By Ted Belman
Ralph Peters starts out his latest article Israel’s toughest choice-WHAT TO GIVE UP. . . AND WHAT LAND TO HOLD by saying some laudetory things about Israel but then displays enormormous ignorance and that’s putting it kindly.
He gets this part right.
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SO why should Israel surrender any land to its enemies, if it gets in return nothing but empty promises and more security problems?
The reason has nothing to do with justice or sense, but with one of those oddities of the international system, “world opinion.” I wish Israel could keep every inch of ground it now holds. But the reality is that global leaders who don’t know Gaza from Giza will demand that Israel give up turf.
That’s the good part. Then he continues,
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Israel’s internal enemies are the rogue, extremist settlers who invoke a real-estate-magnate god to occupy West Bank territory that the state doesn’t need and can’t digest – and whose seizure plays into the hands of Israel’s foes and complicates the support of her all-too-few friends.
To him our claim on Judea and Samaria is only based on the fact God allegedly allocated the land to the Jews. He doesn’t begin to understand that the promised land is central to Judaism and for Jews to give it up is to cut out the heart of Judaism. Jews have prayed for thousands of years for a return to Zion. If we relinguish our claim to the land, we commit spiritual suicide.
Elyakim Haetzni makes this argument in electrifying detail in The Shock of Surrender published by ACPR.
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Yet the fateful evolution of the Israeli parliamentary system has made those who return the least benefit to Israel – who drain its resources and give nothing back – into political kingmakers.
Having just returned from Israel you can imagine who he talked to. This assertion is as wrong as it is outrageous. It is also revolting.
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Jews who insist that their god cares more about a plot of bedeviled dirt than the reverence in their hearts are behaving like Arab militants (complete with the intolerance). No religious text is a valid deed.
That “plot of bedeviled dirt” is at the core of God’s covenant with the Jews. If you don’t recognize that you don’t understand Judaism. Jews cannot give it up without destroying Judaism.
He divides the issues as between security and emotions. As a military man he argues
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Israel can never surrender the Golan Heights. We might as well be honest about it. Syria repeatedly – three times – attacked Upper Galilee from the Golan. Three strikes and you’re out.
Syria’s a phony state, anyway, its borders drawn to please France. Israel has administered the Golan longer – and far better – than post-independence Damascus did.
Borders change. Get over it.
Elsewhere, though, traditional strategists have it wrong. They claim that whoever holds the mountainous “spine” running down through the West Bank controls the land that now comprises Israel. But Israel’s survival and victorious wars disprove that “law.”
What matters is control of the lines of communication – the roads – that enable Israel to shift military forces rapidly, and the control of foreign borders across which weapons can be infiltrated.
Thus, control of the Jordan Valley and its vital north-south highway is essential. The string of hilltop settlements east of Jerusalem that dominate the direct route to Jordan can never be given up.
And the recently floated scheme to swap Arab towns in northern Israel for part of the West Bank is madness – it would cost Israel control of a militarily vital highway from the coast into Galilee.
IN short, there are vital locations within the West Bank. They’re just not the ones obsessing the fanatics who shame their faith.
If Israel doesn’t do a cold- blooded analysis of what it truly needs to retain, the world will ask too much, its government will make decisions based upon political pressure rather than military necessity – and the result will be a far-worse mess than the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip created.
Israel must do what its survival requires. As the interim Winograd Report made clear on Monday, last summer’s duel with Hezbollah was disastrous. Now Israel’s enemies smell blood. Instead of the longed-for era of peace, we’ll see no end of violence in the Middle East.
THERE’S no good solution to the region’s problems. There may not even be any bad solutions that work. The failed civilization surrounding Israel may be hopeless – a possibility we pretend away because we cannot bear the implications.
But Israel can’t pretend anything away. In a world in which so many openly seek its destruction – while others secretly long for the same thing – Israel is going to have to play flawless political chess. That means giving up the spaces on the board that don’t help it checkmate its enemies.
What he talks about keeping is no way near being offered to Israel, so why talk about giving anything up.
