By MARTIN SHERMAN
The time has come for the “Right” to “bite the bullet” & give up trying to advance convoluted political prescriptions in lieu of the two-state formula. It is time to identify the Palestinian-Arabs as the enemy
The goal of our struggle is the end of Israel, and there can be no compromises…the goal of this violence is the elimination of Zionism from Palestine in all its political, economic and military aspects…We don’t want peace, we want victory. Peace for us means Israel’s destruction and nothing else —Yasser Arafat – 1970, 23 years before the signing of the Oslo Accords
The PLO will now concentrate on splitting Israel psychologically into two camps…We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. Jews will not want to live among Arabs. I have no use for Jews. They are and remain Jews –Yasser Arafat – 1996, 3 years after the signing of the Oslo Accords
The Arabs are [the same]Arabs … the sea is the same sea, and the aim is the same aim: extermination of the State of Israel – even if you call it ‘self-determination.’– Yitzhak Shamir, 1989
In my column last week, I made the case for Israel to identify the Palestinian-Arab collective for what it openly admits itself to be—an implacable enemy, not a prospective peace partner—and urged that it to formulate policy commensurate with this diagnosis.
Hardly a hapless victim
In this regard, I underscored that it is imperative to keep in mind that, while there are certainly many Palestinian-Arabs with fine personal qualities, the Palestinian-Arab collective is not the hapless victim of radical terror groups.
Quite the opposite.
It is, in fact, the societal crucible in which they were forged, and from which they emerged. Its leadership is a reflection of, not an imposition on, Palestinian-Arab society.
Corroboration for this dour appraisal is provided (probably unintentionally) by the European Council for Foreign Relations’ Senior Policy Fellow Nick Witney, hardly an avid pro-Israel hardliner, who aptly describes the affinity that the general Palestinian-Arab population has for Hamas, an internationally designated terror organization: “Hamas…can claim more popular legitimacy than the IRA ever could. It was, after all, chosen by the people of Gaza to govern them the last time they were able to express their views through the ballot box, in 2006 – an election which, indeed, delivered a plurality of votes for Hamas across the occupied territories.”
Regrettably, this is a reality that many seem reluctant to acknowledge—even otherwise astute scholars, who appear acutely aware of the deeply flawed nature of the current Palestinian leadership—and even more of the grave defects of the Oslowian peace process that brought them to power.
Reluctance to recognize reality
This reluctance to recognize that innate hostility towards the Jewish state is a societal characteristic of the Palestinian-Arab public (which engenders its Judeophobic leadership), expresses itself in two broad categories of policy proposals.
The first of these categories involves waiting for some alternative, more amenable leadership to emerge—by means of some unspecified chain of events—that will have both the requisite pliancy and authority to conclude a lasting accord with Israel—the pliancy to accept Israeli conditions, and the authority to induce the Palestinian-Arab public to accept them.
The second category involves prescriptions for dissolving the current leadership, dismantling the mechanisms of its administration and incorporating the Palestinian-Arab residents into the permanent population of Israel under Israeli governance, typically invoking some—usually unspecified—process towards their eventual full or partial enfranchisement as citizens of the country.
Neither of these two alternative proposals have any real empirical evidence to support their feasibility or theoretical reasoning to underpin their plausibility.
To the contrary, most of the available data and reasoned conjecture would seem to negate any merit in such formulae.
“Palestinians cursed with incompetent, corrupt leaders…”
Two recently published articles illustrate the logical flaws in proposals of the first category.
One was a piece that appeared in “The Forward”, “How Aid To Palestinians Hurts — Not Helps — The Peace Process” , authored by Asaf Romirowsky, executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and Alex Joffe of the Middle East Forum. (Clearly, neither of the organizations with which the authors are associated endorses anything approaching the kind of extreme concessionary dogma promoted by radical left-leaning groups such as J-Street.)
The other was a piece posted by political analyst, Daniel Krygier , entitled Time to demand the Palestinian Authority’s unconditional surrender, which in itself tends to reveal the author’s hawkish predilections.
In their article, Romirowsky and Joffe cogently call for cutting funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that perpetuates the deceptive and detrimental fiction of Palestinian refugees and convincingly explains why continuing such funding is likely to sustain—rather than curtail—the conflict. (I have advocated much the same for over a decade.)
Accordingly, I found myself agreeing with virtually everything they wrote—until the last paragraph.
In it, they assert: “Palestinians are… cursed with incompetent and corrupt leaders whose fantasies, violence and rejectionism have been a disaster since the 1920s… Replacing their leaders is a vital next step to reforming the Palestinian Authority and making real progress toward creating a state that treats Palestinians with decency, not as refugees but as citizens, and one that is capable of living in peace alongside Israel.”
Leadership a reflection of, not an imposition on, Palestinian society
In his article, Daniel Krygier takes a similar line.
After vividly cataloging the years of nefarious malfeasance of the Palestinian leadership, in his concluding paragraph, he writes: “The time has come for Israel and America to demand an unconditional surrender of the PA and replace it with a new Arab leadership committed to genuine peace and progress.”
This of course immediately raises a number of trenchant questions.
Firstly, if the Palestinian-Arabs have been saddled with “incompetent and corrupt leaders” for almost a century, why have they not cast them off and replaced them with leaders less incompetent and corrupt? After all, history is replete with examples in which people threw off the rule of regimes far more onerous and entrenched than that with which the Palestinian-Arabs are purportedly burdened. So why have the Palestinian-Arabs not even made a feeble attempt in this regard? Indeed, when they were given the chance to determine their leadership they elected…Hamas.
So could it be that, as I argued last week, the kind of leadership the Palestinian-Arabs have had over the past decades is not an unwanted imposition on them, but merely a reflection of their society, of their societal choices and their societal values.
Delusion that two-statism can be fixed
Moreover, when Romirowsky, Joffe and Krygier called for reforming and replacing the Palestinian leadership, who is supposed to do the reforming and the replacing? And how is this to be done? If it is the Palestinian-Arabs themselves who are supposed to do it, what reason to believe that they will do now what they have not done “since the 1920s”?
If the intention is that others do the reforming and replacing, how are these reformers/replacers to be selected? And how are their actions/decisions to be legitimized by the Palestinian public—never mind accepted by any surviving replaced leader?
At the root of this flawed thinking is the belief –even by those who excoriate the Palestinians—that the two-state paradigm can still be fixed- and need not be nixed.
This is a dangerous delusion. For, although it is perhaps conceivable that in the next hundred years, the Palestinian- Arabs could morph into something they have not been for the last hundred years, there is very little—empirically or theoretically—to support such forlorn hope. Moreover, even if this unlikely metamorphosis does materialize, it is likely to take many years, even decades, to come about.
Accordingly, it would appear wildly irresponsible to adopt, as the basis for the current formulation of long-term national strategy, a scenario that is both highly improbable, and is only likely to occur, if at all, in the distant future.
In the meantime, prevailing problems must be addressed and far more plausible possibilities dealt with —like how to contend with a Palestinian leadership that remains un-replaced and unreformed –and just as inimical as it is today.
Lebanonizing Israel
This brings us to the second category of policy prescriptions.
These do not focus on any future reformation/replacement of Palestinian leadership, but on dissolving the current leadership, dismantling the mechanisms of its administration and incorporating the Palestinian-Arab residents into the permanent population of Israel, under Israeli governance.
This is an approach founded on the wildly optimistic (the less charitable might say irresponsible) belief that Israel could forge a coherent and cohesive society with two roughly equal, disparate and largely rivalrous ethnic groups with irreconcilable mutually exclusive defining narratives. Proponents of this view base their credo on demographic assessments that if Israel were to annex the territories of Judea-Samaria, it would still retain a 60-65% Jewish majority –which clearly means an initial 35-40% Muslim minority.
Relying on this assessment (which, generally, I do not dispute), “Right-wing” one-staters typically suggest that some kind of process of enfranchisement would be instituted over time to allow the annexed Palestinian-Arabs full or partial political rights. One of the first, and arguably the most prominent, proponents of this idea from the ranks of the “Right”, was Caroline Glick in her “The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East”.
However, this would, in effect, comprise an almost certain recipe for the Lebanonization of Israeli society. Indeed, I have warned repeatedly how devastating this would be for Israel in terms of the socio-cultural and economic fabric of the country—despite the initial electoral arithmetic—pointing out how/why a process of demographic dynamics could kick in to erode any Jewish majority —see for example here; here; here; here; and here .
Lebanonizing (cont.)
Last week a new article appeared advancing this notion , by Michael Wise, a veteran “Right-wing proponent of “one-statism”.
Entitled One Jewish Democratic State, it proposes that when
“… Israel declares sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria, it should grant immediate universal citizenship to the Arab residents of the West Bank — but only when regional peace breaks out. Jihad and suicide bombings must end, and Muslim leaders and groups must stop lauding violence. And Arab leaders, in both Israel and the region, must recognize Israel as a Jewish state”.
Wise continues, suggesting the restoration of the old and discredited idea of “autonomy”:
“In the interim, Arab residents of the West Bank will have full civil and religious rights. They will autonomously manage their municipal affairs, and democratically elect their local leadership — but should not participate in national elections. Clearly, as long as Hamas and Fatah seek Israel’s destruction — and as long as global Islamic violence continues — one cannot expect that Israel would be suicidal and risk giving national voting rights to a population that wants to undermine its very existence.”
This is a blatant prescription for an “apartheid state”, in which large segments of the permanent population are denied political rights on the basis of ethnicity. It raises a myriad of thorny questions.
Here are a just few:
Is Wise seriously suggesting that Israel condition the political rights of members of its permanent population on the behavior of outside governments and organizations, over which they have no control? Would continuing violence against Israel, instigated by foreign countries, be grounds for precluding the political rights of Arab residents—or stripping them of such rights, should violence flare after they were granted?
And if it would be suicidal for Israel to “giv[e] national voting rights to a population that wants to undermine its very existence”, how much less “suicidal” would it be to sustain that population by providing it with water, electricity, fuel, education, and unrestricted freedom of movement throughout the country—shopping malls, beaches and all?
Time for the “Right” to the bite the bullet
The time has come for the “Right” to “bite the bullet” and give up trying to produce all sorts of convoluted political prescriptions in lieu of the two-state formula—that propose replacing Palestinian leaders, reforming Palestinian governance or co-opting Palestinian residents. It is time to identify the Palestinians for what they are and for what they claim to be–not prospective peace partners but implacable enemies–and to formulate policy prescriptions that treat them accordingly.
Martin Sherman is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies
@ Felix Quigley:
Thank you very much Felix, and easy to understand. I’ve used a PC for years (although understanding almost nothing about it) and understand that the pad is the same as the mouse. So I can carry out your instructions using the pad, including the R and/or L clicks etc. When I highlight it becomes a blue colour, but never noticed that it would say at the top cut or paste etc. Never watched for it, so it slipped past my vision. Now that I know…. Fortunately my contretemps happens only rarely these days, as the site IS very stable.. Thanks again.
@ Felix Quigley
Israel’s economy
https://www.timesofisrael.com/sp-holds-israels-rating-at-investment-grade-with-a-positive-outlook/
@ Edgar G.:
Don’t mention it.
@Felix Quigley
None of that is relevant. He said he thought that the Jews of the Yishuv were about to be massacred. Wrong. He said that the Jews of France needed mostly to understand and work with conditions in France instead of getting the hell out in the late ’30s. Wrong. He said that a global revolutionary socialist regime that would move people around like chess pieces would be the only solution. Hasn’t happened. Globalism, by the way. Wrong. He said there could be a voluntary movement of people in or out to create different homelands. Wrong.
You said bourgeois Israel and global capitalism is tottering. Wrong. Never been stronger.
He said Yiddish was the national language of the Jewish people. Wrong. He said it was only developed after he reached adulthood. Wrong.
His comments about Birobidjan were wrong.
He seemed to think he had to read Yiddish to read the Jewish press. Wrong.
The Jewish Telegraph Agency documented every step of the Shoah as it unfolded in English as it was happening.
He understood that he knew nothing, but he didn’t keep his trap shut.
Wrong.
Every word out of his mouth is idiocy.
FYI Edgar:
It repeatedly ate my comment but I had saved it by typing control a to select all and control v to paste. Finally, I realized it would only let me reply so many times so I deleted the system’s @reply and just typed it in. This should work.
@ Felix Quigley:
To myself I should have said in that initial step of highlighting slide the mouse back up as you hold left click down. By the way the mouse should slide VERY freely. This is important. I am now using just a table top. I stopped using these mouse mats. The free sliding is very important.
@ Edgar G.:
Edgar this site is now very stable. But if you do write a serious comment which may be a bit lengthy that you really do not want to lose then place the curser at the exact end and (use the mouse) simply slide the mouse backwards up the type to end exactly at your start. This changes the colour what they call highlighting. Then right click on the mouse. By doing this, remember on the colour or shaded, you will see at the top cut and copy. Do not use the cut in this case. It will disappear. Use copy. You have still a record. Then place the cursor where you want the text to appear. Right click again and click paste. From what I read you need to get used to the mouse. The mouse is very good for people like you and me. So in short, a serious comment, you write, finish, right click and copy…you already have it insured. I had these problems big time and everybody has had.
So to sum up
you write, highlight, right click, copy…you can go ahead and paste that is double insurance…but I stop at the first
With practise with the mouse you will do this in a flash with practice.
(I am now going to highlight and rt click to copy) because this may be useful at another time)
Can’t think of a context that would justify those quotes. Care to supply one?
https://www.israpundit.org/into-the-fray-identifying-the-enemy-as-the-enemy/
But the context was provided by Sebastien Zorn himself who was in the most malicious and destructive manner MISQUOTING from that collection of writings under that url.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/jewish.htm
When I went into this it seemed clear to me that here was a gang mentality that is so destructive of any kind of advance in thinking, awareness and consciousness.
The format of this above article needs to be understood. It is a pulling together of four different quotes made at different times.
These four quotes are it must be emphasised part of a whole. The whole being that Trotsky arrived in Mexico under very stressed conditions from Norway. What happened in Norway is very instructive too. Trotsky lived in great danger from Norway Fascists as well as from Stalinism, and as months went on the “Labour Party” there which was in power formed an alliance with Stalin against Trotsky. Then there was a desperation to find a country to give Trotsky a visa. Not one would. Only Mexico under the influence of its President and a noted artist.
Trotsky was genuinely isolated much of this time.
The explanation was placed clearly at the top of these well edited quotes, with one mistake, the last quote is not properly annotated. It is made to run into the other three above it. A mistake but not serious.
The explanation or introduction is clear…”We publish herewith four statements by Trotsky during the last years of his life expressing his views on the Jewish question. The first is in the form of an interview given to correspondents of the Jewish press upon his arrival in Mexico. The second is an excerpt from an article on “Thermidor and Anti-Semitism” written in 1937. The third is a letter which Trotsky addressed to the Jews menaced by the mounting wave of anti-semitism and fascism in the United States, calling upon them to support the revolutionary struggle of the Fourth International as the only road to their salvation. The fourth statement is from the archives of Leon Trotsky.”
All of these statements or comments to journalists are of importance. They take up a whole number of vital issues which are very widespread.
It makes two claims in particular. One Jews need their own Homeland as a representing of Jewish nationalism. The success of this Jewish nationaliusm cannot be won by bourgeois Jewish nationalism. Trotsky called this once “Zionism” but as time went on he would have corrected this and said instead more accurately “bourgeois Zionism”.
There is and will be, more and more, another form of Zionism and that is Zionism from the standpoint of the revolutionary reconstruction of society under socialism.
Sebastien Zorn did not understand any of this. This passage is instructive.
“I enclosed the link to that entire passage. he says:” ” the facts of every passing day demonstrate to us that Zionism is incapable of resolving the Jewish question.” in the very passage you cite, for starters.” And from that you conclude he was a Zionist?”
No need for any confusion really…I am clearer in my writing on this than Trotsky but that is easy, much time for reflection has passed by. I would have written…”bourgeois Zionism is incapable of resolving the Jewish question” and so I believe that is precisely the case.
We are indeed in dire straits in the world. Despite my disagreement with his policy… in his contributions on that post Mike Wise described this world situation, with Islamic “chaos making” at its centre, very well and I hope he permits me to use that great description of his. He describes the havoc Islam is wreaking in a weakened and chaotic capitalist world (he does not use the word capitalist though). He lists many countries and many situations. It was not like this in the fifties. It is changing. It is the bourgeois world. It is the present world under the capitalist system.
So it is nonsense to say that there need not be an alternative to the capitalist system.
Why then all that frenetic energy of last week to have the analyses of Leon Trotsky literally destroyed (written out) and NOT DISCUSSED?
To the extent of doing what serious scholars must never do…Use of selective quotation and not struggle for the overall sense of an argument.
The capitalist world itself is breaking up. It is driving to Fascism. Trump I should say President Trump is like a plug in a dam against this Fascism represented acutely by CNN.
The way forward is the enlightening of Jews in Israel. I have many practical proposals but I will not list them. More important is that development in consciousness among the Jews themselves who are very divided and uncertain without leadership. Needed is a massive leap in consciousness. That is why I return to this horrific situation on last weeks Into The Fray article.
If anybody should intimate that I am talking rubbish, irrelevant, not on the point…then I invite you to ask some pertinent questions. When people in the world look at Israel today and ask what is its position on any one of 50 key questions, take the Yemen as just one example, is it clear what its position is? Netanyahu is theoretically and intellectually a very lazy leader. Israel really does not have ANY position, any clear position, any position that leaps from the page, on really anything. That is the real problem and I suspect Martin Sherman agrees with me there.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Gotcha, thanks again.
@ Edgar G.:
Edgar G. Said:
Select and copy or cut then position the cursor where you want it and paste. Copy leaves the original in place. Cut deletes the original. In both cases the copy is transferred to the windows clipboard from which you paste to the destination, control v.
Control backspace is for when you make a typo while typing. It saves having to hit the backspace key repeatedly.
control p is to print what’s on screen to your printer.
This language is universal windows language. should work on any program on any computer. Even Apple has something comparable. It’s pre-windows keyboard shortcuts which were never taken out
FYI. Lenovo is what used to be IBM and the operating system is PC as opposed to Apple, android or Chromebook, for example. All PCs work the same way. All PCs use Windows and beneath that the older operating system, DOS. These short cuts should work on anything. You can transfer text between programs even. So you could copy from a Word Document, say, to Israpundit.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Thank you Sebastien indeed, I can understand all this. I’m surprised….A few questions. How do I transfer something I have cut to where I want to paste it say, in an email or post…? And is “control +backspace” to delete a word in the item I’m cutting and pasting. (because to delete any word in my email, I just use backspace by itself) And the “printing”, is that where I need a printer, or is it something else. I don’t have a printer.. And “select all”, indicates all of what,….??
You see how little I know. When I had a Lenovo I became used to it and was able to use the cut & paste, no problem. This PC is ????
You mke everything easy for me to understand
@ Edgar G.:
control x is cut, control c is copy, control v is paste, control z is undo, control backspace is delete previous word, control A is select all, control p is print.
to highlight, (left) click, drag and release. Or position cursor to the right of the passage and click one, two or three times, you have to play with it. Or, left click before beginning of passage and shift left click at end.
@ david melech:
Thank you for the computer tips, I must say they mean absolutely nothing to me. I have not found out on this computer how to cut and paste yet, everything is a mystery, different signs hieroglyphics etc. I have it only 3 years…..I get stuck with Captcha only occasionally so rather than go to computer school I’ll suffer. Being a Jew I know how to do that…..
The Rabbi did bless me but whilst praying, he divided only one finger instead of two, so I’m not sure what he meant.
@ ms:
Martin,
Action plan summarized in bullet points are needed NOW. Your goals are correct as an explanatory background. Need to start step by step until the goal is reached.
The Yishuv was not built all at once but settlement by settlement.
@ ms:
Thank you Martin. I am well aware of your writings. I have an outline for sovereignty that combines your approach and Bennett’s. We need to go step by step. Some things may work and some things need to be adjusted.
Once Israel has successfully integrated Area C it can then work on Areas A and B. Unless you can be sure you know how to successfully help Arabs emigrate overseas and integrate others why would anyone in their right mind make the approximately 1,500,000 Arabs (of Area A/B in Judah & Samaria) Israeli residents yet alone citizens. This is a terrorist’s dream, to be able to freely travel all over Israel with an Israeli ID card.
Walk before you run and go step by step in this super risky proposition of incorporating a massive amount of Arabs into the State of Israel. If you can be highly confident that you can help large amounts of Arabs emigrate then you could start annexing parts of Area A (a City at at a time). Israel should NOT bring an Arab Trojan Horse into Zion. If you can NOT make sure a large amount of Arabs will emigrate, not do annex these areas and make these people residents!
You are correct in that Israel needs to spend time and money on explaining its new paradigm. However Israel needs to start going step by step NOW in safeguarding the land applying civil law to Jewish Towns in Judea/Samaria.
@ Edgar G.:
write your comment then before you post highlight what you’ve written, copy, post. then if you loose due to incorrect captcha come back to comment box paste your comment then post. if you need more safety do as said paste comment to word pad or similar save reboot copy from word pad and paste and post. sounds like a lot but it saves time, moaning at ted, and easy becomes habit.
if you go to shul the rabbi will bless you and you wont have these problems
@ Bear Klein:
We’ve spent 100 years giving enough carrots to choke dozen herds of donkeys-I mean asses- and it hasn’t worked a scrap. So now we should push on with the alternative . A round knobbed blackthorn cudgel, lead weighted with a few spikes casually embedded. And give it “good and proper”, until they cry “uncle”…..or the Arab equivalent.
@ Edgar G.:
I’m on Mozilla now, and I see that whatever i did, my poor old post has vanished. And I’m still logged in. ….???? …..Mashugga.???
@ Ted Belman:
TED- I’m posting this through Google Chrome. My other post is stuck with Mozilla. If I log out I’ll lose the post, which I didn’t want to do. At the same time,If I just let the post go I think that I won’t have to log out and in again….I think,,,, I’m VERY computer ignorant. I think the 1 password of 3 given worked. it was ****@123. but won’t now.
@ Bear Klein:
RETHINKING PALESTINE: THE HUMANITARIAN PARADIGM http://www.strategic-israel.org/1712/rethinking-palestine-the-humanitarian-paradigm/
@ Edgar G.:
Try logging out then logging in again.
TED -I have a post stuck in the Captcha thing. It keeps asking me to reverse and do the sum correctly.
@ Edgar G.:
The interior ministry does this today. It is a very slow process and would likely become slower. They do this for Jerusalem Arabs who apply to obtain citizenship or ask for permanent residence visas. What I have outlined certainly not be perfect and certainly should be subject to revision.
Real World though it might be as much as we expect to get (as compared to all becoming residents and.or being eligible for citizenship. Also as discussed previously some carrot is better than all stick.
@ Ted Belman:
That’s O.K. Ted, I had an unparalelled opportunity to expound on, and criticise something that was not my business….rarely happens, I grab it..
@ Edgar G.:
Forgot to add that the infrastructure required for everything after #5, would be huge, expensive and pay no dividends. And would strain the available man-power ( should I have said “person-power” so sollee) to carry it out. Not practical.nor practicable.
As the footman in Thackeray’s “Book of Snobs” says..”An’ that’s my candig apinium”.
@ Bear Klein:
Very good stuff but you should have stopped after #5. The rest is fruitless Israeli endeavours to carry on a kind of placation, even with stringent regulations.The Arabs will find a way around them and Israel, lethargic in their “let-down” after they think the whole 100 year mess is settled, will either ignore or be very, very slow to move on it.
I’m going by past experience, because that’s the way Israel is, can’t be ignored they are either overconfident -like after 1967- or haggling for 20 years about nothing much-like Oslo, or super-punitive, like penalising everybody because of the infringements of a few..
And don’t forget the 120 Prime Ministers. ….
@ Edgar G.:
My apologies. I meant that comment for MIke Wise. I have now corrected it.
@ mikewise:
Rather than absorb or at least deal with Sherman’s arguments, you doubled down and reiterated your views. I am with Sherman.
But Sherman’s article left the reader hanging. After thoroughly demolishing the contortions of the right, he should have added one sentance, “Therefore, there is no alternative but to promote Arab emigration.”
The Peace Process is OVER!
Time for Israel to go step by step in making sure Israel secures all the land via measures that legally and physically safe guard Israel.
1. Apply Israeli Civil Law to all Jewish Towns. State that Israel reserves the right to apply Israeli Civil Law to anywhere else in Judea/Samaria.
2. Build in all of Judea/Samaria. Focus on E1, the Jordan Valley, Gush Etzion to start.
3. Plan for the day the PA implodes or explodes or stops security cooperation. Getting ready to take over and administer the Arab Cities and surrounding villages. Any villages or cities that turn violence will be closed off and workers will not be allowed to exit to work in Israel.
4. Form an NGO to buy Palestinian Properties in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Judea/Samaria starting with Area C in villages next to Jewish Towns. Resell these properties to Jews and recycle the money to buy more Arab owned properties.
5. Form a different NGO to help Arabs quickly move to other countries. Provide financial incentives to help them go. Make sure they receive their funds when it is confirmed they are leaving.
6. Residency for Arabs in new areas where Israeli Civil Law is applied shall only be possible after a vetting process which determines they are not a security risk.
They will need to demonstrate loyalty to the Jewish Democratic State of Israel.
This will require learning Hebrew; your children will be required to provide civil national service at age 18 to 20.
Arab residents will be required to inform on anyone planning terrorist acts including family members. This will be a condition of residency!
If after 10 years of residency they wish to apply for citizenship they may. There then will be at least a two year period to investigate if they have successfully fulfilled the requirements of residency prior to bestowing citizenship. If they and their immediate family have met the conditions citizenship can be bestowed upon them.
@ Ted Belman:
That is correct. Just the simple example of a Jew wanders into Abu Dis and he gets attacked by a mob of 200 people and his car burned.
Israel needs to reduce the amount Arabs to those willing to co-exist in peace and willing to pledge allegiance to the State of Israel plus demonstrate this allegiance. We CAN NOT enlarge the Amount of enemy Arabs in our presence. That is why making Arabs residents without vetting them individually is a formula for disaster. They can not be left to go all over Israel and setup terror attacks.
Arafat’s declarations in 1970 and particularly in 1996, AFTER Oslo, as well as the clear-sightedness of Yitzhak Shamir in 1989 tell the whole story.
In paraphrased likeness of Hillel’s exposition of Torah…..all that remains is to fill in the details.
@ mikewise:
Mike. I believe that far too many of your expectations depend on-as you say- “hope”.
To me it’s like the hope that the Titanic passengers and crew had……
@ Ted Belman:
I agree with your last sentence-completely. But not your earlier comment. You call it “doubling-down” I did not debate Martin’s megillah, because I’ve seen it, absorbed it, and commented on it several times before–in much the same vein as have many erudite posters on this site. I’ve got to the point where to endlessly debate the same stuff, slightly altered each time, to cause the impression of new ideas, is pointless. I read it, but have no other comments to make other than those I made originally. The problem is more than just intractable.
I don’t keep records of my posts the way Martin, being professional and orderly, does of his articles, so I can’t just point “here..here…here..here..” as he can-and does. This itself shows that he is what he has previously written is closely related to his present article.
We are constantly looking for more and more innovative solutions to a problem to which there is NO solution, except decisive, crushing, flattening, earth-shattering military and political victory….where at the end of it..WE make the terms and THEY have to accept or be forever in the darkness. Encouraged emigration is the only modern acceptable way. I myself would favour putting them over the River, which is why I support the Jordan Option so strongly, although I would make it a bit stiff for any slow-coaches.
{Alternately, it’s barely possible that the Arabs will realise all at once that they were living in a self made bubble of fantasy, which has now burst, and after a bit of kicking and screaming, they will become humble and go way peaceably…………….I won’t hold my breath, but after much, much travail, this MAY happen.}
What remains to be decided for OUR best, lasting, international benefit, is, in what exactly and in which way the encouragement will be applied. Israel, with 120 Prime Ministers, plus numberless opinionated “machers” and academics, could be set to tear itself to pieces over the denouement.
Bernard Shaw said..”a pat on the back develops character, if applied often enough, hard enough, and low enough…”.
Mike, I believe you are conceptually trying to two things that I do not work. You are trying to fight the apartheid argument by saying the Arabs are citizens on hold until peace comes along. Those who use the apartheid argument will say peace will come when you treat Arabs equally. Kindly correct me if I am missing your point.
You want to apply sovereignty to all of the Land of the Jordan River with giving Arabs actual citizenship but allow them to self govern on a municipal level in Area A?
A longer version of Wise’s Plan responds to those who will continue to brand Israel as an Apartheid state.
But won’t the world brand Israel as an apartheid state with a Muslim minority of second class citizens? A world that has been blind to violent apartheid and racism in which over 100 million people were murdered in the last 100 years, cannot dictate to Israel and the Jewish people how to best preserve itself and continue as a democratic Jewish state. Israel cannot seek guidance from countries that persecute foreign minorities nor from authoritarian countries that have all the characteristics of apartheid non-democratic societies.
The Plan suggests that a semi-autonomous status is clearly superior to current status of military rule or to any proposal that creates a sovereign state on the west bank.
Hence, when Israel declares sovereignty over all of Judea & Samaria (the “West Bank”) it should grant immediate universal citizenship to the Arab residents of the West Bank but only as soon as regional peace breaks out. Muslims must first stop murdering and beheading each other and their neighbors. Jihadists and suicide bombings must end and Moslem leaders and groups must stop lauding such violence. Arab leaders in both Israel and the region, must abandon policies that deny the existence of Israel as a Jewish State.
In the interim, Arab residents of the West Bank will have full civil and religious rights. They will autonomously manage their municipal affairs and democratically elect their local leadership but will not participate in national elections.
The world of Islam is in the midst of a violent storm and as long as Hamas and Fatah seek Israel’s destruction and as long as Muslims proclaim and seek Israel’s extermination it would be suicidal to give national voting rights to a population that due to internal and external influences might engage in covert as well as overt political activities to undermine the existence of the Jewish state. There must first be significant evidence that Muslim Jihadists have undergone a reformation.
One day, the wars between different Moslem groups, between Shias and Sunnis; between Kurds and Ottomans; between Yazidi and Sunni; as soon as the wars of Muslims against fellow citizens in Nigeria, Chechnya, Kosovar, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Chad, Morocco, Sudan, south Sudan, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Bali, Jammu and Kashmir, Thailand, Bahrein, Iran, will end. Until then, Arab Muslims will have full civil and religious rights but the national decisions made by the Knesset with respect to security and international affairs of the nation cannot be placed in the hands of residents who are not committed to the preservation of Israel as a Jewish state. As long as the world of Islam views the Jewish state as a foreign intruder in the region, Israel cannot allow adherents of that ideology the opportunity to participate in crucial life and death national decisions.
In the absence of normalization, Israel cannot risk its continuity by granting full citizenship to a population that would participate in decisions that involve its security and survival as a Jewish state. Arab Muslim citizens cannot be empowered to join with anti-Zionist leftist members of Israel society and paralyze the country. Israel cannot take risks that could destroy Israel as a Jewish state.
It is the primary responsibility of every government including the Government of Israel to provide security for its citizens and residents. Even Left Wing Israel opposition leaders have recognized the reality and consequences of incitement and hatred directed against Israel as a Jewish State. Opposition leaders such as Yair Lapid have said any negotiations with the Palestinians would need to be conducted “in very slow stages.” How slow a process does Lapid envision? His answer is that it will take “15-20 years, the main element of which is security arrangements.” Left Wing Israeli leader, Isaac Herzog issued his peace plan in which he asserted that peace would have to wait until at least 10 years passed, during which the Palestinians would need to completely refrain from anti-Israel terror. Unfortunately, the Palestinians have not brought up a new generation that recognizes Israel’s right to exist; on the contrary, they have brought up a generation that believes in jihad and death, one that denies any Biblical Jewish history or links to the Holy Land.
The Arab world which comprises 22 states with over 5 million square miles and a population of 320 million people must cease to contest the existence of one Jewish State. West Bank Arab Muslims that refuse to live in a Jewish have 56 Islamic republics that would no doubt welcome them with open arms and provide political asylum from a Jewish state that grants full civil and religious rights.
We can hope that a 21st century reformation is in the offing and Muslims will cease slaughtering each other in 50 countries around the world. Shiites are massacring Sunnis. Farsi’s are murdering Sunnis. Turks are killing Kurds. ISIS is killing Yazidis. Moslem brotherhood are killing Al Qaeda in the Sinai. Civil wars rage in Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Egypt. Boko Haram Muslims terrorize Nigeria. Judaism and Christianity have undergone multiple internal reformations and contribute to the modern word. Until there is a total cessation of hostility and violence not only in Israel’s immediate neighborhood but also in the global wars of Islam, Israel cannot be expected to allow a Muslim minority influenced by violent anti-democratic forces to participate in life and death national decisions.
Israel will not compromise its existence as a Jewish state and cannot be asked to commit national suicide.
the includes:
We can hope that a 21st century reformation is in the offing and Muslims will cease slaughtering each other in 50 countries around the world. Shiites are massacring Sunnis. Farsi’s are murdering Sunnis. Turks are killing Kurds. ISIS is killing Yazidis. Moslem brotherhood are killing Al Qaeda in the Sinai. Civil wars rage in Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Egypt. Boko Haram terrorizes Nigeria. Judaism and Christianity have undergone multiple internal reformations and can confront the modern word. Until there is a total cessation of hostility and violence not only in Israel’s immediate neighborhood but also in the global wars of Islam, Israel cannot be expected to allow a Muslim minority influenced by violent anti-democratic forces to participate in life and death national decisions.
I’m glad you ended up by calling them “implacable enemies”….earlier you called them “rivalrous”…. I was afraid you were going backwards instead of towards the light.
The Arab Jew-hate is forever….farther in the future than can be seen. There are already 5 generations of “refugees”, who have taken up terrorism, the family business, or are ready to, when the opportunity is right. And the Israeli Arabs although not actively hostile, are mostly passively hostile, and becoming increasingly radicalised. They re Arabs after all, and we are Jews, and, insult of insults….the Jews are in charge.
Wise’s “Plan” would create a huge unwieldy minority of 40% which would be immediately unstable and untrustworthy, regardless of tests and promises. The country would be doomed from right then, the economy would fall flat, and no Jew would be able to go out of his home without guards.
What sort of mentality do people who devise plans like this have. Do they have an XRay-visible blank spot in the brain?? The last person I would have expected anything like this from, is Caroline Glick. But lately she doesn’t mention it any more, and we see her now almost daily advocating a different and more aggressive position.