Embracing Unilateralism

[I have long favoured unilateralism for the reasons Jack gives. When we act unilaterally, we don’t make any concessions for worthless promises.  Ted Belman]

By Jack Golbert

Predictably the Palestinians sabotaged implementation of yet another variation on Oslo. By entering a unity agreement with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the “peace process” is annulled, notwithstanding any whitewash by President Obama and his Secretary of State, John Kerry.

Israel has incessantly tried courting peace with the Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians,” making one painful concession after another, and one one-sided gesture after another, only to be made a fool of again and again. Negotiations, confidence building measures, painful concessions, security fence, proportionate response, and international guarantees are not just useless, but make Israel the laughing stock of all countries. Every algorithm that required reciprocity from the Palestinians failed. There is no choice but to find a viable alternative, certainly not a rehash of the same approach that has wrought disaster for decades.

Furthermore, there is no point in Israel making any agreement with anyone because only Israel is bound by them. And not only agreements, but Israel is bound even to things the Arabs demand which were never agreed to, such as suspension of Jewish construction over the Armistice Line and every offer Israel ever made, even if rejected, conditions be damned. Bill Clinton has reminded us in this regard, that Israel (in the person of Ehud Barak, who was then Prime Minister) once offered the Temple Mount to the Arabs, so “what’s the big deal?” Once offered, Israel is committed to it forever. And Israeli offer becomes an Israeli commitment, a unilateral one with no quid pro quo.

Yet, no one else is expected to keep any part of an agreement with Israel. Which paragraph of the Oslo or Wye agreements have the Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians” kept? Even the provision that the PLO will take control of the territories handed over by Israel they have not carried out. They shared power with Hamas from the beginning and then got ousted from Gaza in a coup d’etat. They agreed to teach peace in their schools and to eliminate anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement. Instead, they teach jihad in their schools and over their media, extol and glorify terrorists and teach hatred of Jews and Israel and the imperative to kill Jews and destroy Israel. Only Israel views that as a breach of their agreement to teach peace in their schools and to eliminate anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement. No one else cares.

The same has been true of the 1967 cease fire agreement with Egypt. The world demands that Israel keep to every letter of the agreement but never expected Egypt to keep any of it. Immediately upon Israeli surrender of territory, Egypt brought up anti-aircraft batteries prohibited by the cease fire agreement but the US ignored Israel’s complaints. They were the first step in the preparation for the Yom Kippur attack. Ho-hum.

So, it is clear that Israel has nothing to gain from an agreement but only to have its own hands tied. Whatever Israel does she must do unilaterally. Israel cannot, however, unilaterally withdraw from Judea and Samaria or any part of them and expect anything good to come of it. That would be simply preemptive surrender. Martin Sherman has disposed of that idea very definitively. (See http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Into-the-Fray-A-public-challenge-to-Michael-Oren-339234.)

He has similarly disposed of the solution proposed by Caroline Glick, whom he and I both admire and respect. (See http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Into-the-fray-To-my-colleague-Caroline-a-caveat-347503) In brief, Glick proposes that Israel annex Judea and Samaria and extend to the Arab inhabitants permanent residence and the possibility of citizenship. That, as Sherman has explained, would cause Israel to cease to exist, not only as a democracy, but as a society. It would turn Israel into an army with a country attached.

It is clear, however, that the “peace process” cannot lead to peace, nor was it ever meant to. Anyone who needs proof of that need only read the charters of the PLO, Hamas and Hezbollah. The purpose is dismemberment and demoralization of Israel preparatory to a final Arab onslaught to destroy Israel and exterminate the Jews.

In 1947, the Allied Powers supported the creation of the State of Israel for the sole purpose of facilitating the extermination of its 600,000 Jews who had cheated the gas chambers by being in the Land of Israel. After all, British military experts estimated that the Jews could hold out against combined military intervention by the Arab states’ armies for only three days. The British did everything they could to make sure that happened, short of sending their own army to do the job. They handed over their armaments and every strategic position to the Arabs. British officers commanded the Jordanian army. If that were not enough, the British released Nazi German officers from POW camps to command the Egyptian army. They embargoed arms sales to the Jews, although the Arabs already had established armies and the British would sell them all the additional armaments they wanted. And they persuaded all of the Allied Powers to also embargo arms sales to the Jews.

Miraculously, the Israelis won. So, Western diplomacy ever since has had the goal of denying Israel the fruits of its victory and setting it up for another attempt to destroy it. The “peace process” is just the newest disguise for the furtherance of the Allied Powers Holocaust.

Is that idea jarring? Get used to it. Then you will come to understand the BDS movement against Israel, why Israeli self-defense elicits anguished howls about “war crimes” and why any accusation, any calumny against Israel is automatically believed, no matter how outrageous or how many times the accusers have been proven to have lied.

Western leaders don’t give a damn about the Arabs’ true intentions, which they certainly know about. The “peace process” is not about peace at all, except by Arafat’s definition of “peace,” meaning the destruction of Israel. The Road Map does not show the final destination. The road ends at New Auschwitz. “Peace process” is today’s exact counterpart of “Arbeit Macht Frei.”

So Israel has no interlocutor with whom to come to a useful agreement and no alternative to unilateral action. The Palestinian Authority was created to establish peace with Israel but has no intention of doing so. Its manifest intentions are to use every concession made by Israel to improve its ability to wage war against Israel and kill Israelis. Nothing positive can come of dealings with it. Israelis of all political stripe overwhelmingly want separation from the Arabs but the Arabs refuse coexistence They insist on a zero-sum outcome, that being Israel’s destruction and the annihilation of the Jews.

As Sherman has articulated with utmost lucidity, the two-state advocates’ policy would make Israel untenable geographically in order to preserve its democratic character. The one-state advocates’ plan would make Israel untenable demographically in order to preserve its defensibility. The choice is between “apartheid” and annihilation. The alternatives are few and unattractive.

I propose a unilateral plan by which Israel can stabilize the situation and assure its own future. Israel must reenter and annex Judea, Samaria and Gaza, take down the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, destroy all the terrorist organizations, including the PLO, kill all known terrorists, retake control of the Temple Mount and close it to Muslim use, which constitutes a continuing humiliation of Israel and signals the superiority of Islam and its mastery over the Jews. Parallel to this, the Israeli government must generously subsidize Arabs to emigrate, as Sherman has also advocated, help them to find other countries to go to and stand ready to purchase their property and businesses if they have no other buyers.

All this needs to be done in order to make it clear that there will never again be any authority in this land other than the State of Israel and that the hostile Arab population will never become citizens. The diplomatic and media mugging that Israel will suffer will not be greater than for annexing a part, which would imply that the territories are not rightfully ours.

Then Israel should announce that the Arabs can have peace right where they stand. Don’t attack us again and we won’t take any more land from you, but if Israel has to enter Arab countries to defend against attack or to root out terrorist activity against Israel, Israel will never leave those territories. They will be annexed to Israel. It is all Eretz Yisrael anyway but we are content to wait for the Messiah to give it to us.  In the meantime, you may live there in peace and security, but only if you live at peace with us. You need not recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people nor declare an end of the conflict nor relinquish the “right” of return. Don’t declare anything. Just don’t attack us again and peace will reign.

Once it is clear that Israel will not be destroyed, many will leave for the chance to live well somewhere else. They will not stay, even if the oil sheikhs outbid Israel to induce them to stay. The oil sheikhs’ money cannot buy them a life free of the madness that they have created by their obsessive drive to destroy Israel.

None of this can happen, however, unless and until the present ruling elite are removed from power. To truly enfranchise the population and thus to democratize the regime, Israel must do the following:

End the media monopoly of the ruling elite by freeing the airwaves, making radio and TV licenses available to anyone who can demonstrate financial responsibility and sufficient technical expertise to comply with technical broadcast rules;

Restructure the government to provide for winner-take-all district elections to Knesset and executive appointment of judges subject to Knesset confirmation by a special majority;

Establish the centrality of Torah to Israeli education, law, policy and strategic planning. Being a Jewish state means embracing Jewish destiny. There is no other source by which to define such purpose and destiny and is no other purpose for the state that cannot be satisfied in France (where you can join Avram Burg), Spain (where you can join Shlomo Ben-Ami), the US, Italy, Canada or many other places; in brief, instill Torah and Jewish self-respect into Israeli education, foreign relations and defense policy.

This is my idea of constructive unilateralism.