One of the favorite lines heard from Israel’s Left is that they want to “separate” from the Palestinians, or, lately, to “divorce” them. This may sound like a good idea, but it is a poor analogy. In the usual divorce, one of the former partners moves away. They don’t try to continue living in the same house.
The separation or divorce that they are talking about is the same old thing: they want Israel to withdraw from most or all of Judea and Samaria, and allow the creation of a Palestinian state. Whatever you call it, the consequences will be the same: the advancement to the next stage of Yasser Arafat’s “Phased Plan” for the destruction of Israel, and a return to what Abba Eban called “Auschwitz borders.”
The plan calls for the establishment of an “independent combatant national authority” that will control any territory “liberated” from the Zionists; then this authority will unify all the “Arab liberation movements” and ultimately coordinate attacks from a “union of confrontation countries” to complete the “liberation of all Palestinian territory.”
The phased plan, from 1974, sounds quaint today. There is no mention of Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran. Indeed, Iran – ruled by the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi – had good relations with Israel back then. It includes a gesture to Jordan, which still maintained claims on Judea and Samaria at that time.
But the physical geography of our country and its strategic significance haven’t changed. There is still high ground overlooking our population centers from Judea and Samaria. There is still the Jordan valley, whose western slope guards our eastern border. The players have changed somewhat, and the military threats have become more sophisticated. Although the IDF has improved its capabilities, so have our enemies improved theirs. But the land is still the land. Hills are still hills; passes between them are still strategic.
The “international community,” whose will is expressed by the UN, is stuck in 1974, still wanting to reverse the outcome of the 1967 war. Maybe some of the practical reasons are different – a little less Arab oil blackmail and a little more desire to enter the Iranian market – but its hypocritical concern for the welfare of the Palestinian Arabs still hides its fundamental belief that a sovereign Jewish state should not exist.
It wasn’t always thus. Right after the First World War, the victorious Western powers for a short time were prepared to set aside a portion of the former Ottoman Empire that had already been developed by Zionist immigration, and which just happened to be the historic home of the Jewish people, for settlement by the exiled remnants of those people. This was seen as a win-win situation for everyone involved: the Zionists would get their homeland, the Europeans would (ultimately) get rid of their Jews, and the British – who would hold the Mandate for the sake of the Jews – would get a convenient place to stand to protect the flank of the Suez Canal, and maybe to build a railroad from the port of Haifa to the Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire, India.
Almost immediately, the British began reneging on their responsibilities toward the Jews, limiting Jewish immigration and encouraging local Arabs in their desire to see the whole Mandate become an Arab state. Maybe they thought an Arab state would be easier to control, or maybe they just liked the Arabs better than the Jews. Later, as the gates of Europe began closing for Jews trying to escape Hitler, their increasingly ferocious efforts to prevent Jewish immigration to Eretz Yisrael became one of the moral low points in the dark history of the period.
The 1948 War of independence and the 1967 Six Days war – a war of aggression intended to destroy the Jewish state – finally established Jewish control of the all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. The 1973 Yom Kippur war proved that even under the worst conditions, the newly expanded state was defensible.
The Arab nations were soundly defeated, but unfortunately the conflict became a proxy for the Cold War between the West and the USSR. Under the tutelage of the Soviet KGB, the Arabs developed a multi-faceted approach including terrorism, Soviet-supported diplomacy, and a sophisticated propaganda effort using revolutionary third-world rhetoric. After the Yom Kippur War, the Saudi-controlled oil weapon was deployed, and as a result the formerly apolitical (but very powerful) international corporate community quietly joined the vociferous Left in its embrace of the “Palestinian cause” (i.e., the replacement of Israel with an Arab state).
Still, after its 1982 defeat in Lebanon, Arafat’s PLO – the ideological heir of the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who collaborated with Hitler – should have faded into obscurity. But then Israel, under the guidance of the same Left that today claims to want a divorce from the Palestinians, fired a nuclear cannon into its own foot – the Oslo Accords.
Suddenly, the Phased Plan came back to life, with the creation – by Israel – of the very “Palestinian National Authority” called for in Arafat’s original plan!
Today Soviet Communism is gone, replaced by the more pragmatic and flexible (but still dangerous) Putinism, the Saudis are moderating their attacks on Israel in the hope that Israel will deal with Iran for them, and the Arab nations are in no condition to wage war. The center of anti-Zionism has moved to Tehran, from where it operates an octopus of terrorist proxies to fight the Jewish state.
But despite all the changes, what should have been settled in 1967 is still questioned today.
The international community is still pressuring us to reverse the results of the 1967 war. And thanks to the deluded, gulled, pressured, or traitorous architects of Oslo – take your pick – we are on our way to doing that. The vicious PLO is back, ruling the Palestinian Authority. The first phase of Arafat’s plan to finally liquidate the Jewish state is complete.
There are spiritual and historical reasons that Judea and Samaria should be in Jewish hands. But whether or not they are important to you, there are also brute facts of geography: without control of the high ground of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, the state cannot be defended. We must not go back to Auschwitz borders.
I think a divorce from the Palestinians is a good idea. But I have a different property settlement in mind: we keep the house and they move out.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Well Adam …maybe you should “hand it over” now, because…as Jimmy Durante used to say… “I can’t wait that long..I only have 2 changes of underwear”..
@ Edgar G.: If so, Edgar, you are going to be a very poor man when I pass away.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Actually Adam, you DON’T deserve it. But I’m trying hard to get you to make me the man beneficiary in your estate.
@ Edgar G.: Thanks, Edgar. I appreciate the compliment-don’t know if I deserve it.
@ pjsmillie:
Arabs are no more indigenous to the Middle East than the Spanish are to South America
For obvious reasons, I banned PJSMillie from commenting.
@ pjsmillie:
Since the 1920s the Jewish – Arab middle-east conflict has continued because the Arabs (now called Palestinians) do NOT accept the presence of Jews in the area. Before the state of Israel was recreated in 1948 the Arabs were killing Jews and inciting via falsehoods that the Jews are planning to destroy or defile the Mosque on The Temple Mount in Jerusalem. In 1929 the Palestinian Riots occurred for these same lies. This resulted in 100s of dead Jews including 68 in Hebron. The Arabs drove the Jews out of Hebron. Jews had lived in Hebron for 100s of years (at least). They killed Jews all over what was then called Palestine.
Rather than accept a Jewish State and a Palestinian Arab State as proposed by the UN in the late 1940s the Arabs tried to drive the Jews into the Sea. They killed 1% of the Jewish population but lost the war. Since then the Jewish population has risen from 600,000 to about 7 million. The Jewish State of Israel is growing population wise, and economically. The state is highly advanced in technology, medical science and water resources.
Yet the Palestinians still refuse to accept the reality of the Jewish State and constantly are finding ways to kill Jews and try and drive them out.
Israel has two rational choices to the conflict. No one is not a two state solution for two people as the Palestinians do not accept the permanence of the Jews.
One is try and minimize damage caused by the Palestinians and keep fighting with one hand tied behind its back when the Palestinians try their various forms of attack periodically as has been advocated by Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Ya’alon.
The second option is drive out forcibly all terrorists and their supporters. Allow Arabs who demonstrate loyalty (such as the Druze and many Bedouin) to keep enjoying full civil rights. Palestinian polls say 78% of the population of East Jerusalem, Gaza and Judah/Samaria (West Bank) would like to emigrate to the west. Assistance (including financial) to these people should be extended to fulfill their desire to emigrate. This would allow for actual peace between Israel and the remaining Arabs.
@ Edgar G.:
1@ adamdalgliesh:
Adam- I should have waited to see the post you’d obviously send. It says everything necessary. But I doubt it’s have any effect except to double down. Facts only bother these guys.
I think he’s an Irish umadhan, from the good old Jew-Hating Owld Sod. Probably went to Synge Street School on the South Circular Rd. at the corner of Heytsbury St. in Dublin…I used to have a fight with them every single day for years. They all sounded something like him.
@ pjsmillie:
Are you of the Irish branch of the O’Smillies or MacSmillies…(Patrick Joseph–good old Irosh names) or even a Smillie at all…perhaps an Abu Ibrahim Yasser Jihad Smillieahdah
You should change the psychotic lying websites that you obviously soak up all your misinformation, absolutely untrue lies and cognitive distortions from. Have you ever read a critical, scholarly, objective history of the pertinent times, and realised how recently the Arabs came to pour into Israel, where they actually came from…WHY and WHEN….. ???
A perusal of the UNWRA criteria for being a “refugee” might “open your eyes”….There are hundreds of thousands who never even “left their homes. and more who moved just a few miles away. All these 2-3-4th generation crappers are fraudulent and self-created.
Do you know anything at all about the ancient 3500 year enduring relationship between the Jewish People and the Land-never mind your silly and offensive reference to a “book”. There was never a time when Jews were not living in the Land regardless of whoever was the major occupier or conqueror. Of course if there’s no space in your head for truth…. well….. never mind.
It’s obvious that you know exactly ZERO of the actual artificial insemination and caesarean “birth” of the “Palestinian Nation”.in Moscow…. As the Hillel aphorism, which has come down to us says..”go forth and learn”.. That is…if you can take a deep breath, swallow your bile, and open your eyes, and clean your muck- clogged ears to allow truth to enter.
Fortunately I regard you just as being uninformed, otherwise I’d have been seriously offended. You may not have noticed, but 4 letter curses are not my style. They are rarely seen on this site.
@ pjsmillie: Israel has committed no genocide. The Arab population has grown something like fivefold under Israeli rule, life expectancy of Arabs has nearly doubled, nearly all Arab families have running water and electricity although almost none had these things when Israel first “occupied” the area in 1967. Per capita incomes have quadrupled. Nearly all children now attend school and nearly the whole Palestinian Arab population is literate, when only 35% were literate in 1967. While there was only one two-year college in the Palestinian territories in 1967, there are now twenty universities overing four-year bachelor’s degrees. Most of them now offer master’s degrees and doctorates as well. And thousand s of Palestinians have graduated from Israeli universities and received advanced degrees from them as well. Some genocide.
The Palestinian Arabs have done nothing wrong? What about the thousands of innocent Israeli civilians cruelly murdered by Palestinian terrorists since 1967, simply because they are Israelis and Jews?
Other than his acceptance of the term “divorce” used by the appeasers, the rest of Vic’s analysis is spot on. I especially like his
@ pjsmillie:
You’ve got it ass-backwards.
Wow. What utter hatred you have for your fellow man.
You want a legitimate people to leave their homes and land because you have a book that tells you, you are superior? My god….
Never been friends? Your history is skewed to a basis of horrific lies to justify your genocide towards a people that have done nothing wrong other than be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Utter shame…lack of morality and denial of the most basic facts of this one way witch hunt. I wonder that if a country was created in the middle of my country…that those coming would have as much nerve to make accusations/act the victim and create havoc with the local population as the Israelis do in Palestine…unbelievable. And anyone supporting the rights of the indigenous population would be labelled as anti-semitic. Fucking disgrace.
The problem with the “divorce” analogy is that Israelis and “Palestinians” have never been married. They were never even friends. And they have been enemies since Muslim and Christian leaders in British Palestine first heard of the Balfour Declaration–or even before that, according to some historians. There is no court in the world that would grant someone a “divorce” from a hostile neighbor to whom he/she had never been married, or even lived with on intimate terms. . Maybe a court would grant someone an “order of protection” from a hostile neighbor. But in the Middle East, who could enforce such an order? Maybe, just maybe, the IDF.
The international community is still pressuring us to reverse the results of the 1967 war
how about the Israeli (Jews) did not win in 67 but the arabs became gracious loosers.