The Israelis as Occupiers

NO one likes to be an occupier, but it's better than being occupied." So said an Israeli official recently. Most of his countrymen would probably echo the sentiment in trying to explain their feelings about their country's occupation of Arab lands. When Israel ended the Six-Day War with more than 43,750 sq. mi. of Arab territory under its control, the country also acquired more than 1,000,000 Arabs who were bitterly resentful of their defeat and implacably hostile to the occupiers.

Today even some Arabs will admit that the Israelis have been fairer than the Arabs would have been had the roles been reversed. Still, that is little consolation to a people who are convinced that Israel has no intention of ever giving up the occupied lands. Says Anwar Nusseibeh, a former Jordanian Defense Minister: "We are occupied by a foreign power whose purpose it is to gather in as many Jews as possible. In the scheme of things today, there is no place for Arabs."

In everyday life, there is hardly a sign of outright Israeli repression. The administrative and military posture of the occupiers is low; West Bank Governor Brigadier General Raphael Vardi, who controls some 600,000 Palestinian Arabs, does his job with a lean staff of no more than 300 Israelis. TIME Correspondent Jim Bell cabled last week after a five-day tour of the West Bank: "The Israelis you saw were in the occasional infantry squad, their combat fatigues wet with sweat, walking along a road or eating rations under a gnarled olive tree. Occasionally others raced by in Jeeps and weapons carriers, looking neither right nor left. In Jenin, messengers came and went from the military governor's office. Across the street a sweating workman was putting new glass in the window of a bank at which a hand grenade had been tossed the day before. There was no question that the Israelis were there. But they went about their business looking through the Arab sea around them."

Arab mayors have been kept in charge of local government, Arab judges in charge of local law. The Jordanian syllabus, although purged of all inflammatory anti-Israel material, is still used in West Bank schools. Israeli agricultural experts dispense advice to Arab farmers. While business on the whole is down because of the loss of Arab tourism, the occupied areas are not economically stagnant. There is a reasonable amount of practical cooperation with the Arabs, but Israeli officials do not deceive themselves about the depth of hostility toward their rule and, as a result, permit a good deal of criticism. "You can say anything you like over there," explains Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, "but we won't stand for bomb throwing." Indeed, terrorism or sheltering and aiding fedayeen commandos bring quick, harsh Israeli retaliation. Houses are razed and suspects are arrested and held without due process. In general, however, Arab resistance is sullen and passive. There is hardly any fraternization; neither side seems to want any.

Israel realizes that absorption of more than 1,000,000 Arabs into Israeli life could be dangerous. "All the Jews will be getting Ph.D.s," frets Premier Meir, "and the Arabs will be doing the dirty work." Defense Minister Moshe Dayan explains that "we do not want to exploit them or colonialize them or turn them into Jews. We just want the right to be there and to let them run their own lives, with full rights--but not to depend on their agreement, because we will not get it. There is no point in trying to get agreement with them, but there is a point to try and say: All right, we know what you think and you know what we are doing. As things are like that anyway, how about trying to drill for water or have a mutual bus company taking tourists around?"

Even in such enlightened talk, Israelis inevitably refer to the Arabs as "they"--signifying an Israeli sense of difference and superiority. Not a few Israelis, mainly intellectuals, worry about the ultimate effect of the occupier's role on the national character. There has always been a small but gnawing guilt feeling that Israel acquired some of its richest lands because the earlier Palestinian owners were, in one way or another, forced out. Throughout their history, the Jews have lived too often as aliens in someone else's land, at someone else's mercy, to be entirely at ease in their new role as occupiers. However necessary and fair-minded the Israeli administration of the occupied territories may be, there are Israelis to whom the idea of Jews ruling anyone against his will is repugnant.

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