago – and that's without even mentioning reserve duty. Yet even so, the occupation wants more. The army warned that it doesn't have the troops to protect the 40 new settlements approved by the government, but the government approved them anyway.
We were promised that all they want is "the Land of Israel." But they forgot to tell us where the borders of this land lie. Over the last three years, we have glimpsed a bit of the settlement movement's true appetite. And it isn't just dreaming about the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Soldiers on the Syrian border have been forced to chase after activists from the Pioneers of Bashan movement who infiltrated across the border. Those activists have already found an attentive ear among the politicians. Nor are their comrades from Uri Tzafon, who want "occupation, expulsion and settlement in Lebanon," any different. They know what their future settlements will be called and cultivate ties at the highest levels of government. In their view, Lebanon is also our home.
And just as we have discovered that "the entire Land of Israel" can stretch as far as Iraq, we have discovered that "love of Israel" – a phrase used in Jewish tradition to mean love for your fellow Jews – means loving Israel, not loving Israelis. Future generations will try, in horror, to understand how this generation abandoned Israeli men and women to die in Hamas' tunnels in Gaza while politicians were talking, even screaming, about a "miraculous moment."
The occupation has lasted for 59 years, and all its lies have been smashed to pieces. An election is coming up soon. I understand the fear, the attempt to secure every possible vote, the worry about being seen as overly-optimistic, even delusional, in the face of such a gloomy reality. But who are the ones who will be mocking you? The same people who brought Israel first to the massacre of October 7 and then to our current isolation? Let them mock.
In this campaign, we can't afford to talk about how we'll get through another month instead of about what kind of country we want to live in. The occupation is still hungry. I just wish we would stop feeding it.