Fog is made up by droplets of water in the atmosphere dense enough to obscure view of objects within or beyond the fog. Those who are fogbound cannot be sure of what lies around or ahead of them, the nature of shapes but dimly perceived, the right direction to take through the fog or even if path leads toward the edge of a cliff.

Mists of fog obscure realities about Israel, its Arab foes, "Palestine," the Middle East, and Islamist Jihad. The fog may be sprayed by those who seek such obscurity for their own reasons, and lead others into fogbound misperception and misunderstanding.

Besides the propaganda of Muslim governments and other entities, droplets are added to the fog by others who:

-- pursue career and financial ambitions that may be advanced via largesse from Saudi princes and other dispensers of petrodollars. They include government personnel, especially in the field of foreign affairs, executives of international corporations, and administrators of university and foundations. {See Issue No. 25}

-- nourish personal spite against Jews. This motive is strong in the European Union that

1. seeks to rid itself of 2,000-year-long guilt toward the Jews by demonstrating that the victims really deserved it, and

2. cannot endure that the Jews, now free in their own land, should survive and flourish while Europe sinks into the decay its elites have chosen for it. {See Issue No. 15}

-- weakly accept the prospect that their own societies will be overcome by Islamist Jihad and want to be on the winning side.

-- are professional intellectual-humanitarians, propping up their own egos and self-esteem by patronizing the "poor Palestinians". Israel is too successful to qualify for patronage.

-- who dance any step to any tune that is the fad of the moment. Academics {see Issue No. 27} and journalists {see Issues Nos. 13, 64} are prominent among the choreographers, composers, and performers.

In the fogs thus created wander the fogbound: Those who do not bother to take a close look at the figures within the fog, but accept what they are told by incompetent and corrupt popular news media and ill-informed teachers. Indeed, it may be more comfortable to remain fogbound than to get a clear view of a harsh and challenging reality.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Among international issues, the long-playing Palestine Problem gets excessive attention, often short on knowledge and logic and/or honesty and objectivity. It is befogged by doctrines and delusions and obsession about an area that can scarcely be found on a map of the world without a magnifying glass. Lurking in the swirls of that fog is a monster mistaken for a pet.

[1] The Palestine Problem or Palestine-Israel Conflict, is central to all of the problems in the Middle East, or even in the whole world. It is the cause of troubled relations between Islam and the West. Therefore, it must be the most urgent concern of the International Community

This is jargon for "Israel's refusal to surrender to the Arabs puts them in a bad mood, so all the trouble Muslims make for the rest of us is Israel's fault". It co-exists peacefully with the refusal to admit Israel as an ally in the War on Terror, on the grounds that it -- and it alone -- ought to surrender to terror, not resist it.

A chorus-master leading this chant is Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Great Britain -- the nation that created the Palestine Problem by its bungling treachery on its Palestine Mandate, and whose Foreign Office has not guessed right since 1922. {See Issues Nos. 2, 5, 7} He goes so far as to write: "How can we bring peace to the Middle East unless we resolve the question of Israel and Palestine? [Achieving peace] would not only silence reactionary Islam's most effective rallying call but fatally undermine its basic ideology."

Blair revealed this insight while large gatherings of Muslims in London shouted their intent to take over Great Britain and impose Muslim shariya law there, and demanded the execution of Pope Benedict XVI.

The "Question of Israel and Palestine" does not cause the lack of peace in the Middle East or beyond it. The "basic ideology" that creates it also creates many other troubles and wars in the Middle East and beyond it. Among them:

-- intra-Arab wars

Egypt's poison-gas attack on Yemen
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait
the long, bloody war between Iraq and Iran
a series of civil wars in Lebanon

-- Syria's occupation of Lebanon
-- a Syrian government's annihilation of its own city of Hama and its inhabitants.
-- the government of Iraq's persecution of Kurds and Marsh Arabs
-- persecutions by Muslim governments of Christians and Ba'hai
-- the Sudanese government's long, bloody war against the Christians and Animists
-- the ongoing slaughters and sufferings in Darfur
-- the Taliban regime in Afghanistan
-- strife between India and Muslim Pakistan for control of Kashmir
-- the campaign of Albanian Muslims to drive Christian Serbs out of Kosovo
-- the strife between Russia and Muslim Chechyna
-- jihadi killings in Thailand, Indonesia, and other parts of southeast Asia
-- attempts of Islamist jihadis to take over Somalia, and Ethiopia's resistance thereto
-- dictatorship, tyranny, repression, poverty, sickness, and ignorance throughout the region
-- Saudi Arabia's establishment of institutions of Wahhabi Islam within Western societies.
-- Al-Qaeda terrorism worldwide
-- Jihadi infiltration throughout Western Europe.

Casting upon Israel the onus for lack of peace does not "silence reactionary Islam's most effective rallying call" because that rallying call is Islamist world domination. And it will strengthen not "fatally undermine its basic ideology".

[2] Arabs make war on Israel because they have real grievances that must be rectified.

The grievance of Arabs and other Muslims against Israel is that it exists. All other complaints derive from the consequences of Arab efforts to destroy it.

The Arabs are not attacking Israel because they lost the Golan and Judea/Samaria. They lost them because they attacked Israel. The intended destruction began in 1947 and is still going on. The results of each defeated aggression beget excuses for more aggression.

In Muslim doctrine, all the earth is divided into two parts: Dar al-Islam [House of Islam] and Dar al-Harb [House of War]. Any land once acquired by Dar al-Islam must remain within it forever and ever. If it is lost -- as in Spain -- it must one day be regained. All of Dar al-Harb will eventually be conquered by jihad, military or otherwise.

The Ottoman Turkish Caliphate that once held Palestine as its province is gone, but the land is still Dar al-Islam that must never be yielded to any infidel, least of all to the Jews, who were once downtrodden dhimmis, a people cursed in the Koran and despised as "sons of apes and pigs"

To quote the Deputy Minister for Religious Affairs of the Palestine Authority: "The conflict with the Jews is a religious, existential struggle and is not a conflict over borders." Therefore, though a temporary truce might be permissible, peace is forever forbidden.

That Israel thrives while its neighbors do not aggravates the grievance. That Israel successfully defends itself against the aggressions of its neighbors aggravates the grievance. The more Israel advances in the arts and sciences of civil life, while Arab societies sink further into squalor, the greater the hatred.

Nothing can remove the grievance and satisfy the hatred short of the total extirpation of this hated entity.

Taqiyyah (deception of the infidel) permits talk of "peace" if only Israel agrees to the right terms, but this kind of talk is not heard in Arabic where the key word is always "destruction" not "peace". {See further Issue No. 5}

Any policies or plans formed by Israel or any other nation or group of nations that does not grasp this basic reality is futile and dangerous.

[3] Solving the Palestine Problem will forward international peace and security

Islamist jihad is soaring over the globe, confident and assertive. It does not disguise its goal of bringing all the earth into Dar al-Islam, ruled by a Caliph under Islamic shariya law. In the United States, CAIR [Council on American Islamic Relations] flaunts its intent to make America an Islamic country, with the flag of the caliphate flying over the White House.

Israel is the first target of this jihad, but it is not the only one and will not be the last one.

It is also the first line of defense against global jihad. In Middle East policy, the Western World has two options: a. Render Israel defenseless against the jihadis, in hopes this may mollify Dar al-Islam and postpone Jihad against other parts of Dar al-Harb -- for a little while at least. b. Strengthen, not weaken, Israel because it is the frontline of defense against jihad, and if the jihadis can overcome so staunch a nation they will be emboldened to move on to other prey.

Pressures on Israel to make concessions to Palestinianist demands are rewards and encouragement to jihad. If Israel submits to such demands, whether from foreign friends or domestic appeaseniks can have no other result than to make Israel weaker and jihad stronger. They cannot and will not lead to peace.

Any policies or plans formed by Israel or any other nation or group of nations that are not based on this harsh reality are futile and dangerous.

[4] To bring about a just and lasting peace, Israel must end its occupation of Palestinian Territory and withdraw itself and its settlements therefrom.

This decree is based on a doctrine unique in international law and without historic precedent, promulgated for this occasion and no other: "To The Defeated Aggressor Belong the Spoils".

It also bandies the word "occupation" in ignorance or disregard of the meaning to the Arabs who harp upon it. It means all of Israel, not only to the Administered Territories of Judea-Samaria. The start of the Occupation is dated to 1948, when Israel became a sovereign state and the war to destroy it began even before its Declaration of Independence came into effect in 1948. By Arab doctrine, Tel-Aviv is an Illegal Israeli Settlement in Palestiniian Territory. By Arab doctrine, the end of Occupation will be achieved only when Israel all together ceases to exist. They will never be satisfied with anything less. {See further Issue No. 5}

Furthermore, any program dealing with "Palestinian Territory" cannot be carried out for the simple reason that there is no such thing. There has never been a nation of Palestine, and a Palestinian political identity is a fiction spun after 1967. The bulk of the Arab population west of the Jordan River derives from immigration in the 20th century, into a region where it had no historic roots or national identity.

What is glibly called "Palestinian Territory" is actually Judea-Samaria, the heartland of biblical Israel. The name West Bank was stamped on it only during the Jordanian occupation of 1949-1967. It has not been part of any independent sovereign state since the Roman conquest of Judea in 70 C.E. "Palastina" is a geographic not national name, designating a province of the Roman Empire. Thereafter, it was a province of one foreign empire after another, the last of them the Ottoman Turkish Empire ruled from Istanbul. In that period it was desolate and scarcely inhabited. The bulk of the Arabs who now claim to be the aboriginal inhabitants of Palastina filtered into the region in the 20th century -- after the start of the modern Jewish rebuilding of the Land. {See Issues Nos. 2, 6, 8, 24}

Since the collapse of the Ottoman empire at the end of World War I, part of this province has become the State of Israel and part of it has become the Kingdom of Jordan, and part of it is biblical heartland of Judea-Samaria. In 1948, Jordan seized it by aggression. In 1967, Jordan lost it by aggression.

That Israel now administers this land is not "occupation" because it has never been the sovereign territory of any other independent state. The Jewish communities damned as "settlements" or "illegal settlements" are in no way illegal. {See Issues Nos. } The right of the Children of Israel to "settle" and dwell in their historic homeland is at the very least equal to the right of Americans to "settle" from Plymouth Rock to Waikiki.

The calls for "withdrawal" means to the ceasefire lines of the War of Independence of 1948. There is nothing sacred about these lines, that were never recognized as permanent borders. A study by the highest military experts of the United States, the Join Chiefs of Staff, determined that these lines would be indefensible. Any government of Israel that perpetrates a withdrawal to these lines is nothing short of traitorous. {See Issue No. 39}

Sovereignty over Judea-Samaria has not yet been declared, but there is no informed or fair-minded or prudent reason to take it for granted that it should and must be bestowed according to the fantasy claims of the newcomer Arabs in a fantasy Palestine.

In the meantime, securing for them merely part of the Land of Israel, it will have no effect but to weaken Israel and encourage the Arab belief that since war and terrorism got them something, more war and terrorism will get them everything.

[5] Mighty Israel oppresses the Helpless Palestinians, who are thus the underdog deserving the sympathy of all nice persons.

There are little more than 6,000,000 million Jews in Israel. There are some 15,000,000 Jews in the entire world. That is about 0.002 percent of the human race.

There are some 250,000,000-280,000,000 Arabs, and some 1,500,000,000-1,750,000,000 Muslims.

The territory of pre-1967 State of Israel was 8,000 square miles. That was 17 percent of Mandate Palestine designated to be the Jewish National Home. The "territories" of Judea-Samaria are another 2,000 square miles.

The 22 states of the Arab League have territory of almost 6,000,000 square miles. (The territory of the United States is less than 4,000,000). Of all the land the Arabs demanded for themselves since World War I, they were given 99.5 percent. The Palestine Problem consists of the other one-half of one percent.

Taqiyya and those who believe it present the Arab residents west of the Jordan River as standing alone against the big bully Israel. In fact, almost all Arabs and other Muslims are active in one way or another in the war against Israel, through fighting, terrorism, supplying weapons, economic pressure, diplomacy, rhetoric, and propaganda.

In the War of Independence of 1948, Israel was attacked by the military forces of six Arab states, aided, abetted, supplied and sometimes commanded by Great Britain. In the Sinai Campaign of 1956, the Six-Day War of 1967, and the Yom Kippur War 1973, the Arabs were aided, abetted, supplied and sometimes commanded by the Soviet Union.

Since then, Egypt signed a peace treaty as the only way gain the Sinai and use the Suez Canal, but misses no opportunity to do harm to Israel and/or the Jews. Jordan also signed a peace treaty but the bulk of its population remains almost unanimously hostile.

Even the most fogbound viewer should be able to discern which is David and which is Goliath.

[6] Israel must make Good Will Gestures and put forth Confidence Building Measures and obey International Humanitarian Law

Israel has a long record of good-will gestures and confidence building gestures. None of them were answered by the tiniest grain of reciprocal Good Will. All of them Built Confidence among its enemies that they had gained something through terrorism and would gain more through more terrorism.

Some of the gestures and measures were made through the foolishness of its own governments, some imposed by harsh outside pressure. In every instance they have been not merely futile but lethal, increasing the toll of death and injury

They are always unilateral. The Palestine Authority never indulges in Good Will or Confidence Building, and is never expected to. Rather, it takes Israel's concessions as evidence of weakness, fear, and lack of resolve and the assumption that if pushed harder Israel will yield more and eventually all.

Among the demands upon Israel from distant monitors:

a. Do not inconvenience and humiliate Palestine-Arabs by checking whether they are carrying bombs

Palestine-Arab terrorists who were not identified and stopped in time have murdered thousands of Israelis and injured, crippled, and bereaved many thousands more.

Some disguise themselves to mingle among Jews, so all Israelis also routinely go through security checks in public places. But only if a Palestine-Arab is asked to open a shopping bag when going through a checkpoint does that simple and essential precaution become unfair inconvenience and humiliation.

President George W. Bush professes great distress on their behalf -- while, because of jihad terrorists, myriads of his own citizens cannot board an airplane in an American airport without extreme and sometimes grotesque investigation.

When Israeli officials succumb to pressure to reduce security measures, their own citizens are placed in danger. For example: when Israel's faux-government gave up all control over Gaza, Madam Doctor Secretary Condoleeza Rice literally shrieked and screamed that it must also give up security checkpoints at Gaza crossing points. Israeli cabinet ministers gave in. Israelis have been killed and injured because of her arrogance and their pusillanimity.

On her Middle East tour of mid-January 2007, she demanded that Israel remove more checkpoints, even while Israeli military intelligence was dealing with warnings of plans for terrorist attacks.

b. Exercise Restraint after terrorist attacks

A standard foreign response after an Arab terrorist atrocity is to deplore it and urge Israel to exercise restraint. Sometimes this is given an egalitarian phraseology of "Both sides should exercise the utmost restraint", said only after the attack on Israel has already been perpetrated, and only an Israeli response has yet to come.

c. Supply money, food, medical care, utilities and other goods and services to Gaza in the name of International Humanitarian Law

It is not specified just what that Law is, and which provisions require the victim of terrorism to provide for the comfort of the terrorists. Neither are there examples cited of how International Humanitarian Law protected Jewish victims of genocide and terrorism.

d. Release convicted terrorists from Israeli prisons

This is a standard Good Will Gesture expected from Israel on various occasions. Often the released terrorists return to their trade and cause more casualties. The release of thousands of such prisoners as ransom for abducted Israelis -- or for the remains of murdered Israelis -- is considered a reasonable transaction.

e. Do not endanger innocent civilians

This applies only to civilians among Israel's sworn foes, who are always "innocent" even when they choose to be human shields for terrorists and terrorist installations. Under real international law, combatants and terrorists do not win impunity by placing themselves in the midst of civilians, even when those civilians are unwilling, much less when they are eager volunteers.

It is a respectable doctrine that military forces, even when waging a defensive war, do not deliberately harm defenseless non-combatants. There is no doctrine that requires a nation that has been attacked to sacrifice or endanger the lives of its own people, civilian or military, or even to eschew measures that would end the aggression against it.

The real violation of the doctrine has been committed by faux-governments of Israel that do so endanger and sacrifice the lives of its own people, as in

-- the military action against terrorist installations in Jenin, when the lives of 23 young Israeli soldiers were sacrificed to protect Arabs in those installations
-- refusal to take any action against the terrorist bases in Gaza that almost daily fire rockets at towns in Israel that kill and injure Israeli civilians and endanger vital installations.

News media and international organizations are so eager to convict Israel of violating this doctrine that they even invent crimes that never happened, among them the make-believe killing of young Muhammad al-Dura and make-believe attack on a Lebanese Ambulance {See Issues Nos. 21, 47, 64}. At the same time, deliberate and calculated murders of Israeli civilians, including babies and children, are given little note and evoke little reaction.

f. A ceasefire must always be imposed when there is fighting

A ceasefire becomes urgent as soon as the aggressors are losing, as in the War of Independence, the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War. This saves the aggressors from the full cost of defeat, and leaves them free to resume fighting at their earliest convenience.

A common variant is the unilateral ceasefire, in which the Arab states or terrorist entities can go on with their attacks and terrorism, and the ceasefire is only deemed broken if and when Israel responds.

The Hamas government in Gaza now and then speaks of a hudna -- a term for "truce" that in this context can be translated as "Don't Shoot at Me While I Stop to Reload". Hamas even hints that if Israel first meets its immediate demands and withdraws entirely to the [indefensible] 1949 ceasefire lines, then Hamas will thereafter consider a hudna for up to ten years.

g. Get the Peace Process back on track

The Peace Process, since its inception, has run along a track to folly, failure, danger, and disaster. Common sense would urge that it be flagged to a stop rather then set into more motion.

The Palestine Authority is an entity of the terrorists, for the terrorists, and by the terrorists. If moderates exist in its midst, they do not win or long hold public office or even influence. They will be brave indeed if they even dare to say a word.

The present Chairman of the Palestine Authority -- who uses and is allowed the title of President to which he has no right -- is the direct successor to Yasser Arafat. Abbas was Arafat's second-in-command for forty years. He is a lifelong professional terrorist. He was the director and paymaster for the massacre of the Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in 1972. He holds a Ph.D. from a Soviet university earned with a doctoral thesis proving the Holocaust never happened -- or, if it did happen, was not as bad as made out to be.

He heads the Fatah faction of the Palestine Authority and its terrorist Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade. However, the voters of the PA entity freely and democratically elected a government from the rival Hamas faction, so its leader Ismail Hanniyeh is prime minister.

Fatah and Hamas are fighting each other for power and control within the Palestine Authority, but their platforms differ on only one point: Abbas vows in Arabic to destroy Israel and raise an Arab Palestine on its ruins, while in English or other infidel tongues he murmurs of "recognition" and "negotiations" and "co-existence". Hamas vows in Arabic and all other tongues that it will destroy Israel and raise an Arab Palestine on its ruins.

Abbas says the right word in at least one language, so Western policymakers can embrace him without violating their own rule of not dealing with terrorists. The United States and the European Union shower him with money. Recent U.S. administrations have forced American taxpayers to donate many billions of dollars to the terrorists of the Palestine Authority and must donate billions more. They supply weapons to PA gunmen, and assign U.S. experts to train them.

Recently, Madam Doctor Secretary Condoleeza Rice had U.S. weapons shipped to Abbas, in direct violation of U.S. law. She gave assurances that they will be used against Hamas and not against Israel. At the same time, Abbas himself extols terrorist bombers and martyrs, and exhorts his people not to use their weapons against fellow Palestinians but only against the Jews. When it is mentioned that Abbas does absolutely nothing to reduce terrorism or rocket attacks on Israel, it is explained that he cannot because he is too weak and therefore all the money and weapons have to be given to strengthen him.

When Rice came to visit, she and Abbas stood smiling side by side to be photographed beneath a portrait of Arafat. She declaimed:

"I want everyone to know, particularly the Palestinian people, how much we admire the leadership of President Abbas as a leader of the Palestinian people . ... we've made a lot of progress over recent years, in particular because of the hard work of President Abbas."

Then she went on to Egypt to praise its long-time President Hosni Mubarak and declare Egypt " really a partner". It is indeed a partner, of terrorists, smugglers of weapons of terror, and all who attack the United States that has him on an allowance of $2,000,000,000 a year.

[8] The Palestine Problem is one in which all nations so inclined have a right or even duty to meddle

It is not rare in history for those who make and implement a regime's foreign policy to try to bring the policies of other nations into line with their own, whether by persuasion or coercion. This is commonly done under cover of diplomacy.

Rarely is it done with open, flagrant contempt for another nation's independence and sovereign rights, least of all by supposedly "friendly" powers. The United States, the friendliest of all toward Israel, has often imposed its will by withholding vitally needed support or supplies.

Its Roadmap to Middle East Peace, promulgated in 2002 and periodically dredged up again, goes far beyond such traditional methods. It implicitly negates Israel's sovereignty and reduces it to a vassal of a collective overlord dubbed The Quartet.

Those piping the tune in the Quartet are the U.S. Department of States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations.

The terms of the Roadmap are entirely against Israel's rights and legitimate interests. The powers of the Quartet reduce Israel from a sovereign state to a vassal, denied any say in the fate to be imposed upon it. {See Issues Nos. 23, 28, 29}

This is not denied by the authors. Madam Doctor Secretary Rice ruled "The terms are not negotiable . ... Israel has no veto".

Recently, her erstwhile boss and mentor, the vulgarly Judeophobic James E. Baker III, attorney for the Bush family and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, proposed that the problems of the Middle East be settled in an international conference. Israel, however, would be banned from this conference, so that its fate can be dictated "without a Jewish presence".

Other Quartet members, with EU functionary Javier Solana as a mouthpiece, follow the same line. Europe is sinking in decay, Russia reviving its old ambitions, the United Nations is an epicenter of corruption.

The United States, that alone has the power to enforce, does not belong in this kind of company.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

These befogged and befuddled items lead up to the most perniciously befogged and befuddled conclusion: That the Palestine Problem can be solved by carving up the Land of Israel into separate Jewish and Arab states expected to "live side by side in peace".

This notion is a monster lurking in the fog and mistaken for a pet.
 

In a legend about the seventeenth-century Rabbi Loewe of Prague, he creates a creature called the Golem, meant to protect the Jews of the ghetto, that becomes a dangerous monster.

In Mary Shelley's nineteenth-century novel Frankenstein, the young scientist Victor Frankenstein, impelled by his own hubris, forms and animates a creature that becomes a dangerous monster.

Neither Rabbi Loewe nor Victor Frankenstein foresaw that their creatures would become dangerous monsters.

There is no such excuse for those now relentlessly set on creating an artificial creature they dub State of Palestine. This determination, now a virtual obsession, requires willful denial of the abundant evidence of the consequences. [Read "Twelve Bad Arguments for a State of Palestine" here. ]

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Part I considered some of the particles in a fog of misconceptions about Israel and the Arabs that lead to bad policymaking. These particles come together to form the super-misconception of The Two-State Solution as the panacea for the ills of the Middle East. [See Twelve Bad Arguments for a State of Palestine]

Some advocate this policy because they yearn for the demise of Israel and suppose this is the way to achieve it. Some may simply be willing to sacrifice it in hopes of ingratiating themselves with Arab oil sheiks and/or appease Muslim jihadis.

Some advocate it because they do not understand the character of the problem or the futility of the supposed solution. They do not grasp that the monster will turn upon them.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The decisions on "the Palestine Problem" must be made by Israel and the United States. Other states and groups of states proclaim their views on the subject, among them Great Britain (that created the Palestine Problem by its bungling treachery on the Mandate), the EU (willing junior partner in Eurabia), and the UN (world epicenter of political depravity), but they are irresponsible and irrelevant.

By any rational measure, Israel should be vigorously opposing a policy so dangerous, unjust, and altogether deleterious to it. Not so the incumbent faux-government of the corrupt, weak and stupid Peresite-Osloid-Kadimite clique, in whose hyper-secularist and quasi-socialist ideology the enemy is those fellow Israelis who are faithful to Jewish tradition and love of the Land of Israel. [On this clique and its doings, see further Issues Nos. 38, 39, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 55, 57, 60, 61, 62]

It squeezed into power by a political fluke and has deservedly earned the lowest approval rating in the history of public polling. Its feckless performance may give the impression that Israel wants the Two-State Solution, but in fact most of a disgusted population is against it. Friends of Israel in the United States and elsewhere may innocently suppose that supporting it is something good for Israel as well as the United States, when in fact it is very bad for Israel, the United States, and free societies everywhere.

In the United States, a large majority of the public opposes planting a State of Palestine in the heart of the Land of Israel. Previous presidents, including Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, rejected the notion of a separate state for Arabs in western Palestine. The present administration has succumbed to the notion that satisfying the Arab demand for a miniscule scrap of extra land is the way to stymie worldwide jihad. In accordance with this notion, it has from the first proclamation of a "War on Terror" excluded Israel -- so long the frontline bulwark against jihad -- on the grounds that it has the option of submitting to a "political settlement" with those flagrantly bent on annihilating it.

President George W. Bush has made it a keystone of his foreign policy, and in a recent address to the UN gave it precedence over far more urgent issues. He repeatedly proclaims his devotion to "the good cause of the Palestinian people" and laments their "suffering". He thereby embraces a population that produces and enthusiastically supports terrorist mass murder in the cause of genocide. The "suffering" of having to pass through security checkpoints that intercept terrorists on the way to work is deemed more distressing than -- for example -- the long, bitter oppression of the peaceable people of Tibet, the horrors of Darfur, or the plight of mothers in famine-stricken Africa who trudge long miles in search of food for the babies they carry on their backs.

Palestine Infatuation Syndrome pervades the keynote address delivered by Madam Doctor Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the American Task Force on Palestine Inaugural Gala on 12 October 12, 2006. After verbose fawning on the virtues of Palestinians, their accomplishments and contributions to the well-being of American society, she gave this pledge:

"I know that sometimes a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel must seem like a very distant dream. But I know too, as a student of international history, that there are so many things that once seemed impossible that, after they happened, simply seemed inevitable. I've read over the last summer the biographies of America's Founding Fathers. By all rights, America, the United States of America, should never have come into being. [....]

"I believe that there could be no greater legacy for America than to help to bring into being a Palestinian state for a people who have suffered too long, who have been humiliated too long, who have not reached their potential for too long, and who have so much to give to the international community and to all of us. I promise you my personal commitment to that goal."

Her juxtaposition of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America with the "Palestinians" could be illustrated by touching up two well-known paintings --

-- "The Spirit of '76" -- add a masked, bomb-bearing terrorist, chiming in with drummer and piper by rhythmic firing of his kalatchnikov rifle.
--"Washington Crossing the Delaware" -- replace his tricorne hat with a keffiyeh.

Shortly after this speech, journalist Cal Thomas asked Rice about her confidence in the readiness of Palestinians to live in peace with Israel:

Thomas: I read ... the sermons, the editorials in the Middle East, the right of return idea, ... What evidence do you have that teaching their schoolchildren at the ages of four and five to be martyrs, to show up in their little uniforms with plastic guns and their headbands, textbooks ... what evidence do you have out there that if they had an independent state that they would lay down their arms and not complete the mission of killing the Jews and throwing them out?

Rice: . ... I really believe that the people of the Middle East -- not the extremists -- want the same things that everyone else wants. I haven't seen a society yet where it wasn't true. Let me put it that way. I haven't seen a society yet where ordinary people, given an opportunity, wouldn't opt for a better life and for peace. [....] you can look at any opinion poll in the Palestinian territories and 70 percent of the people will say they're perfectly ready to live side by side with Israel because they just want to live in peace . ...

Thomas: Do you think this or do you know this?

Rice: Well, I think I know it.

Thomas: You think you know it?

Rice: I think I know it.

In the real world, recent polls of Palestinians show that some 75 percent believe Israel should not exist -- a majority that rises to 90 percent among the younger student generation. Some 70-75 percent would not be willing to live in peace with Israel even if it yields all of the Disputed Territories -- including Jerusalem -- to a State of Palestine. That means that such a state would be a base for war and terror against Israel.

When the PLO was granted autonomy in 1993, it began a calculated program of indoctrination in public media, religious sermons, universities, schools, children's summer camps, to inculcate hatred of Israel and dedication to its destruction.

Adolescents, children, even toddlers, are taught to seek martyrdom through terrorism, with the promise Kill a Jew and Go To Paradise. Mothers declare themselves proud and happy when their offspring fulfill such a mission. Small children are displayed on television, couched to say how proud and happy they are that their suicide-terrorist Mommy killed five Jews.

This is not the program of any society that means to live in peace with Israel, ever, at any time, anywhere, on any terms.

There may indeed be individuals among the Palestine-Arabs who would prefer more normal aspirations, but they do not influence public policies and take no part in setting tone or agenda. If there were dissent, it would be brutally suppressed and/or the dissenter killed by those holding power. "Palestine" would be what those in power would make it. It is a dangerous delusion to suppose otherwise.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The steadfast loyalty of George W. Bush to his "vision" of Palestine revealed in June 2002, and his Roadmap thereto promulgated in April 2003, has not been shaken by the bloody performance and brutal policies of his proteges. This evasion of reality is plangent in the recent avowal "I'm a two-state person. I don't see how Israel can possibly survive unless there is a democracy on her border" -- as though planting a genocidal entity in Israel's heartland is for its own good, and as though there were the slightest chance of such an entity becoming a "democracy" in the American or Israeli sense.

[1] Is the international drive for a State of Palestine sensible or befogged?

The very term "Two-State Solution" is false, because there are already are two states within the area of Mandate Palestine. One is Israel. The other is Jordan, that was given more than 75 percent of the land that had been designated for a Jewish National Home, and where Jews are totally banned. To chop up the remnant of the Jewish National Home to invent a second Arab state in Palestine would be a Three-State Solution that is actually a Non-Solution.

Of all Arabs have demanded for themselves since the end of World War I, they have been given 99.5 percent. They were given 22 states, with a combined territory of 6,145,389 square miles. Israel has 8,000 square miles of sovereign territory and 2,000 square miles of disputed territory. That latter sliver of land is commonly miscalled "Palestinian territory" in disregard of the fact that there has never in the history of the world been a nation of "Palestine" or any such thing as "Palestinian territory" [See Issue No. 2]. Only the fog of fantasy cast over this sliver of land makes it seem a supremely urgent focus of the world's concern, and the key to ending worldwide jihad. [See Part I.].

[2] Is sponsoring a State of Palestine in the best interests of the United States of America?

The Palestine-Arabs are ferociously anti-American. The sermons of their spiritual leaders curse America and pray for evil and destruction to fall upon it. The political leaders admire and side with every enemy of America, including Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Osama bin-Laden and Saddam Hussein -- to whose memory they recently dedicated a school, a street, and a soccer tournament.

When America and Americans suffer pain and loss, the Palestine-Arabs rejoice and celebrate. They danced and cheered and gave out candy in their glee at the hideous attacks on America, on 11 September 2001, while Israelis wept.

Excerpt from Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin, 3 January 2007:

"A former Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister from Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party has wished Al Qaeda success in its attacks against the US, and in its targeting of President George W. Bush. The Fatah leader, Abu Ali Shahin, said in an interview on official PA TV: 'Do to Bush whatever you want, and we wish you success... We are fighting the Americans and hate the Americans more than you!' [....]

"Shahin's statement that Palestinians hate the US and wish Al-Qaeda success in terror is in line with the sentiments of the Palestinian population even before the Hamas election victory. According to a December 2005 public opinion poll, '65% of Palestinians support Al-Qaeda actions in the US and Europe.'"

America cannot win the favor of any Palestinian entity no matter how much it bestows upon it. Nor can it win friends in the Muslim world, that has no sincere interest in the Palestine-Arabs except to exploit them for propaganda against Israel. America cannot by sponsoring a State of Palestine overcome the real reasons for Muslim hatred of America: That it is both the symbol and bastion of the liberty and tolerance that they despise.

In contrast, General John Craddock, Supreme Commander of NATO operations in Europe and head of the U.S. European Command has told the U.S. House Armed Services Committee that Israel is the United States' closest ally and "critical military partner" in the Middle East, that has "consistently and directly supported U.S. interests by means of security cooperation and understanding U.S. policy in the region . ... and encouraged democratic ideals and pro-Western values and economics".

The U.S. administration's Two-State Policy, that would drive Israel into a shrunken and vulnerable corner, goes against the best professional opinion of its own most experienced military: An analysis by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, that concluded that Israel must at the very least keep control of the highlands of Judean Hills and the Jordan valley. Forcing the State of Israel out of these integral parts of the Land of Israel reduces it to a width of nine miles at its narrowest and must strategic part. "Palestine" holding the adjacent highlands can bombard much of Israel with missiles and rockets and shoot down civilian aircraft. Foreign troops can sweep in across the Jordan Valley without hindrance.

Present policy goes even farther than the extreme demands of the Roadmap by adding the condition of "contiguity". That is, a demand that not only must Judea-Samaria be yielded to "Palestine" but it must also be contiguous with Gaza -- a demand geographically impossible to meet without splitting up the remnant of Israel into separate parts.

Current official policy in the United States is to promote the interests of those who hate it, in order to establish a superfluous sovereign state that will be its fanatical enemy, hostile to all traditional American principles and ideals. To this end, it pursues goals that diminish and endanger an Israel that is one of the most sincerely pro-American nations in the world.

[3] Could a Three-State Solution resolve the "Palestine Problem"?

This "problem" is not the amount of territory Israel holds, or where its borders are set, or what policies it follows. The problem is that it exists. It is an infidel intrusion into Dar al-Islam [House of Islam] and therefore intolerable on any terms. [See Part I.]

Every war the Arabs have launched against Israel has been with the openly announced intention of destroying it utterly and obliterating it forever. When Palestine-Arabs demand a state of their own, they do not mean one that will ever live in peace beside Israel, but rather one that replaces Israel.

Their maps show Palestine as an all-Arab entity with Israel obliterated. In the year 2006 it is declared that the Israeli Occupation has been going on for 58 years -- dating it back to Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948. So much for the befogged notion that "occupation" applies only to the land the Arab states lost when they launched the Six-Day War, and that is the limit of their claims.

When outright military attacks 1948-1973 failed, a new tactic was laid out by the PLO in 1974, dubbed The Two-Stage Plan. (1) Take whatever territory Israel can be persuaded or forced to yield. (2) Use that territory as a base for the future war to take all of Israel. Stage 1 was achieved with the Oslo Accords and the empowerment of the PA [Palestine Authority], The PA regime never hid its intent of proceeding to Stage 2.

In December 2006, PA Foreign Minister Mahmoud a-Zahar declared that a ceasefire "does not constitute recognition of Israel, but is rather one of a number of tactical steps on the way to the complete liberation of Palestine. We as Muslims are the owners of this land and we shall not give up a single handful of Palestinian soil." He declared that a solution to the conflict is not the creation of a Palestinian state according to the 1967 boundaries, but the total liberation of "all Palestinian lands" -- meaning all of Israel.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, now the elected prime minister of the PA, explains that a state in the "occupied territories" is only a temporary goal. Achieving that temporary goal "won't block the path before future generations to continue the liberation and restore their rights". Those rights, as have been clearly defined by PA spokesmen, is to take over all of Israel.

These recent statements confirm that the basic PLO/PA doctrine is still in force; a doctrine repeatedly proclaimed from the signing of the Oslo Accords and onward.

Within hours of that signing, Arafat made a radio broadcast in Arabic assuring his audience that this was Stage 1 of the Plan-of-Stages. Soon after, he explained further: "This agreement I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our prophet Muhammed and Koraish." [In the Seventh Century, Muhammad contracted a peace treaty with the Arabian tribe of Koraish. Two years later, he attacked and destroyed the tribe of Koraish.]. In a talk to Arab diplomats in Sweden, he pledged to "eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state".

In 2001, Faisel al-Husseini, then PA Minister of Jerusalem (kinsman of the Grand Mufti al-Husseini who persuaded Hitler not to let any Jew escape alive) declared:

"We will] continue to aspire to the strategic goal: namely, Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea. Whatever we get now, cannot make us forget this supreme truth. . ... "If we agree to declare our state over ... the West Bank and Gaza, our ultimate goal is the liberation of all historic Palestine from the River [Jordan] to the Sea [Mediterranean]. We distinguish the strategic, long-term goals from the political phased goals, which we are compelled to temporarily accept due to international pressure."

For almost sixty years, every futile and often costly effort by Israel and/or the United States to find an action, a program, a plan, an agreement, a truce, a treaty, a concession, a withdrawal, or any other device of accommodation with the PA has been based on refusal to recognize the real nature of the "Palestine Problem".

Condoleezza Rice has promulgated her credo: "There can be no peace without a Palestinian State". This can be corrected by merely deleting three letters: "There can be no peace with a Palestinian state".

[4] Would a State of Palestine relieve the suffering of the "Palestinian people"?

It was long a fashion to attribute the multiple belligerencies of the Arab states against Israel to their "humiliation" had having lost a series of wars against that tiny defendant. Those states could have avoided their humiliation by not launching the wars in the first place.

A current sequel fashion is to attribute the obsessive hatred and non-stop terrorism of the Palestine Arabs to their "suffering". George Bush is deeply affected by this suffering. Condoleezza Rice says the suffering has gone on too long, and prescribe a State of Palestine as the relief and remedy. That concern at least implies that Israel causes the suffering, though it is the leaders and rulers of the PA that impose it.

When Israel administered Judea-Samaria and Gaza (1967-1993) there was a rise in the standard of living for Arab residents, health care improved, the first universities were founded. The Arab communities in general had better conditions and more civil and human rights than those in Arab nations. Residents could chose to lead normal lives without persecution or oppression. If they were suffering it was from chagrin at their inability to massacre the Jews.

Through the Oslo Accords of 1993, 98 percent of the Arab population in Judea-Samaria and Gaza were placed under PA rule. With the abandonment of Gaza in 2005, 100 percent of the Arab population was placed under PA rule. Thereafter they have subject to a PA regime characterized by violence, brutality, corruption, graft, and extortion. Wherever the PA is in power, there are no human rights or civil rights or rule of law.

Where the PA rules, the Christians suffer. In those parts of the Holy Land their communities, that long predate the advent of Islam, are the victims of discrimination, persecution, and violence, and their numbers are ever dwindling.

Living conditions within the PA have plummeted even though the Palestine-Arabs on a per capita basis receive more foreign aid and donations than any other group on earth. (Very little of the subsidies comes from Arab petrodollars, except in the form of bonuses for terrorists.) These gifts finance acquisition of weapons, explosives, rockets, training of terrorists, indoctrination of martyrs, education for jihad, and the lavish lifestyle of the cliques in power.

The PA Finance Minister admits that very large sums have simply disappeared and there is no accounting for where the money went. Well, virtually none of it has gone to develop an economy, or the infrastructure of a viable society, or care for the needs of the populace. Since the PA took power in 1993, there has been no effort to become even partially self-supporting. It chooses to be totally dependent on foreign largesse, and most likely always will be.

A special humanitarian concern has been for the Palestine-Arabs deemed to be refugees because they left Israel in 1948. They then numbered 500,000-550,000, including some who had resided there for as little as two years, and even some who had never resided there at all. They are now alleged to number some 3,500,000 -- a statistically implausible rate of natural increase [See Issues Nos. 9, 31]. They and their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren have ever since been kept in separate communities, some but not all of them now within the PA areas, run by UNRWA (a special agency of the United Nations) and largely subsidized by the US taxpayer.

This is the Arab Refugee Problem that will never be solved by the invention of a State of Palestine because the rulers of such a prospective state along with the rulers of Saudi Arabia and most other Arab states will not allow them a chance to join the general population and rebuild their lives. Instead, they perpetuate their plight in order to demand a Right of Return. That is: They must be moved to Israel, where they would destroy the Israelite state from within. Thus, a State of Palestine would not alleviate much less solve the Arab Refugee Problem.

The suffering of the Palestine-Arabs is inflicted by the PA that now rules over them. To promote the PA to the status and dignity of a sovereign state will make them worse off, not better.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

It is a befogged folly to imagine that a State of Palestine would be anything but a murderous enemy to Israel. And when its massive attacks come, they would be joined by Syria and by Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, and perhaps by Egypt and Jordan despite their peace treaties with Israel, and backed by Iran and other Islamist states, and a Fifth Column provided by Israeli Arabs subverted by Hamas and al-Qaeda.

This would be the consequence, should the incumbent Israeli and U.S. administrations act out their game of "Let's Make a Palestein Monster".

 
Patricia Berlyn is a native of New York City, who now resides in Israel.

This essay is from "A Time to Speak -- Messages About Israel." Part I. is Volume VII:1 (No. 65) January 2007 -- Tevet-Shevet 5767; part II is Vol. VII:2 (No. 66) March 2007 -- Adar-Nissan 5767.

"A Time To Speak" appears once a month, and each issue is on a theme that relates to Israel and the Middle East past and present, including history, background, current events, analysis and comment. All issues appear on its website: http://www.israel.net/timetospeak. A complimentary subscription to the e-mail edition is available by request to: speak@actcom.co.il.

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