Ghajar as a Test Case?

Yaacov Lozowick
Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
18 November '10

The significance of the ongoing Ghajar story is that it tests all sorts of assumptions about Israel's conflict with its neighbors.

Last night I had a discussion with a luminary of Israel's so-called human-rights firmament. The kind of person who generally puts the right of the individual above - or at least, balanced against - the right of the government to pursue policies in the national interest. I was of the opinion that the Ghajar case is a fine example: the Israeli government is about to shunt some 1500 of its citizens into a country they have no identification with, while probably negatively impacting their ability to lead normal lives, in the name of a national interest. My interlocutor, however, had no patience for my pleas to take consideration of personal needs of citizens: They are free to move anywhere else inside Israel (and by implication: why do they think it's their right to remain in the town of their forefathers). For my interlocutor, the overriding consideration was ending a piece of Israeli occupation.

When I tried to apply the same logic to other hypothetical cases, such as for example the idea that Israel will swap Israeli-Arab towns along the Green Line for settlement beyond in a future peace agreement, the discussion got too slippery for me to be able to follow it. But perhaps I wasn't trying hard enough.

This article in Haaretz postulates how the reality on the ground will in a few months: Ghajar will be fenced off from both Israel and Lebanon. Sounds jolly to me:

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