By Ted Belman
Two years ago, I began considering whether annexation of Judea and Samaria is the route to go. In my article Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan?, I considered the issues. The biggest argument against annexation was that Israel had too many Arabs to contend with and it would be crazy to add to them.
Then I asked the question Is Israel’s greatest threat; demographics or indefensible borders?
In May ’06, after much research, I concluded The ‘peace process’ is in need of a paradigm shift
So what do you think? Is Israel better off with
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1) ’67 borders, a divided Jerusalem, an Arab population of 20%, uprooting 120,000 Jews and potential mayhem in Palestine with an inflow of one million refugees and untold rockets or
2) the Jordan River as a border, all of Jerusalem, an Arab population of 33%, no uprooting, no inflow of refugees and rockets
Totally aside from what Israel prefers, I do not believe the first option is available as a choice because the Arabs won’t agree to it. They are dedicated to Israel’s destruction. It is a religious duty.
A new political party is soon to be announced which will advocate for annexation. It will be a secular party rather than a religious one. MK Effie Eitam is in favour. It is believed that such a party will find great support among secular Israelis.
B. Shapiro’s solution just won’t fly, at least not the way he is coming at it to solve Israel’s problem that we all can agree has much to do with Palestinians not letting go of the dream of the death of Israel and not wavering in their resolve to fight on until that dream is realized.
If all Israel had to be concerned about by taking Shapiro’s advice is that Jews and Israelis would be called Nazis, annexation of Gaza, Judea and Samaria would have happened long ago, along with the forceable expulsion of the Palestinians and those Arab Israelis from Israel who were not yet citizens of Israel.
It would be a good thing if Israel’s situation was akin to the situation of the allies at the end of WWII who forcibly laid out what was to become of a defeated Germany. It isn’t.
I have however laid out in other posts that if the West would open their eyes to the realities of the situation and Egypt and Jordan could be made to deeply fear a radicalized Palestinian neighboring state, then that would allow for the possibility for a new peace paradigm that would not include an independent Palestinian state.
In such case, Egypt and Jordan woud likely admit wanting a strong, but peaceful Israeli neighbor on their borders as opposed to a radical Palestinian state that could threaten their own stability and interests. With such an attitude change in Egypt and Jordan, the resistance of other Arab nations couldwaver or melt away.
With there being no strong objections to Israel annexing J & S and Gaza, the West, instead of handing over hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the Palestinian authorities only to have that money thrown down the Palestinian sewers, could parcel out that money to each and every Palestinian directly as an inducement to emigrate to live in other countries that would have them.
The miserable impoverished life Palestinians have now in the Gaza and J & S will be the same miserable impoverished life they will have in future if the status quo does not change.
If the status quo can change as laid out above, then with pockets bulging with monies, the Palestinians who emigrated to make their homes in other countries, would have a big head start towards achieving a better life that now they can only dream of.
If I may be permitted to offer an item from a sagacious young man written in 2003. I will offer my comment at a later time:
COMMENTARY: BENJAMIN SHAPIRO
Transfer is not a dirty word
By Benjamin Shapiro
Commentary
September 8, 2003
Raise your hand if you were shocked at the breakdown of the so-called Middle East road map. If you are raising your hand, give yourself a nice, hard slap across the chops. Maybe that will wake you up from your reverie of self-delusion.
The road map was doomed from the start. The Arab enmity for Jews and the state of Israel allows for no peace process.
The time for half measures has passed. Bulldozing houses of homicide bombers is useless. Instituting ongoing curfews in Arab-populated cities is useless. Roadblocks, touch fences, midnight negotiations and cease-fires are useless.
Some have rightly suggested that Israel be allowed to decapitate the terrorist leadership of the Palestinian Authority. But this, too, is only a half measure. The ideology of the Palestinian population is indistinguishable from that of the terrorist leadership.
Half measures merely postpone our realization that the Arabs dream of Israel’s destruction. Without drastic measures, the Arab dream will come true. In the short term, the establishment of a “Palestinian state” based in Judea, Samaria and Gaza cuts Israel to the bone. In some places, Israel would be an unthinkable 9 miles wide. In the long term, the growth of the hostile Israeli-Arab population within pre-1967 Israel bodes ill for the future of the Jewish state.
As University of Haifa professor Arnon Soffer says, “The trends and indicators all point to an economic and ecological catastrophe waiting to happen and of the death knell of the ideological dream of a Jewish state.”
Here is the bottom line: If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper. It’s an ugly solution, but it is the only solution. And it is far less ugly than the prospect of bloody conflict ad infinitum. When two populations are constantly enmeshed in conflict, it is insane to suggest that somehow deep-seated ideological change will miraculously occur, allowing the two sides to live together.
Unfortunately, this insanity is generally accepted as “the only way forward.” President Bush accepts it because it is politically palatable. The Arabs accept it because, for them, it is a Trojan horse. The Israelis accept it because they are afraid that if they expel the Arabs, they will be called Nazis.
For anyone who lived through the Holocaust, or who has relatives who died in it, being called a Nazi is unspeakably terrible. That is the secret weapon of the Arabs. Any time the Jews get wise and threaten mass expulsion of Arabs, the Arabs pull out their big stick, equating Nazism with Zionism. Their cartoons merge swastikas with stars of David. Their newspapers call Ariel Sharon another Adolf Hitler. Their spokespeople cry “Genocide!” And the Jews cower in fear that they could be equated with their parents’ murderers.
The Jews don’t realize that expelling a hostile population is a commonly used and generally effective way of preventing violent entanglements. There are no gas chambers here. It’s not genocide; it’s transfer.
After World War II, Poland was recreated by the Allied Powers. In doing so, the Allies sliced off a chunk of Germany and extended Poland west to the Oder-Neisse line. Anywhere from 3.5 million to 9 million people were forcibly relocated. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was pleased. In 1944, he had explained to the House of Commons that “expulsion is the method which, so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble . . . a clean sweep will be made.” Churchill was right. The Germans accepted the new border, and decades of conflict between Poles and Germans ended.
Arab-Jewish conflict is exponentially more volatile than the German-Polish conflict ever was. And the solution is far easier. If there was “room in Germany for the German populations of East Prussia and of the other territories,” as Churchill stated, there is certainly room in the spacious Muslim states of the Middle East for 5 million Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. If Germans, who had a centuries-old connection to the newly created Polish territory, could be expelled, then surely Palestinians, whose claim to Judea, Samaria and Gaza is dubious at best, can be expelled.
It’s time to stop being squeamish. Jews are not Nazis. Transfer is not genocide. And anything else isn’t a solution.
Benjamin Shapiro, 19, is a senior at UCLA. He can be reached at Benscolumn@aol.com
Copyright © 2003, Orlando Sentinel
Annexation will happen, however it is more likely to come as the product of an action of self defense rather than by a formal process.
Although there is just cause for annexation, it will take a catalyst in order to create the momentum necessary to thrust the idea forward — For it will not happen until there is a massive realization than there is no other alternative.
The “peace” process has been in the works under various names for decades now. No one who is being realistic can have any faith in the process; most people now realize its proponents are either delusional, or are aware of this fact but continue on merely for the sake of process.
We have discussed this before, that the sole purpose of the process is to have a process, this, in order to fill a vacuum that would be filled by violence and global disruption if nothing existed at all in its place.
Got to keep the economy churning, the oil flowing, the world turning.
(2), obviously, but offer to pay Arabs handsomely to leave (based on polls, many would), and kill all terrorists.