Reply #12: Doubtless We Share The View, Mr. Pelsar, Amusement Is Where One Finds It

[The Magistrate]

Morbid curiousity over what might make me grin in the coming hours is about my only reason for waking in the mornings.

"No Justice, no Peace!" is to my view one of the sillier sloganeerings to have ever gained wide currency, right up there with "If you could see tomorrow as it looks to us today!" which was the basis of an auto-maker's advertizing some years ago here. Both convey about the same degree of objective meaning, in the same granduer of candy wrapper. Where there is enduring conflict, it is precisely because there is no agreement on what justice is regarding it, and anyone employing the slogan actually means by "Justice" the triumph and vindication of my view in the matter, and by "Peace", "Victory".

Still it remains a fact that the settlement program is a breach of international law, and a transgression of the regulations governing legitimate military occupation, which Israel has rightfully engaged in for neigh on forty years. That is simply a fact, without moral or emotional signifigance in and of itself. The beauty of Law as a standard for judgement is that it can be pretty readily and objectively ascertained whether a thing is or is not legal, while the morality or emotional signifigance of something cannot be so readily agreed on, differing greatly as these things do from person to person and place to place. While it is true some are willing to distort Law, or to subject only one side to its requirements, these things do stand out as obvious blemishes, and gain little traction for enforcement.

Viewed simply as a question of strategy, it is very hard to make any arguement that the settlement program is currently of strategic benefit to Israel, and much easier to make the arguement that it is a strategic liability. Its illegality has some bearing on this, for it does weaken the standing of the state diplomatically and politically somewhat. This would be of scant account if it also brought some signifigant military benefit, but it does not. Depth of ground in defence against a conventional army's assault is no longer a signifigant factor in the situation, as it was forty and even thirty years ago. What the settlements do is provide a standing irritant and provocation to the native populace of the area, and constitute potential targets for attack isolated in a hostile land, that require considerable military exertion to protect.

It is true enough that a final settlement will see some alteration to the post '49 border, particularly in the environs of Jerusalem, where development is both close in to the line, and has reached a pitch it would be difficult if not absurd to attempt reversal of. These adjustments will have to be regularized by compensation in money and land. But the whole network of settlements deeper into the area, and particularly the outposts of fanatics, will necessarily have to be removed, and as a practical matter, there can be no question of their remaining on the territory of a state of Arab Palestine. They certainly cannot be employed to hamper the contiguity of such a state, or compromise its authority over its eastern border. Nor can the state of Israel have the shadow of a right to maintain, in a state of Arab Palestine, military outposts on that state's eastern border.