THINK-ISRAEL

The Pros and Cons of Creating A Third Palestinian State

posted by Bernice Lipkin. July 20, 2002

Arguments In Favor Of A Palestinian State.

Everyone is familiar with reasons why the Palestinians should have a state. The major one purports to be historic: there is a Palestinian people, who lived in their land, Palestine. It isn't right that Israel occupy their land. Those who know that talking about a Palestinian people and a Palestinian land isn't factual (see the Background page) are given a future-oriented reason: if the Palestinians had control over their own lives, they would have an incentive to be good neighbors. Unfortunately, the more autonomy the Palestinians have gained, the more they have resorted to murder and mayhem.

 

A More-Or-Less Autonomous State That Meets Certain Conditions.

This is the centrist position: a state with more or less autonomy. On June 24, 2002, President Bush clearly stated the case for not creating even a provisional Palestinian state until there is a major transformation in the Palestinian Arab society. 

"And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state, whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East." 
"A Palestinian state will never be created by terror. It will be built through reform."

Addressing the idea of a provisional state, Charles Krauthammer wrote (A Guarantee of More Violence, June 20, 2002)

"Today terrorism is reduced (Israel stops 90 percent of planned attacks) because the Israeli army goes into Palestinian territories to seize and stop terrorists. After statehood, this becomes an invasion of another country. The terrorists will have sanctuary. Every time Israel pursues them, the Security Council will be called into emergency session, and America will be censured unless it condemns this Israeli 'invasion.' The net effect will be more terrorism and increased resentment of American diplomacy."

Recent events have forced many others to return to the pre-Oslo American position that peace in the region requires a demilitarized West Bank. A major problem with reproposing a demilitarized area, even one with a great deal of autonomy, is that a Palestinian State has been put on the table as an achievable goal. President Bush has declared against a Palestinian State until it has a leadership that doesn't advocate terror. But he also believes there is a Palestinian people and they are living under occupation. The problem with this nice balance is that diplomats and politicians have a habit of sticking their thumb on one side of the scale whenever it suits them. What happens when the certifiers decide things are jolly-peachy because there hasn't been a major terror bombing in weeks? And besides the bombers came from Lebanon. 

What's The Most Likely Result Of A Palestinian State?

The Oslo Agreement furthered the notion that gradually the territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA), would become more and more autonomous, as the PA built an infrastructure for nationhood, and finally there would be two countries living peacefully, side by side.

Now that we know about the organized teaching of hate in the Arab schools, the training of young suicide bombers, the amount of effort that has gone into building bomb factories and the amount of money that has gone into buying weapons, it has become clear that, since Oslo, the Palestinian Arabs have focussed on destruction, not nation-building. Polls show this hate is not confined to a small segment of the Arab population. As reported in the Jerusalem Post in an article by Lamia Lahuod and Reuters, 13 June 2002, "The majority of Palestinians believes the aim of the current conflict should be to eliminate Israel and not just end the occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip." The poll was conducted by the Palestinian Jerusalem Media and Communication Center (JMCC).

Let's face it. The Arabs have got a bad attitude. And it ain't gonna change. The Palestinian Arabs are hostile and inflamed. They have developed a culture of hate. It suits them. As Sherri Mandall, mother of Kobi Mandell, a young Israeli who was murdered by Arabs while out hiking, says in Fashioned In the Womb in the Jerusalem Post: 

"Now in the womb of Palestinian culture, Palestinians are being shaped to hate, to pervert their lives and national aspirations into the slaughter of innocent Jews. Too many Palestinian mothers are applauding their children's deaths, appearing in videos the night before suicide attacks clutching rifles like teddy bears, enjoining their sons and daughters to kill as many Jews as possible. Those who could be creating life are destroying it."

"This cruelty has become so confused with the Palestinian national struggle in such a way that cruelty has become a dominant form of expression in the Palestinian community."

"The PA is preying on the dead bodies of both Israelis and Palestinians by honoring martyrdom, honoring killing as the highest value in its culture."

Expressing hate in ugly ways is approved in their society. They glory in their horrible deeds. They spend a lot of time thinking about ways and means to hone their skills. They don't just explode a bomb to kill people; they aim to maim and cripple as many Jews as possible. As reported in the Washington Post, May 26, 2002: 

"NAIL IN BRAIN. NAIL IN HEART. Such labels affixed to x-rays in hospital emergency rooms have become almost routine in Israel. They describe victims of Palestinian suicide bombers, who strapped themselves with homemade bombs made of high explosives and packed with the staples of the building trade -- nuts, bolts and nails."

They haven't just deprived their children of an ordinary childhood; they have twisted and damaged the minds of their young, perhaps permanently. Arutz Sheva (www.IsraelNationalNews.com) quotes Yedioth Ahronoth (Ynet.com), June 28th, 2002, which reports an interview with Naima al-Obeid, mother of Mahmoud, yet another Palestinian suicide bomber. "God willing you will succeed... May every bullet hit its target, and may God give you martyrdom. This is the best day of my life." "When I heard that my son was dead, I cried out for joy." The full story appears below.

Everything we learn about the Palestinian Arab society supports what the Arab leaders have been saying all along. They have made no secret that their goal is the extermination of Israel. This was stated by a moderate Arab, the current PA Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, Nabil Sha'ath, in an interview with ANN television, London, October 7, 2000. 

"We decided to liberate our homeland step by step... this is the strategy... we say: 'should Israel continue - no problem.' And so we honor the peace treaties and non-violence, so long as the agreements are fulfilled step-by-step. [But] if and when Israel says 'enough,' namely, 'we will not discuss Jerusalem, we will not return refugees, we will not dismantle settlements, we will not withdraw to the borders,' in that case it is saying that we will return to violence. But this time it will be with 30,000 armed Palestinian soldiers and in a land with elements of freedom. I am the first to call for it. If we reach a dead end we will go back to our war and struggle like we did forty years ago." 

Think that means the West Bank?

This is what was said by another moderate Arab, Faisal Husseini, the PLO representative in Jerusalem and PA minister, in an interview with the Egyptian daily Al-Arabi (June 24, 2001). It was translated by Memri.org. Read the full report in Jewish Issues.  

"If we agree to declare our state over what is now only 22 percent of Palestine, meaning the West Bank and Gaza -- our ultimate goal is [still] the liberation of all historical Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] sea, even if this means that the conflict will last for another thousand years or for many generations."

Were it in the power of the world community to start retraining them today, even optimistically it would be many years before they could be persuaded to change their values, to give up the goal of destroying Israel. Israel returning to anywhere near its 1967 borders would just make it easier for these Arabs to destroy Israel.

Viable Alternatives To A Third Palestinian State.

There is a growing sentiment that the entire question of having hostile Arabs on Israel's border needs to be reexamined.

When Israel became a State in 1948, it was immediately attacked by its Arab neighbors. Transjordan took over Samaria and Judea and renamed it the West Bank. The Jews who lived there were ousted. It became for the first time in history a Jew-free zone. It was ethnically clean. In 1967, when Israel was again attacked by her Arab neighbors, including Jordan, Israel took over the West Bank. Understanding that a Jewish presence on the West Bank acted, in a sense, as an early-warning facility and under pressure from Jews who felt strongly that Samaria and Judea were part of the Jewish homeland, it encouraged the building of Jewish settlements. But it didn't annex the area. That would have introduced a large and rapidly multiplying group of Arabs into Israel's society. And these Arabs were not democratically-oriented. Or peace loving.

Since then, Israeli regional policy was and ever more urgently continues to be dictated by the idea of separation. The results of a Public Opinion Poll on National Security conducted by the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies and summarized in Memorandum No. 60, August 2002 indicate: "the general mood seemed to embrace the idea of separation between Israelis and Palestinians and 74 percent supported that idea. While some claim that separation is not a feasible policy option, 62 percent thought that such separation was a feasible idea."

What is under consideration is the shape of the separation. Already Israel has begun building a physical separation, a wall tracing around the Green Line. But that isn't a policy. That's expediency.

Baldly put, the issue boils down to: (a) while safeguarding security, leave the land in order to separate Israel from these Arabs, or (b) keep the land and get rid of the Arabs. Carrying out either of these policies will make for enormous problems. But pretending it's possible to make peace with a recalcitrant group of Arabs hasn't worked so well either.

Israel can't just pack up and go. She'd be overrun in a very short time. If Israel allows a PA state, the Arabs won't need to dig tunnels to get weapons from Egypt. They won't need fancy long-range missiles. They can mass at their border with Israel and, if they put some unarmed 10-year old kids at the front of the March, they can walk into Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. The Jews will be conflicted about firing at children. The Arabs won't mind a couple of thousand underage martyrs. (Arafat on Al Jazeera TV has said "We want a million martyrs for Jerusalem." National Review Online, April 10, 2002, points out that "Children as young as four are taught to march with suicide-bomber belts strapped to their bodies.")

What to do? On the one hand, the idea of turning the problem over to other Arabs has resurfaced. The argument is again made that Jordan take over the West Bank, Egypt Gaza -- the way Israel expected it to happen by negotiations after 1967. According to the Debkafile article U.S. has Small Plans for Arafat (April 20, 2002), a plan is being discussed whereby Arafat and the PA would be sent to Gaza where Israel and Egypt can keep an eye on him and insulate him from his power bases in the West Bank.

In an article entitled The Two-Palestine Solution, (see Morse article) Chuck Morse, the Boston radio commentator, points out that

"The interesting nuance to this plan [of sequestering Arafat in Gaza], one which, albeit imperfectly, harkens to a long term solution to the conflict, is that Jordan will replace the PA, de facto, as the administering authority in the West Bank along with Israel, hence, the two Palestine solution. The historic and undisputable fact is that both Israel and Jordan are Palestine."

The second solution -- keep the land, annex it, and throw out the Arabs -- is reasonable if one asks the question: why should the Israelis return to the 1967 boundary? If we are turning back the clock, why to 1967? Why not to 1919? Judea and Samaria and Gaza were formally declared to be part of the Jewish national homeland at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Radio Bergen described it this way:

"In 1919 a Zionist delegation was invited to the Paris Peace Conference on behalf of the future population of Palestine. The Emir Feisal, a son of the Hashemite Hussein, Sherif of Mecca, as well as a hero of the Lawrence of Arabia adventures, attended as Arab Plenipotentiary, with authority also from the Syrian nationalists.

The Zionist delegation stated its territorial demands for the Palestine Mandate-to-be to extend east of the Jordan River to the Hejaz Railroad. Feisal described these demands later as 'moderate and proper.' In his own demands to the Peace Conference, Feisal expressly excluded Palestine because of the Jewish National Home policy adopted by the Allies, and he suggested a Mandate. He earlier had made an agreement with the Zionist leader Dr. Chaim Weiztnann envisioning Palestine as a future Jewish state."

A few years later, England took 75% of Palestine, earmarked to become the Jewish homeland (read: State), and it became what we now call Jordan. And Israel became a state in 1948. So, viewed historically, a Palestinian state would not be a first. It would be the third Palestinian state carved out of Mandated Palestine.

From the time Transjordan occupied Samaria and Judea in 1948 until 1967, no one suggested this territory become a separate state. Then Israel conquered the area. It was around this time that the Arabs, most of whom had come into the area when the Jews came and created economic opportunities, began calling themselves a people. By the time of the Second Intifada, they had a cause: Israel had occupied their homeland. They had discovered that the world resonated in sympathetic agreement whenever they talked about Israel occupying the West Bank. After all, if you were a Palestinian and someone was occupying your country, wouldn't you have the right to do everything in your power to regain your land? The supposed Occupation has became the weapon of choice to clobber Israel. And thanks to the medical care and services provided by Israel, more and more Arabs are alive to make this claim.

The bulk of Palestine and the majority of the Arabs are in Jordanian hands. Why not transfer the Arabs in Samaria and Judea to Jordan? Many Arabs on the West Bank are Jordanian citizens. Or move them to another underpopulated area in the region. Transference of populations is common enough in the world. Actually, half of the operation was completed years ago when Jews were forced to flee from the Arab countries and took refuge in Israel. This would complete the transfer operation. Each Arab family could be set up with a dowry; it would be cheaper than supporting them as refugees in camps. Moreover, settling them in Jordan will take away the stigma that Jordan is an apartheid state -- a minority (the King and his family and clan) ruling the majority. 

The Goal is Peace In The Middle East, Not Another State.

It used to be Israel's goal to try to woo the neighboring countries: Jordan and Egypt were neutralized and the attention was on Syria. Suddenly, with the Oslo Accord, everything was focused on the group of Arabs who'd begun calling themselves the Palestinian people in the 1960's. This meant that Israel's Arab neighbors, who had always used the Arab refugees as a PR tool against Israel, could now avoid the distasteful task of genuinely accepting a Jewish presence in the Middle East. (Unless you count the Saudi peace plan that says to Israel: commit suicide by having the Arabs return to Israel and then we'll think about making peace with you.) 

Is It Good For America?

It is said that America is getting heat for supporting Israel. That may be, or it may be an argument promoted by Israel's enemies in the hope that American will reduce its support of Israel. The converse is certainly true. America is too big for the European Union and the Islamic countries to take on directly; but Israel is more their size.

As Benjamin Netanyahu stated it before the Government Reform Committee, 20 September, 2001:

"The soldiers of militant Islam do not hate the West because of Israel. They hate Israel because of the West -- because they see it is an island of Western democratic values in a Muslim-Arab sea of despotism.

That is why they call Israel the Little Satan, to distinguish it clearly from the country that has always been and will always be the Great Satan -- the United States of America.

For the Bin Ladens of the world Israel is merely a sideshow. America is the target."

Beyond the war of words, we are beginning to see a pattern more clearly through the fog of Islam-speak. They aren't planning to stop terroristic activity, even if they succeeded in destroying Israel. That's just the first stage in glorious plans to make Islam dominant world wide.

To use a (in)famous Islamic figure as example, the Debka file describes Bin laden's goals this way: (The report is on the debka website,www.debka.com/LADEN/LADEN1/LADEN2/LADEN3/LADEN4/body_laden5.html.)

"Digging into his roots, DEBKAfile has discovered Bin Laden's first mentor to have been an obscure Palestinian sheikh who lived in Hableh near Tulkarm and Jenin, called Abdallah Azzam. Founder of an Islamic liberation movement called Haraketh al-Tahariyeh al-Islami, this sheikh, for the first time in the 20th century, called for an Islamic struggle on a global, not merely a national, footing. He urged Moslems to fight for world domination and the eclipse of infidel rule. Although a Palestinian himself, Azzam mocked Yasser Arafat's PLO as inconsequential. This doctrine actuated Bin Laden in founding his Al Qaeda (The base) a decade ago. It is his guiding light to this day."

And it isn't just smoke. Now that Bin Laden has discovered the Plight of the Poor Palestinian, look, for instance, at just one terrorist chain: Hezbollah works with Al Qaeda. Hamas and the PLO have close ties. The Palestinian Arabs support Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda terrorists have been reported to be openly training at the Ein Hilwe UNRWA refugee camp in Lebanon to attack Israel. (See http://israelbehindthenews.com/Archives/Mar-17-02.html - IsraelResource Review.)
Will anyone be surprised if Bin Laden turns up in Gaza?

 
(Reported in Arutz Sheva, 28 June 2002.) "When I heard that my son was dead, I cried out for joy." So reports Ynet today, quoting the mother of a Hamas terrorist who murdered three Israeli soldiers two weeks ago on a mission from which he knew he would not return. The mother, Naima al-Abed, said, "I imbued my son with a love of Jihad [holy war] and death for Allah," and recounted how her son Mahmoud consulted with her on whether or not to take this action:

"When he finally told me that he was going to do it, I blessed him and encouraged him, because I saw how much he wanted to? I didn't tell my husband, because he is emotional and he would have attempted to dissuade him? When he left on the mission, I was worried that it might not succeed and I couldn't cook? I prayed with all my heart that he would succeed in his suicide mission.

"One morning, he told me that he was going that day? That afternoon, I heard a knock on the door, and I saw it was Mahmoud. I started yelling at him and said, 'Did you change your mind? Did you get scared?' He told me that the mission was to be an ambush, and that the soldiers didn't pass by that day. [Two days later,] he got a call from the lookout. He showered, prayed, and left?"

Her other son later told her that there had been an attack on soldiers, and that one of the attackers had been killed. "I remained tense until they came from Hamas and told me that he had been killed. I then let out shrieks of joy that woke up the whole neighborhood"