The Cabinet decision to approve a small number of building permits for Palestinians residing in the Israeli-controlled Area C of the West Bank reminds me of the famous story about the rabbi who instructed a Jewish man with many children to bring his goat into the family’s one-room home. When the crowding became unbearable, the rabbi instructed the man to take the goat out, and the man felt immense relief. The goat method did not, of course, solve the poor man’s original problem.

Israel has for years frozen virtually all construction in the Palestinian villages in the area under its full control (some 60% of the West Bank). No wonder the Jewish settlers there are turning the thawing of this freeze (part of Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman’s “carrot-and-stick’’ plan) into a major political scandal orchestrated by the HaBayit HaYehudi party and the Land of Israel lobby in the Knesset.

In an Oct. 26 column for Al-Monitor, Ben Caspit described a “second Liberman” who, unlike the first, is “rather pragmatic.” Indeed, compared to the Liberman we know and his loud friends on the political right, the defense minister in his current state could be considered a moderate, reasonable man. The pro-reconciliation image he's projecting with the help of his carrot-and-stick plan (of rewarding peaceful Palestinian villages while punishing the villages of Palestinian assailants) might propel him toward the coveted office of prime minister. But 50 years of occupation have proven that this policy distances Israel from another coveted goal: ending the conflict with the Palestinians and ensuring Israel’s survival as a democratic state and the state of the Jewish people.

Liberman did not invent this approach. The Roman poet Virgil wrote in his epic work “The Aeneid,” “Spare the conquered, battle down the proud.” Up until the last century, the carrot and the stick were tools used by colonial European states such as France, Belgium, Holland and Portugal to rule Africa. After years of apartheid the white rulers of South Africa understood that this method no longer works in modern times and enlightened societies, in which people’s right to self-determination is indisputable. Israel remains the only “enlightened” state to adhere to the belief that a system of reward and punishment can still be used to oppress national aspirations and enable rule over another people.