Jeffrey Goldberg hit the nail on the head this morning in his assessment that adopting the recommendation of the Levy Committee would “spell the end of Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy, but that the right seems more enamored of land-ownership than it does of such antiquated notions of, you know, Zionism.”
The Levy Committee has put forward a number of incendiary recommendations, including the legalization of all outposts and Israeli settlements anywhere in the West Bank. Enacting such a policy would prove disastrous to the prospect of a two-state solution. The committee is expressly advising the government to contravene more than thirty years of legal precedent concerning the status of the West Bank.
Further, as Ha’aretz reports, the panel draws the inflammatory assertion that there is no Israeli occupation in the West Bank because, among other reasons, “it is impossible to foresee a time when Israel will relinquish these territories, if ever.”
Adopting the Levy Committee’s recommendations would be tantamount to condemning all parties to unending conflict under a one-state paradigm. This nightmare scenario would force Israel either to cede its Jewish character to an Arab majority or to invite the world’s unprecedented condemnation and isolation as a profoundly undemocratic state.
J Street calls on the Israeli government to reject the committee’s recommendations and to choose instead a path that leads to two states, thereby securing both Israel’s Jewish and democratic future.
Jeffrey Goldberg hit the nail on the head this morning in his assessment that adopting the recommendation of the Levy Committee would “spell the end of Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy, but that the right seems more enamored of land-ownership than it does of such antiquated notions of, you know, Zionism.”
The Levy Committee has put forward a number of incendiary recommendations, including the legalization of all outposts and Israeli settlements anywhere in the West Bank. Enacting such a policy would prove disastrous to the prospect of a two-state solution. The committee is expressly advising the government to contravene more than thirty years of legal precedent concerning the status of the West Bank.
Further, as Ha’aretz reports, the panel draws the inflammatory assertion that there is no Israeli occupation in the West Bank because, among other reasons, “it is impossible to foresee a time when Israel will relinquish these territories, if ever.”
Adopting the Levy Committee’s recommendations would be tantamount to condemning all parties to unending conflict under a one-state paradigm. This nightmare scenario would force Israel either to cede its Jewish character to an Arab majority or to invite the world’s unprecedented condemnation and isolation as a profoundly undemocratic state.
J Street calls on the Israeli government to reject the committee’s recommendations and to choose instead a path that leads to two states, thereby securing both Israel’s Jewish and democratic future.