Annexation in right-wing Israeli discourse--The Case of Ribonut

Ian S. Lustick

Israeli settlers and their supporters have waged a half century campaign to prevent territorial compromise which was said to constitute the basis for Israeli-Palestinian peace.  From a practical point of view, the success of this movement means the crystallization of a one-state reality. That reality is marked by the fact that ending Israel’s control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while not impossible, must now be imagined, if it can be, as the result of secession from parts of the Israeli state rather than as withdrawal from temporarily occupied territories that are not part of the state.  

In this article, published in 2022 in Frontiers of Political Science, I ask how the de facto annexation of “Judea and Samaria,” in particular, changed the discursive landscape of the movement dedicated to bring this about. In the wake of this accomplishment, how do settlers and their supporters see the future, its opportunities, and its challenges? By analyzing the objectives, internal arguments, certainties, and uncertainties of the Sovereignty movement, as reflected in the pages of its journal, Ribonut, this article analyzes how satisfaction of its highest operational priority has affected the annexationist project, especially in regard to the need to confront what is now a greatly enlarged “Arab problem.” The methodology used, of discourse analysis, entails systematic assessment of arguments to uncover what the community to whom these arguments are made assumes to be true, believes, worries about, or considers problematic.

Since 1967 there has been no formal and explicit act of official annexation of lands under Israel’s control but beyond the Green Line.  This includes, contrary to popular belief, the Golan Heights and expanded East Jerusalem.  The Basic Laws passed concerning those territories neither declare Israeli sovereignty over them, nor declare them as officially joined to the State of Israel.  Instead, the one-state reality of rule (effective or not, democratic or not) by Israeli governments of all the land and people between the river and the sea has been accomplished by what has traditionally been referred to as “de facto annexation.”

After more than half a century of this gradually consolidating condition, anomalies arise in the status of the one in eleven Israelis who live beyond the Green Line.  Difficulties, contradictions, and confusions also emerge between ordinary practices and understandings and the ideological commitments of those who have always favored Israel’s permanent rule of the whole land.  In this context, and based on the never concealed ideological commitments to extend Jewish rule over as much of the “Whole Land of Israel” as possible, campaigns to formally annex or declare or impose Israeli sovereignty over lands occupied in 1967 have intensified.  Unlike diehard two-state solution supporters, or those who prefer an ambiguous status quo to struggles over whether a “Jewish state” encompassing a majority of non-Jews can be a democracy, those advocating formal annexation are constrained to consider the official changes in the status of these territories that can and should be promulgated, when those changes should be made, and what their implications will be or could be for Palestinian Arab inhabitants and, as a result, for Israeli politics.

The journal Ribonut (Sovereignty)—broadly published online--was founded in 2013 by Women in Green and other far-right settler activists as the official publication of the Ribonut organization.  Its purpose has been to advance the cause of official annexation and the formal imposition of Israeli sovereignty over the whole Land of Israel, but in particular over Judea and Samaria/the West Bank.  It has replaced the low-circulation, intellectually and ideologically sophisticated journal Nekuda, which ended publication in 2010, as the most prominent published voice of the settler movement.  Featuring short, easy to understand articles on why and how sovereignty in every part of the Land of Israel should be implemented, Ribonut reflects the success of the settler movement in its ability to attract praise from leading politicians and Cabinet Ministers whose lectures and interviews fill its pages. By analyzing patterns across all issues of the journal published since its founding, it is possible to answer some key questions. First, in what ways has the debate over the territories has been transformed by the emergent one-state reality? , Second, what urgent questions do activists within the settler movement believe it necessary to address?  Third,  what opportunities and problems are perceived to be associated with formal steps that could be taken toward annexation and sovereignty imposition?  In this last regard, prominent topics are how to design legislation that regularizes Israeli life beyond the Green Line and aids in battles against what is perceived as Arab seizure of Jewish land, and whether that can be done without creating international problems or integrating Arab inhabitants into Israeli society and politics.

The thorniest and biggest unsolved problem facing the movement is the status to be accorded to Arab inhabitants.  While some argue that permanent incorporation of territories occupied in 1967 can never be accomplished unless all those living within them are governed by the same laws, most disagree.  The dominant view within the pages of Ribonut emphasizes the meaning and imperative of Israeli sovereignty, not as establishing Israeli laws as those that will govern the lives of all inhabitants, but of establishing and promoting both the reality and sentiment of Jewish supremacy--the mastery, of Jews over non-Jews, over the territory they inhabit, and over the property within it.  Thus, it is in the pages of Ribonut that one sees, earlier and more explicitly than anywhere else, that the struggle over the future of the country has become, not a struggle over where the state will be, but over what it will be. 

Ian S. Lustick is the Bess W. Heyman Professor, Emeritus, in the Political Science Department of the University of Pennsylvania.

This post is based on the following article:

Ian S. Lustick. 2022. "Annexation in right-wing Israeli discourse—The Case of Ribonut," Frontiers in Political Science 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2022.963682