Two weeks ago, in the Intermountain Jews News, Dr Neil Dobro wrote a letter to the editor censuring Israel’s decision to exchange deceased soldiers for a child killer. Ultimately, the letter covered the Israel-Arab conflict in general, eloquently – while also vehemently – enumerating the difficulties, or as he views them, impossibilities of Israel negotiating peace.
While we agree that the peace process faces huge hurdles, we are not as strident in our lack of belief as Dobro, who wrote on behalf of the organization Americans Against Terrorism (Denver). We would, however, be interested in hearing what suggestions those whom believe the peace process fruitless have for solving the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Is there an alternative to the peace process?
Dobro, clearly a realist, realizes the conflict is complex. He concludes, “We need a spiritual awakening and a political change of course.”
So here’s an open call, to you our readers and participants. There is a situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories that is not going away, that somehow needs solving. What ideas do you have for achieving a solution? What kind of solution do you think is viable?
There is an alternative to the peace process. It’s called hanging tough. If one side is not ready for a solution, because, at the very very best, it will agree not to be violent against Israel but will never recognize it as a Jewish state, this means that a “peace” agreement is, from the Palestinian point of view, just a stage in the continuing war for Israel’s destruction. “Peace negotiations” with people who don’t want peace can only be to Israel’s detriment. Witness missiles from Gaza. Witness continuing, attempted suicide bombings. Witness Hezbollah’s lust for bombing Israel. Witness Iran’s call for Israel’s destruction. Israel has to hang tough, build its deterrent power, and wait for another day. If the left — Rabin & Co. — can’t bring peace, and the right — Sharon & Co. — can’t bring peace, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.
The IJN poses the question of an alternative to negotiations.
These negotiations have produced exclusively Israeli concessions. The removal of Israeli checkpoints have facilitated new deadly terror attacks that otherwise would have been avoided. The release of Arab terrorist prisoners has resulted in about 40% of those prisoners returning to terror, for the purpose of causing Jewish deaths. The concession of Israeli troops staying out of area A has lead to the establishment of Arab terror bases and training camps, which has lead to new attacks and Jewish deaths. Space permits a full recounting; but you get the picture.
On the Arab side, not one promise of a meaningful concession has been kept. Not one.
This makes an answer rather easy, as almost anything is better than continuing a policy that has produced total failure. The obvious one is: win the war the Arab side started.
Ironically, if the terrorists are soundly beaten, they will talk peace for real. As a matter of historic fact, negotiations are only effective when one or both sides changes the initial aspirations it had when the war began. Israel aspires only to exist. The Arab side aspires to have Israel’s existence terminated. The “peace process” has given the Arabs only encouragement that their aspirations can and will be realized. It has also shaken Israeli confidence that its aspiration of existence is possible in the long term. Continuing this process can only change the Israeli side.
Decisive military shifts change aspirations. War isn’t nice. War is painful and sad. The alternative to war is a lot of dead Jews and Jewish refugees looking for new homes in New Jersey.
While it seems counter-intuitive, war does settle conflict and brings peace.
Most Americans, and sadly most Israelis, don’t have the answer to the IJN’s question. When you cannot even consider the alternative of winning a war in which you are already dying as a solution, the other side surely has you beaten. That is part of what I meant by “a spiritual awakening and a political change of course”.
Final note: for a DVD of my recent lecture “The Arab Revolution and Israel: How the Arab Side Plans to Win”, please email [email protected] Cost: a minimum $5 donation to Americans Against Terrorism
I agree with Ben M. To say it a little differently, there cannot possibly be any true peace (exclude the Hudna-type of pause that allows Hamas to re-arm) in the near term with Israel’s enemies that have spent every day of the last 15 years teaching their citizens, particularly their young people, that the Jews are inherently evil, Israel is an illigitimate country, killing all Jews is justified and, worst of all, that to blow yourself up in the process of killing Jews is the best possible thing you can do, even if you are a pre-teen.
Those who think that making enough concessions (read appeasement) will eventually bring lasting peace to Israel will wake up one morning to find out that there is nothing left to cencede and that the Israeli concessions (hasty pullout from Lebanon, vacating Gaza and northern Galilee, etc.) have strengthened their enemies to the point that reversing those concessions is no longer an option. That morning may not be far off.
If Olmert and the Labor/Kadima ruling parties can be replaced in the very near future by the kind of leadership that was in place prior to 1993 (Oslo Accords), then there may be a chance to reverse the disastrous concessions of the last 15 years.
If Jewish Israelis are so tired of fighting their enemies (as Olmert famously said) that they do not have the will to continue the fight in the spirit of the six-day war, then, short of the fulfilment of biblical prophecy, there is no hope for the country and their people.
To serious students of history and geopolitics, there can only be one
reality-based strategy to ending the
Arab-Israeli conflict: End any hope of irredentism among the Arabs by a clearly stated and consciously applied Israeli program of resettling as many Arabs as possible elsewhere, with fair compensation in the first instance. It is arrant fantasy to believe that the mass of Muslim Arabs, with the exception of the Druze, will ever accept a uniquely Jewish state in their midst, when their religion’s most basic tenets preach supremacism over all other religious paths and the recovery of all lands that have ever been ruled by Muslims. Total conversion of all the world’s people to fundamentalist Islam is the unwaveringly stated goal.
There is thus no stable diplomatic solution to what is essentially a religio-ethnic contest for sovereign control over the landmass that comprises the State of Israel.
How then to impose a Jewish one-state solution on the non-Druze Arabs in Judaea, Samaria, green-line Israel, and eventually Gaza too?
Following are some basic steps:
1. Israel must change its rules for citizenship; namely, all its citizens must learn to speak Hebrew, pledge political allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state, do some form of national service, and pay taxes. All Jewish immigrants should continue to have automatic citizenship. However, no Arabs from Judaea & Samaria would be eligible for Israeli citizenship, except after a period of 10-15 years and then only on the basis of discretionary needs criteria set by the Israeli government. All Arab citizens in Israel would be required to do national service of some kind, but only civilian in character; their participation in military service should not be permitted.
2. All Arabs in the land, even citizens, should be offered significant cash & perhaps educational/job inducements to leave Israel voluntarily. The earlier any given person decides to leave, the more generous the inducements should be.
3. All members of terrorist organizations or those committing terrorist acts should be rooted out and expelled, or jailed until they could be expelled. Israel should enact limited capital punishment & justifiable homicide statutes to deal with terrorists captured/confronted during the planning or commission of acts of terrorism.
4. The Oslo Accords should be officially rescinded/abrogated and Israeli sovereignty and full military and civil control re-extended to all of Judaea and Samaria. If a binding non-aggression treaty could not be concluded with Gaza within a reasonable period of time, Israel should forcibly reoccupy the territory at the first instance it is militarily provoked and then reassert sovereignty and total control there too.
Israel must be publicly declared to the world as the sovereign home of the Jewish People, whose primary purpose is to provide a political commonwealth for the protection, nurturance, and advancement of the Jewish People and Judaism.
Once the political will is expressed stolidly by Jews for the integrity of a Judaic-centric state, the world will come to accept it eventually.
With Arab hostility endemic to the region at least in the short term, Israel’s military prowess must remain second to none and its willingness to deploy it in furtherance of proper & legitimate security objectives must be clearly articulated and, if need be, acted upon. Thus, in addition to Gaza, if a non-aggression treaty cannot be concluded with Lebanon, Israel must invade that country and fully neutralize, all the way up to the Litani River, the clear and present threat posed by Hezbollah’s deployed missile force & terrorism infrastructure.
Perhaps the first thing to do is to be candid about what that “situation” is in Israel and the surrounding territory. Israel should not even exist and the war cry of many in the middle east is to blow the Jewish state right off the map. Even children are lauded as heroes if they blow themselves up in the process of killing Jews. Simple solution.
But that depends which side you are on, now doesn’t it? Consequently, if you are to have peace in Israel, it will not come through negotiations with those with attitudes of hate taught from birth.
The release of that brutal terrorist for two dead tortured Israeli bodies is an outrage. As soon as those soldiers were captured, he should have been shot and then sent back with the message that one prisoner per day would be returned the same way until the pows were sent back unharmed. This is the only language terrorists understand. The notion of appeasement is fatalistic. That idea merely serves to give a false sense of security while simultaneously encourages those with a bloodthirsty mentality to expect and demand more.
This solution to fight back will not completely end the violence, but the rest of the world sure would take notice that Israel wastes no time nor words on evil hearts and twisted minds. No more negotiations, no more prisoner releases, no more land. This is no ideal perfect planet with all amicable inhabitants; so the best thing possible to achieve a lessening in the violence in the middle east is for the leadership in Israel to accept the reality of their neighbors’ barbaric Islam-based views and take a solid, real stand to defend itself and it’s citizens boldly, unwaveringly, and unashamedly.
Dr. Dobro is correct in believing that Israel should never negotiate with terrorists. The Israeli and Palestinian coflict has been falsely reported for years, and without Israel remaining firm in their military efforts they might as well give up all the land.
The sad truth is that the Arab world has convinced the uninformed world that they are being “occupied” by the Israeli’s false claim to statehood. All the while, Jordan is comprised of 53% so-called, “Palestinians.” What? Yes, Jordanians are really . . . Palestinians. Or, are Palestinians really Jordanians? You decide. Either way, the Palestinians already have their state . . . it’s called Jordan! Therefore, it should be the responsibility of the oil-rich Arab states to absorb the helpless “Palestinians.”
As for Israel . . . it’s the inheritance of the twelve tribes of Jacob (Israel). Has any country in the history of the world ever given back the land they captured? Will America ever give back their land to Mexico? Or, will they give back Alaska to Russia? No way! However, the U.N. and the like, have the chutzpah to tell Israel they must return back to the pre ’67 borders!
It amazes me that 5 million+ Jews, threaten 80 million+ Arabs surrounding Israel, and the world sympathizes with the terriorists. If Arabs want to better their lives by living in Israel, then they should accept Israelis and Israel as belonging to the Jews (period). Should Israel backdown? No! However, it appears that the Kenesset has lost thier way all for the notion of “peace.”
I would recommend every one reading this comment to take the time to read, “From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine” by Joan Peters.