By Ari Yashar, Arutz Sheva Staff
As negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority continue amid international calls for a 23rd Arab state in the Judea and Samaria (West Bank) region – which would leave Israel with the territory it held prior to the 1967 Six-Day War – familiar calls from within Israel are being heard warning of the “indefensible borders” the Jewish State would be left with in such an eventuality.
It is not a new claim. Israel’s former Foreign Minister Abba Eban famously referred to the so-called “’67 borders” as “Auschwitz borders,” provocatively expressing the fears of many Israelis that a return to the 1949 Armistice lines would leave them perilously vulnerable to attack in a neighborhood which has proven all too often to be hostile to their very presence.
But is that really the case? Or, as some critics of Israel claim, are those fears simply unfounded?
One prominent Israel advocate who has taken it upon himself to clearly illustrate the case is New York based attorney Mark Langfan. On Tuesday Langfan appeared on the CBN News show “The Watchman with Erick Stakelbeck,” and, with the aid of three topographical maps set out to prove why in his view a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria would create an indefensible security situation for Israel.
The show starts with a regional map showing how Israel provides “the first and last line of defense” between Islamic terror and NATO nations, first among them Greece.
Langfan then showcased a topographical map illustrating how the inaccurately termed “West Bank” actually consists of the mountains of Judea and Samaria. His analysis predicts a Palestinian state there could turn into a strategic terror base in the heart of Israel.
Langfan on Stakelbeck The Watchman from Mark Langfan on Vimeo.
The maps show how 70% of Israel’s population and 80% of its industrial base lie in an area nine miles wide at its narrowest between the “Green Line” and the Mediterranean sea.
If a Palestinian state was created in that region, Langfan asserts the Palestinians could easily smuggle in rockets – as has occurred in Gaza – and vividly demonstrated how the katyusha rockets currently being fired from Gaza possess a range that would reach every part of Israel’s population center.
Langfan, of “Americans for a Safe Israel”, has created these three-dimensional topographical map to explain the implications of strategic height and depth for Israel’s security.
In 2011 he won the “Justice Louis B. Brandeis Award” from the Zionist Organization of America, and in 2012 he received the “Shomer Yisrael” award from Bet El Yeshiva Center.
The show “The Watchman” debuted on CBN News on September 17, 2013. Langfan is scheduled to be back on next week with maps detailing the Iranian threat.
Other graphical presentations have also shown how a Palestinian state with no IDF presence in the Jordan valley presents indefensible security threats to Israel.
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