What we’re seeing in Israel is a massive shift or redirection of population and resources from Israel proper (i.e. within the cease-fire lines) to the occupied territories (mainly the West Bank), in defiance of logic (and apparently of international law).  Thus, population, infrastructure and investment that is sorely needed within Israel itself, and that should be directed to the Galilee, Negev and the rest of Israel’s so-called periphery, is instead being channelled into the Settlements.  The vacuum left in Israel’s periphery is being filled by land invasions and illegal occupation on the part of Israeli Arabs, motivated mainly by an Islamist or irredentist ideology.

The problem is that there is no way Israel will ever be allowed to see her investment in Judea and Samaria mature.  The investment will never be recovered.  Israel will never benefit from it.  (I’m saying this in as many different ways as I can.)

So on the one hand, Israel will eventually be obliged to give up most of the settlements and most of the territory of the West Bank, while on the other hand, she is steadily losing her grip on her own periphery.  The meaning of “periphery” in Israel itself is changing, with the word now coming to mean everywhere outside the main population centres.

It surprises me that the right in Israel hasn’t made the connection between the misdirection of resources into the Settlement Enterprise and Israel’s steadily weakening grip on its own territory.  Or perhaps they would like us to believe we can have both.

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