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by Peter A. Belmont / 2010-05-05
© 2010 Peter Belmont
We all know that Germany said that, in WWII, it invaded most of Europe in order (in part?) to gain “lebensraum” (space to live) for Germans. After the war, at the trials in Nuremberg, the victorious armies (and who better to punish the losers by declaring new law) made ex-post-facto law by declaring the principle that beginning an unprovoked (aggressive) war was a “crime against peace” and punishable by death, an idea which had apparently never been propounded through all the ages.
If Germany was making aggressive war in order to find lebensraum for its too-crowded citizens, its leaders were out of luck and its citizens were destined to remain crowded. (After the war, Germany opened its borders to German-speaking immigrants, so I guess it wasn’t so crowded after all.)
But even if illegal since 1945, the making of aggressive war, for lebensraum or otherwise, has not been abandoned. Not at all. The USA and Israel are perhaps its chief practitioners, but (like Tom Lehrer’s “Lobachevsky” who advised the young mathematician “don’t shade your eyes, let no one else’s work evade your eyes”, “but be sure to be calling it research”) the USA and Israel call their wars defensive (if they were arguably attacked) or pre-emptive (otherwise).
But back to the fiction of the need for “lebensraum”.
Israel’s population is increasing and many Israeli Jews want to live in the West Bank. Several questions arise
[1] Would Israel be entitled to increase its territory merely because it perceived a need for lebensraum—room in which its population might live?
There is a population problem world-wide. Too many people doing what people do—you know, drinking water, eating food, burning fossil fuels (some people think fissile fuels to be better), cutting down trees, and, of course, making babies. No country is entitled to steal the land of others just to acquire lebensraum (or water). Period. Read UNSC Res. 242 , whose preamble recites “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.”
In particular, a country like Israel which invites and allows unlimited immigration should not be allowed to demand room for these so avidly welcomed immigrants in the territory of its neighbors.
[2] Does Israel need such room today?
Israel has plenty of room already. Israel does not need additional room today on any argument that it is bursting at its seams. Israel is 11 or 15 or 17 times more sparsely populated than Gaza, after all—see calculations below. And Israel likes to pretend that the people of Gaza are so comfortable that they should be required to remain in Gaza. And not allowed to spread out into, say, the West Bank, or, say again, into Israel (the land from which most of them—or their parents, etc.—were expelled in 1948).
The 1.5M residents of Gaza live in 360 sq. km. of land, with a population density of 4166 people per sq. km. see here.
The population of Israel (7.5 M—of which 5.6M are classified as Jewish and of which 550,000 live as settlers in the occupied territories) live in 20,770 sq. km. with a population density of 361 people per sq. km. (or 270 Jews per sq. km.) (or 240 people per sq. km. for Israeli Jews living in pre-1967 Israel and not in the West Bank).see here.
Thus, Gaza is 11.5 times more densely populated than Israel, and 15 times more densely populated than Israel is populated with persons classified as “Jews” (or 17 times more densely if we count only Jews living in pre-1967 Israel and not in the West Bank).
[3] If Israel needs extra space now, and its population continues to increase at the same rate, will the West Bank suffice, and if so for how long?
If we assume, arguendo, that Israel does require additional room for the settlement of the present Jewish population of the occupied territories, and that the current settlement program of the West Bank reflects this, then we see that in the year of grace 2010 Israel’s Jewish population is “too big” by 550,000, about 10% of its Jewish population. How much lebensraum do 550,000 people need in which to live? Well, if they are Gazans, then can be satisfied with (or can be forced to acquiesce in) 120 sq. km. But if they live higher on the low-population-density, ummm, hog, like Israeli Jews living in pre-1967 Israel, they would be expected to occupy 2077 (or 2040) sq. km.
The West Bank has an area of 5640 sq. km. and an Arab population of 2.3M for an Arab population density of 408 Arabs per sq. km.see here. Thus the joint Arab-Jewish-settler population of the West Bank is 2.3M + 0.55M = 2.85M. At Israeli densities, this combined population would require 10,370 sq. km., or nearly twice the size of the West Bank.
If we ignore the Arab population entirely, perhaps on the theory that the Arabs of the West Bank will all have elected—in the search for freedom or water—to move to other countries or, always inoffensively, merely to die in place, then we see that at Israeli density, the West Bank can accept about 1.5M Israeli Jews, or 1M more than presently live in the West Bank as “settlers”.
When will this population be achieved (so that Israel will, once again, “need” to fight a war for lebensraum?
Noting that the occupied territories have seen a stead growth of Jewish colonial settlers of 5-6%/ann. over many years see here and assuming for the following calculations a 6% growth annually, we would expect the populations as follows:
2011:583,000;
2012:618,000;
2013:655,000;
2014:694,000;
2015:736,000;
2016:780,000;
2017:826,000;
2018:877,000;
2019:929,000;
2020:985,000;
2021:1,044,000;
2022:1,106,000;
2023:1,173,000;
2024:1,243,000;
2025:1,318,000;
2026:1,397,000;
2027:1,481,000 (close enough to 1.5M).
So, upon the deeply flawed assumption that Israel requires lebensraum, but upon the well established assumption that Israel’s rate of settlement will remain constant, the West Bank will be as thickly settled in 2027 with Israeli Jews as pre-1967 Israel is today.
On the other hand, there may also be growth of the Arab population of the West Bank in case the Arabs of the West Bank are able to resist Israel’s seemingly irresistible pro-emigration blandishments. So the West Bank, now seemingly a bit crowded if only from the point of view of unpleasant Arab-Israeli contacts and, of course, and always, from the point of view of available water resources for use by Arabs—see A Thirst for West Bank Water—will get more crowded and the clashes more unpleasant.
slowly boiling two frogs
What we have, here, in the spurious name of a “need for lebensraum”, is a well-practiced exercise in Israel’s speciality, slow “frog boiling”, where the two frogs being boiled are the Palestinian Arabs whose exit from the West Bank Israel so urgently—but nevertheless so patiently—desires and the USA, which continues to countenance these Israeli antics[1] (well, crimes, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder). How long before the Palestinians escape the boiling pot, and how long before the USA can no longer ignore the seemingly un-ignorable—and begins to refuse to be Israel’s protector and partner in crime—remain the questions.
A long time, I’d guess, because human beings are always able to adapt to deteriorating circumstances and because the organs of information in the USA—the MSM including especially the NYT—seem endlessly able to ignore the muted screams of the Palestinian frogs and the gradually more troubled sleep of the American frogs.
Freedom “cuisses de grenouille” anybody?
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[1] Israel is in clear violation of international law in at least two major ways—by building its wall (separation wall, apartheid wall, security fence) in occupied territory and by building settlements in occupied territories and populating them with its own citizens. See here
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