Is the PA worth keeping?

Posted on September 27, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
Mahmoud Abbas vilifies Israel at the UN, Sept. 26, 2014

Mahmoud Abbas vilifies Israel at the UN, Sept. 26, 2014

Mahmoud Abbas made a vile speech to the UN yesterday. To “long applause,” the head of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the PLO and Fatah accused Israel of aggression,  apartheid, racism, colonialism, terrorism, war crimes and genocide. He accused Israel of threatening the al-Aqsa mosque and “attempting to give a religious nature to the conflict.” He found it “inconceivable” that anyone could place Israel’s right to defend itself above “thousands of [Palestinian] victims (probably a reference to US State Department statements during the Gaza war). Israeli UN delegates were saved from the need to walk out by the Rosh Hashana holiday.

The speech was full of the inversions of reality for which Palestinian leaders are famous. For example, he described the state that he wants as

a sovereign and independent State living in peace and building bridges of mutual cooperation with its neighbors; that respects commitments, obligations and agreements; that strengthens the values of citizenship, equality, non-discrimination, the rule of law, human rights and pluralism; that deepens the Palestinian enlightened traditions of tolerance, coexistence and non-exclusion; that strengthens the culture of peace; that promotes the role of women; that establishes effective administration committed to the standards of good governance; and that cares for the needs and interests of its people …

and declared that

We will not accept to forever be the ones being demanded to prove their good intentions by making concessions at the expense of their rights …

He even blamed Israel for Da’ash [ISIS]:

Confronting the terrorism that plagues our region by groups – such as “ISIL” and others that have no basis whatsoever in the tolerant Islamic religion or with humanity and are committing brutal and heinous atrocities – requires much more than military confrontation. … It requires, in this context and as a priority, bringing an end to the Israeli occupation of our country, which constitutes in its practices and perpetuation, an abhorrent form of state terrorism and a breeding ground for incitement, tension and hatred.

Delivering a message to the US and other peace processors, Abbas said that he would not return to negotiations that did not take as their starting point the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state in all of Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, as well as a “just solution” to the refugee issue. Israeli security is not his problem:

Palestine refuses to have the right to freedom of her people, who are subjected to the terrorism by the racist occupying Power and its settlers, remain hostage to Israel’s security conditions.

Abbas proposes to avoid all of the Israeli objections by having the UN Security Council pass a resolution “ending the Israeli occupation” and setting a timetable for withdrawal and a “solution” to the refugee problem. Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians would then deal only with technical issues, like demarcation of borders, expulsion of Jews from ‘Palestine’, and immigration of Arab ‘refugees’ into Israel.

Such a resolution passed by the Security Council could actually have teeth in the form of economic or even military sanctions against Israel if it refused to cooperate. Even if an initial resolution were passed without any kind of UN sanctions, it could open the door for individual nations to apply their own.

In the past, the US has indicated that it would veto such a resolution. But the growing anger and frustration of anti-Israel President Barack Obama about the lack of ‘progress’ in forcing a withdrawal from the territories could manifest itself in a US abstention, or at least massive pressure for concrete Israeli concessions in return for a ‘no’ vote.

Practically speaking, Abbas is nobody. He and the PLO have little support among Palestinian Arabs, who see Hamas as a more effective way of ‘resisting occupation’. The IDF protects him from Hamas, and the US and Europeans support him financially. The primary reason that Israel, which was willing to give up territory in return for peace for so many years, was unable to do so was because Abbas did not have the ability to deliver on any deal.

Israel has supported the PA, led by Arafat and Abbas, since 1993 because it is assumed that it is better than the alternatives. But is it? What would happen if Israel withdrew IDF support from the PA and let it fall? Does Israel gain more in security from the existence of the PA than it gives up diplomatically? I don’t think the answer is obvious.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, The UN | 1 Comment

Two dead murderers

Posted on September 23, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
The murderers of Gil-ad Shaer, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrah.

The murderers of Gil-ad Shaer, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrah.

News item:

Hamas terrorists Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisheh, who abducted and murdered Israeli teens Gil-ad Shaer, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Frenkel in June, were killed Tuesday in a joint military, police and Shin Bet security agency operation in Hebron. …

According to Army Radio, IDF troops and the Police Counterterrorism Unit, operating on Shin Bet information, raided a Hebron house in which the terrorists were believed to be hiding early Tuesday morning. During the ensuing clash, Qawasmeh and Abu Aisheh exited the house and opened fire at the soldiers, who returned fire, killing them both.

This is the best possible ending to a tragic story. Qawasmeh and Abu Aisheh will not be imprisoned with other Hamas terrorists, eating halal food and taking correspondence courses for college credit while they wait for the next kidnapping and ‘prisoner exchange’. They will not go home in a few months or years to a hero’s welcome. They may well get schools or summer camps named after them, but that’s fine with me — because they are dead, and nothing is more permanent.

I expect that NY Times writers are already working on their stories about how these murderers, who shouted “allahu akbar” while they executed three teenagers in cold blood because they were Jews, had human sides — they have mothers, fathers, children, etc. Here is a picture of Abu Aisheh’s family in case someone wants to write such a story:

The family of dead murderer Amer Abu Aisheh.

The family of dead murderer Amer Abu Aisheh.

Feel bad for them? Don’t — they were with him all the way.

Perhaps Human Rights Watch will issue a report about how the security forces didn’t have to kill them, that they could have been taken alive. And then they could have paid their debt to society in a relatively comfortable prison, together with their friends. Maybe they could even have conjugal visits from their wives.

They don’t understand. They think they are civilized, but what they are is ignorant. They don’t see that not killing these murderers would be a statement of weakness and an invitation to more murders and more kidnappings. They don’t see that the best response to violence is the most disproportionate one, the one that strikes the enemy a blow from which he can’t recover.

And they don’t see that it is important for us, too, that the murderers get precisely what they deserve. It is important to us for everyone, our friends as well as our enemies, to really understand for once and for all that it is not OK to kill Jews because they are Jews. It will not be allowed any anymore. If you kill us, we will kill you.

So, yes, I am very happy that these murderers are dead.

Hamas itself still lives, because the IDF was trying (too) hard to be civilized, at least until the last couple of days of the war. Maybe next time.

But at least today there are two fewer murderers walking around than yesterday. That is some progress.

 

Posted in Terrorism | 1 Comment

Grün’s legacy

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
David Grün and wife, 1905

David Grün and wife, 1905

Israel has made great economic strides in the last few years. The ‘high-tech startup nation’, however still remains stuck in its socialist past in one area:

Labor sanctions in support of striking Israel Post employees are expected to spread on Sunday. Postal service and Histadrut labor federation representatives are also scheduled to renew negotiations with the Finance Ministry, in an attempt to draft an agreed-on recovery plan for the nearly bankrupt mail service.

Courthouses are expected to be closed to the public, although court hearings will be held as scheduled.

Also, tax and customs officials at the border crossings with Jordan and Egypt will not be letting goods in and out of Israel, starting at 8 A.M.

Meanwhile, labor sanctions are ongoing at Health Ministry facilities, where employees are not offering public services and are not providing oversight for imported food and medication.

The Tax Authority has also been subject to sanctions. In addition, workers at the postal service and Transportation Ministry are not enabling members of the public to transfer car ownership, and post offices are not accepting payment of fines on behalf of the courts, the police or municipalities.

Since I first lived in Israel in 1979, I remember this as a recurrent problem. Expecting a package from overseas? Customs strike. Need an elective operation? Doctor’s strike (this actually happened to my daughter; luckily someone decided it wasn’t elective, so she had the surgery).

Government and quasi-governmental employees periodically try to pressure the committees that decide how much to pay them by torturing ordinary citizens who have absolutely no influence between elections.

The torture is escalated bit by bit. So they are still allegedly delivering the mail, although a document that I have been expecting for two weeks hasn’t arrived yet. I guess it doesn’t matter, because the document is needed to pay a fee — which can only be paid at the post office.

Let me say at this point that despite everything you might hear about the US postal service, it is far better than the Israeli one. Yes, you read that correctly.

The problem is left over from the days of Russian and Polish socialists who had to choose between making revolutions in Europe and creating the workers’ paradise in the Jewish yishuv in Palestine. The ones that stayed in Europe ended up murdered by Hitler or Stalin, even the big successes like Lev Bronstein (also called Leon Trotsky). We got the Pole David Grün (who called himself Ben-Gurion), who ruthlessly forced the new State of Israel into a socialist mold.

‘Ruthlessly’ means ruthlessly. During the 1940s, Grün and his associates hunted down and turned over members of right-wing militias to the British to be imprisoned or hanged. He almost started a civil war during a ceasefire in the 1948 War of Independence when he ordered the IDF to attack the Altalena, a ship carrying immigrants and weapons for the right-wing Etzel militia of Menachem Begin.

Sixteen members of Etzel and three IDF soldiers were killed. Only the good sense of Begin prevented the outbreak of civil war, which might have caused Israel to lose its war against the Arabs. Begin gave into Ben-Gurion’s demands and sacrificed the chances of the Right to attain political power in the new state — and his own personal ambition — for the sake of that state. He would have to wait until 1977 to become Prime Minster.

In a striking example of how history is written by the victors, most people unacquainted with the facts think of  Ben-Gurion as one of the great men of his age and Begin as an extremist right-wing ideologue. Historians are only recently beginning to put things into perspective.

It is taking Israel a long time to recover from Grün and his friends. Little by little, the vestiges of socialism in the economy are dying out. Except, apparently, in the Post Office.

Posted in Israeli or Jewish History, Israeli Politics | 3 Comments

Why the Palestinian Arabs lack civil rights

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
Palestinian Arabs will get full civil rights when they get this kind of leadership

Palestinian Arabs will get full civil rights when they get this kind of leadership

Israel’s Left is unhappy. Nobody votes for their parties and their chance of returning to power is negligible. You can see them boiling with frustration — they used to run things here, and now they are a permanent opposition, reduced to increasingly hysterical announcements that “time is running out” on a peaceful solution with the Palestinian Arabs.

Outside of Israel they are still taken seriously, primarily because of their well-funded — by the Europeans and left-wing American sources — English-language propaganda organs and NGOs. It doesn’t seem to occur to those Israeli progressives who still think that there is room in the world for a Jewish state that they may be compromising their Zionism by accepting the largesse of people who oppose Jewish self-determination.

Some are giving up, making plans to emigrate, to rejoin the Diaspora that their parents and grandparents suffered immensely to escape. Others think that their fundamental conception — that Israeli Jews have it in their power to bring about peace and reconciliation with the Arabs by being more forthcoming, more prepared to sacrifice — is correct, and it only needs to be sold more effectively. None of them seem to think that this premise is simply wrong.

So journalist Noam Sheizaf writes in the European and American-Left funded +972 Magazine that “the problem of the occupation” needs to be solved in a new way, because they will not get Israelis to agree to commit suicide by agreeing to a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. Forget “two states,” he says, and concentrate on a “civil rights struggle” for Palestinians.

This is a stroke of unmitigated PR genius. If anything will play to the hearts and open up the coffers of well-meaning Europeans and Americans, it is ‘civil rights’. It immediately makes the comparison to the African-American movement of the 1960s and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. It immediately pushes aside the question of Israel’s security, for which there is no analogy in these other civil rights campaigns.

The analogy breaks down in several essential ways. The US and South Africa were not surrounded by hostile states allied with their black residents. The American civil-rights movement was not dominated by groups whose charters called for the violent expulsion or killing of whites, and which had already killed thousands in terrorist attacks. South Africa really was an apartheid state, characterized by explicit institutionalized racism.

What does he think count as civil rights issues?

The fact that Palestinians do not enjoy freedom of movement. The fact that they have been tried in military courts for almost half a century. The limits on their freedom of speech and their right to freely assemble. The lack of proper detainee rights (including minors). The disrespect for their property rights, and, of course, their lack of political rights.

The justification for all of these limitations, as everyone knows, is security. The right to freely assemble, for example is limited when the assembly is a riot in which Palestinians and supporters try to destroy the security barrier and throw rocks and firebombs at police and soldiers. Freedom of movement is limited in order to prevent terrorists from killing Jewish Israelis; and plenty of them have been stopped by the barriers that are so strongly criticized.

It is certainly true that these measures are inconvenient, unfair and oppressive to Palestinians who are not terrorists. The alternative, however, isn’t to dismantle them in the name of civil rights and hope for the best. That’s suicide.

Sheizaf is right that the two-state solution idea is dead. He is right that Palestinian Arabs living in the territories do not have the same rights as Jews and Arabs in Israel. He is right that this is bad for Arabs and Jews alike.

But what he doesn’t understand is that ending the conflict isn’t up to us. Israel has already done more than what ought to be expected of it, and result has only been wars, intifadas, and the further radicalization of Palestinian Arabs.

The root of the problem is the Palestinians’ adherence to a false historical narrative and to ideologies that do not accept the existence of a Jewish state (and in some cases, like Hamas, the physical presence of Jews) in the Middle East. It is nurtured by the continuous propaganda coming from the terrorist organizations that own Palestinian politics, the anti-Jewish attitudes that permeate international institutions like the UN, and the complicity of the West.

Israel didn’t create this situation, and it can’t fix it.

The key to the solution to the problem, if there is one, is in the hands of the Palestinian Arabs, who will have to give up for good the idea of replacing Israel with an Arab state. Unless a Palestinian leadership arises that understands this, the conflict will continue, and so will the limitations on the rights of Palestinian Arabs.

Posted in 'Peace' Process, Israeli Politics | 1 Comment

Are Israelis safer than Americans?

Posted on September 16, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
Right-wing provocateur James O'Keefe sneaks across Mexican border into US wearing a Bin Laden mask

Right-wing provocateur James O’Keefe sneaks across Mexican border into US wearing a Bin Laden mask

41 days ago I returned to Israel after 26 years of exile in the US. Well, not exactly exile — We could have come back any time, as my wife reminded me often. So finally we did, and last week our possessions (we have too many) followed us, which is why my blog posts have been sparse for the past few days.

We moved during the recent conflict with Hamas, and many of my American friends thought we should be anxious about the rocket barrages. I responded that there is always a quantifiable insecurity in Israel, because it is a small country with enemies on at least two sides.

The key word is quantifiable. Israel knows who its enemies are and what weapons they have. We think — that is, we feel a degree of certainty greater than hope but perhaps less than complete confidence — that the IDF and the government have reasonable plans to deal with the threats from Hizballah, Hamas, Iran, Da’ash, etc.

Maybe life here is more dangerous than life in the US — and maybe not. I know I had zero confidence in the US administration and its Department of Homeland Security to, er, keep the homeland secure.

I keep reading about Hizballah activity in South and Central America and its close relationship to drug traffickers there. Then I see right-wing provocateur James O’Keefe sneaking across the border from Mexico wearing an Osama Bin Laden mask. It gives me pause.

New York City remains a target, but one American organization that has been extremely serious about terrorism is the NYPD. Perhaps unfortunately, its aggressive undercover surveillance of Muslim communities has been curtailed recently for political reasons. It remains to be seen if this will turn out to be a fatal error, or if — as police spokespersons say — the new ‘open’ approach will be equally effective.

In Israel there is a clear understanding that it is absolutely necessary to spy on Palestinian Arabs in order to prevent terrorism. Recently, after 43 reservists in an IDF intelligence unit signed a letter saying that they would refuse to perform surveillance duties that “harm innocent people,” the reaction in most segments of Israeli society was one of disgust. Of course it violates the privacy of Palestinians — but Israel doesn’t have the luxury of not doing this.

I believe that the US thinks that it is big enough and powerful enough that it can afford to have lax border controls, to take elaborate care to never, ever ‘ethnically profile’, despite the threat of Islamic terrorism — not Jewish or Buddhist terrorism — that it faces, and even for the President to deny that the terrorists he wants to fight are Muslims.

As everyone knows, airline security provided by the TSA in the US is a bad joke. Israel’s version selectively inconveniences some passengers, but is highly effective. In addition, El Al aircraft are fitted with $1 million systems to divert surface-to-air missiles. US airlines presently have no plans to install such systems, despite the fact that the terrorist world has been flooded with hand-held missile launchers from Libya.

I understand that providing real security for the US, with its long borders, thousands of commercial aircraft, etc. would be massively expensive and an order of magnitude or two more difficult than Israel’s problem. On the other hand, the US has resources far greater than Israel’s.

But there is no reason that the US has to insist upon the fiction that every person is equally likely to be a terrorist. There is no reason to insist on the fiction that the terrorists who are trying to kill Americans aren’t Muslims and aren’t motivated by their religious beliefs.

So am I safer in America or in Israel? I am not really sure, and I don’t know how to answer the question scientifically. I do know that psychologically I feel more secure here in Israel, where we — despite the sometimes excessive self-criticism — take our enemies seriously enough to take real steps to protect ourselves against them.

Posted in Terrorism | 2 Comments

Three lessons of 9/11 + 13

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
A popular theme in the Muslim world

A popular theme in the Muslim world

…when the Lord your God grants you respite from all your enemies around you in the land which the Lord, your God, gives to you as an inheritance to possess, that you shall obliterate the remembrance of Amalek from beneath the heavens. You shall not forget! — Deut. 25:19

On the occasion of the anniversary of 9/11, we were bombarded by social media injunctions to ‘never forget’.

To never forget what, exactly?

There were several lessons the West should have learned from the terrible events of that day. After 13 years, some of our leaders may be learning some of them. But what they haven’t learned is still remarkable.

Lesson 1: Like it or not, we are combatants in a religious war.

The perpetrators of 9/11, Hamas, the barbarian hordes fighting in Syria and Iraq under the banner of Da’ash, Boko Haram, etc. are fighting in the name of Islam and with a particular understanding of Islamic law that is rapidly gaining popularity in the Muslim world. Unlike virtually all of the leaders of the Western World (George W. Bush was an exception), they take their religion seriously. We are engaged in skirmishes of a religious war fought on many fronts by numerous groups with and without coordination.

The Muslim world did not undergo an ‘enlightenment’ which forced religion to take a back seat to reason, nor did it have a Talmud which explained why certain harsh commands in the basic documents of the religion mustn’t be taken literally. It did not have a Vatican II which commanded tolerance from the faithful. Instead of John XXIII, Muslims had Hassan al-Banna and Sayed Qutb who taught that the purest Islam was the 6th century variety. The West doesn’t launch religious wars. Muslims do.

US president Barack Obama said recently (and quite foolishly) that “ISIL [Da’ash] is not ‘Islamic.’ No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.” But the forced conversions and executions of those they consider ‘infidels’, taking slaves, etc. are based on Islamic law. And the fact that most of the victims are Muslims is entirely irrelevant. Either he hasn’t learned Lesson 1, or — the man dissembles as naturally as breathing — he pretends that it isn’t true.

Lesson 2: The war is an entirely new kind of asymmetric conflict.

Asymmetric warfare, in which a modern military faces irregular forces that are hard to pin down isn’t new. American colonists utilized it against British forces in the US Revolutionary War. But there are some new aspects of today’s asymmetric warfare that the West hasn’t learned to deal with. One is the use of non-state proxies to neutralize the power of military action against state infrastructure. The US could destroy Iraq’s power grid with relative impunity as part of its campaign against Saddam’s regime, but Israel was severely criticized for hitting Lebanese infrastructure in its 2006 war with Hizballah, a non-state actor which is far more militarily powerful than the government of Lebanon.

Another new feature is the asymmetric application of Western-developed institutions and laws against the West. In an attempt to ‘civilize’ warfare, various rules of war were adopted at several international conventions held in the 19th and 20th centuries. After WWII, the UN came into being as a way to prevent war — its charter outlaws acquisition of territory by force or threat of force. In addition a whole industry of unofficial or quasi-official non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was created. These groups, often funded non-transparently by governments or super-rich individuals, supposedly serve humanity as independent watchdogs for human rights, charities, service providers for poor populations, etc. Most of them have a post-colonialist ideology that is effectively anti-Western.

These institutions today present two fundamental problems: first, the various rules intended to civilize the behavior of nations are difficult or impossible to apply to the decentralized non-state proxies that are at the forefront of the conflict against the West. In order to protect themselves against legal sanctions, the US and — to an even greater extent — Israel have been forced to impose rules of engagement on their soldiers that are so strict as to neutralize the advantage of their better-trained and equipped armies. Non-state actors like Da’ash, Hizballah and Hamas commit war crimes as an essential part of their tactical arsenal.

The second closely related problem is that many of those international organizations, especially the UN, have been effectively co-opted by the Muslim world. This is a particularly big problem for Israel, which is on the front line of the conflict between Islam and the West and lacks the financial clout of the US.

Lesson 3: The psychological battleground is as important as the physical one.

There are 1.4 billion Muslims in the world. Many of them see 9/11 as a victory for Islam, despite the fact that the US then invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, causing great loss of life and property. Why is this?

One of the reasons, paradoxically, is Western deference to Islam. Statements like President Obama’s tell Muslims that 9/11 had the desired effect — to regain Muslim honor and respect. Bin Laden’s famous remark “when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse” explains the rationale for highly visible, memorable attacks like 9/11. They serve the dual purpose of energizing Muslims — convincing them that radical action makes them the ‘strong horse’ — and causing the West to fear and respect Islam.

Likewise, the recent war between Hamas and Israel has been seen by Palestinian Arabs as a great victory for Hamas, whose popularity has risen significantly even though Hamas suffered large losses and didn’t obtain its stated objectives of lifting the blockade, getting ports or having the salaries of its functionaries paid. What they saw was that — even though very few Israelis were killed by their hundreds of rockets — Israelis were running for shelters and living in fear of terrorist incursions via border tunnels: they saw fear and respect.

What are the consequences of not learning these lessons?

Simply, we will lose the war.

We must understand that it is a religious war and that our objectives can’t be limited to making it irrational for the enemy to continue. Religious wars are essentially irrational. There can’t be a compromise solution. Our enemies have to be crushed and humiliated; it needs to be made obvious to them that God is on our side, not theirs. This doesn’t mean we have to fight 1.4 billion Muslims — on the contrary, if we thoroughly humiliate the ones we do fight, the lesson will be learned by others that we are the ones to fear and respect, that we are the strong horse.

We must understand that the traditional rules of warfare do not work in this situation, and stop trying harder and harder to fight wars without hurting anybody who isn’t carrying an Al-Qaeda, Hamas, or Da’ash membership card. Is that inhumane? In the long run, probably fewer innocents will be hurt if we bring the war to an end as quickly as decisively as possible.

We must understand that the UN is a negative force, one that promotes rather than prevents war, and starve it to death instead of trying to strengthen it.

Finally, we must emphasize the psychological struggle. We’ve allowed our collective guilt to dominate our civilizational psyche, and we need to stop. Certainly the West has committed genocide, permitted slavery and has not extirpated racism. Are we still not better than the barbarians who glory in these things today? These are, after all, the very pillars of their ideology!

We must act so as to emphasize that our system is the stronger one, that we are not beset with doubts, that we are not the corrupt and decaying empire that they say we are. And we must prove that we will do whatever is necessary to win, and use our superior weapons to the fullest to obtain victory.

Posted in Islam, Terrorism, The UN, War | 1 Comment

Why a Palestinian state is not the answer

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal

Every once in a while I feel the need to write some form of this post to explain to Americans yet again why a Palestinian state is a bad idea.

This is not a big issue in Israel, despite the impression you may get from reading Ha’aretz’s English website. Most Israelis understand that a peaceful Palestinian state is not on offer, and that withdrawal from Judea and Samaria would create a security nightmare. But a large number of Americans still think that the moderate answer to the Israel-Arab conflict is a “two-state solution.”

They think this because they hear it from liberal Jewish leaders, and because they hear it from the President, whom they by and large respect. And they hear it from the Israeli Left, which has a voice in the media that is far out of proportion to its numbers.

After all, Americans are not here in Israel to see for themselves, so they depend on ‘experts’. And who is a bigger expert than the head of the Union for Reform Judaism or the President of the US? Those who oppose the two-state idea are called ‘extremists’ or worse, and nobody wants to be an extremist.

So here are the reasons against creating a Palestinian state. See if you think I am an extremist.

1. Security, security, security.

Given the instability in the Middle East today, even if a peaceful Palestinian state were to be created there is a real chance that it would come to be dominated by those who want to see Israel destroyed. Gaza, which was turned over to the ‘moderate’ Palestinian Authority only to be taken over by Hamas and used as a base to launch rockets and terror attacks against Israel, is a case in point.

Judea and Samaria are far more strategic than Gaza. A topographical map shows that the part of Israel where most of its population is located lies on a flat plain next to the Mediterranean. The terrain rises abruptly to the east, which would make it possible for terrorists to fire rockets and mortars down into populated areas, as well as Israel’s international airport, its lifeline to the outside world. During the recent Gaza war, Israelis fled from the kibbutzim surrounding Gaza because there is no technical solution to mortars fired over such short distances – Iron Dome, effective against longer-range rockets, can’t stop them. We also saw the potential of serious damage to Israel’s economy when the FAA ordered US airlines not to fly into Ben-Gurion airport (and others followed their lead), even for a day.

Then there is the importance of the Jordan Valley, or more precisely, the slope from the central highlands down to the Jordan river. This is a natural barrier to invasion from the east. If it were not controlled and defended by the IDF, there would be nothing to prevent tanks from as far away as Iran from driving into Jerusalem or cutting the country in half. Can Israel afford to take the risk of laying itself open to invasion in these days of the Islamic State?

2. There’s no partner who can deliver peace.

Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the most ‘moderate’ Palestinian leader around, has never agreed to end the conflict in return for land, or to recognize the remaining part of Israel as belonging to the Jewish people (he does not believe there is such a people). He insists on a right of return for Palestinians to Israel. When Ehud Olmert offered him almost all of Judea and Samaria plus eastern Jerusalem and control of the holy places, he didn’t respond.

But even if he did agree, he is 80 years old and the other members of the Fatah Central Committee (Fatah dominates the PLO which controls the Palestinian Authority) are more hawkish than he is. Anyway, the PA exists on funds that it receives from the US and the Europeans, and is protected from being taken over by Hamas by the IDF and Shabak (Israel’s internal security service) in the territories. The PA is highly unpopular among Arab residents of the territories, and would be trounced by Hamas in a free election. So what would a paper signed by Mahmoud Abbas be worth?

3. The Palestinians could not be allowed to have a sovereign state.

Even if there were an agreement, certain aspects of sovereignty would have to be denied to the Palestinians. Could Israel agree to a militarized state two miles from its population centers? Could Israel agree to a Palestinian air force, Palestinian tanks? Would ‘Palestine’ be permitted to make treaties, such as a mutual military assistance pact with Iran? Considering that they have been at war with Israel since 1948, could we afford to give them more than a limited state?

In fact, what we could and would give them is a form of autonomy. They would control their economy and the relations between their citizens; Israel would be responsible for security. I can’t imagine that they would be happy with such an arrangement.

4. The Palestinians could not be allowed to import millions of ‘refugees’.

Due to the remarkable rules established by the UN, Palestinian refugee status was made hereditary (unlike that of any other refugee population in history). There were also very loose criteria applied to determine who initially was a refugee. As a result, the 500,000-650,000 Arabs that fled in 1948 have ballooned into a refugee population of almost 5 million – and there is supposedly a “Palestinian Diaspora” of 11 million. All of these (or even a small part of this number) could not possibly be absorbed by a ‘Palestine’ that is dependent on international aid and has few natural resources, without creating instability that would endanger Israel and Jordan.

There is a solution.

But it does not lie in creating yet another Arab state, for a ‘people’ that is mostly descended from Arabs that migrated into the region starting in the 19th century, and who are similar in most ways to their relatives in Syria and Egypt. The first part of the solution is to abolish UNRWA, the UN agency that is responsible for promoting the growth of the refugee population and preventing their absorption in their host countries – which is the next step. Palestinian refugee camps exist in Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza and Judea/Samaria. There were a large number of refugees in Syria, but most have now fled to Jordan. The funds formerly provided to UNRWA should be used to facilitate their integration in the places that they are living (yes, even in Gaza). This will require that discriminatory laws that prevent Palestinians in Lebanon from working or studying must be revoked. And it will probably require the overthrow of Hamas in Gaza.

Next should be the understanding that Arabs in Judea and Samaria can be granted some form of autonomy, but that overall security control for the territories will rest with Israel. Israel’s eastern border will be the Jordan River. Palestinian Arabs that want Israeli citizenship and do not belong to terrorist groups should be able to acquire it.

Of course the Palestinian leadership, committed to its vision of replacing Israel with an Arab state, would never agree to this plan or anything like it. But neither is there a reason for Israel to agree to plans that are nothing more than recipes for its dismemberment.

One question Americans sometimes ask is “if the creation of a Palestinian state is incompatible with Israel’s security, why does our administration say it is committed to both?”

That is a good question, but it should be addressed to the administration, not to me!

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs | 3 Comments

How Israel can lose in the UN what it won on the ground

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
Cambodian soldiers on their way to Lebanon to "keep the peace" for the UN, Dec. 2012. They are actually human shields for Hizballah terrorists.

Cambodian soldiers on their way to Lebanon to “keep the peace” for the UN, Dec. 2012. They are actually human shields for Hizballah terrorists.

News item:

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States is open to a new U.N. resolution on Gaza but only if it contributes to sustaining the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations said Wednesday. …

A draft resolution circulated by the United States, Israel’s closest ally, and obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press calls for the re-establishment of full Palestinian Authority control over Gaza, which was ruled by Hamas militants who refuse to recognize the state of Israel.

It includes a key Israeli demand, affirming that a lasting solution must ensure that Gaza is “free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those under the full and legitimate control of the Palestinian Authority.”

The Palestinian Authority does not have the ability to disarm Hamas or prevent Hamas from rearming. On the other hand, it is dominated by people who hate Hamas as much as they hate Israel, so introducing the PA into Gaza can’t be all bad.

But if Hamas is really going to be castrated as it so richly deserves, only the IDF has the power to do it — and Israel has now left the field by prematurely ending the war. Unfortunately, Israel’s more sophisticated enemies are already taking advantage of this strategic failure:

The Security Council is also considering “elements” for a resolution proposed by European nations, and a Jordanian draft resolution backed by the Palestinians and their supporters which was written before the latest cease-fire .

The European proposal goes further than the Americans, calling for the establishment of an international Monitoring and Verification Mission in Gaza to ensure that the cease-fire agreement is implemented and to investigate reported violations.

On the surface, it appears as though the UN is supporting Israel’s call for disarmament of Hamas. But as happened in Lebanon after the Second Lebanon War of 2006, a UN mission will be a disaster for Israel. No UN personnel will endanger themselves by trying to interdict Hamas military operations in any way, and their ‘investigations’ will not result in action.

A UN mission will perform the same function for Hamas in Gaza that it does for Hizballah in Lebanon, which is to prevent Israel from taking action against Hamas. They will be human shields.

Apparently Israel’s military planners thought they didn’t need to mortally wound Hamas because they believed that they could always come back and “mow the grass” every few years. They seem not to have learned from their experience in Lebanon, where Hizballah now has five times as many rockets as it had at the beginning of the Second Lebanon War, as well as significant qualitative improvement in its fighting ability. All this was obtained under UN protection.

The UN, the European governments and the Obama Administration do not endorse Hamas terrorism. Most of them would agree that Hamas is a terrorist organization and should not be supported in any way. Most would even say they agree that Israel has a right to exist. But the policies that they propose belie their words.

It is not possible to understand their policies — in connection with Hizballah, Hamas, the disputed territories, Iran, etc. — in any way other than as policies designed to strategically weaken Israel in the face of its more violent enemies. If Israel did not resist their demands, it would soon cease to exist in a violent bloodbath.

Whatever else you may say about PM Netanyahu, he has no illusions about the attitudes toward Israel found in the European and American capitals. Whether they believe that an attenuated, weak and dependent Israel can and ought to survive, or that the ‘mistake’ of 1948 should be ‘corrected’ (they will deplore the violence inherent in the ‘correction’, of course), they clearly do not favor a strong, independent Jewish state.

Israel might well lose the battles it won on the ground in the chambers of the UN. Again.

Posted in The UN, War | 2 Comments