The time has come to admit there will be no friendly, peace-loving Palestinian state

Ehud Olmert returned from his farewell visit to Washington just when a hail of Qassam and Grad rockets rained down on Negev communities, with the IDF not really knowing what can be done about it.

Yet both from there and from here we can see that President Bush's vision regarding a viable Palestinian state that peacefully coexists with Israel is out. The truth is that it was never Bush's vision, but rather, the Tel Aviv bubble's pipe dream, which has been implanted into Bush's policy by Ariel Sharon.

It's not America's fault and it isn't our fault; the time has come to admit this vision cannot be realized. There will be no friendly and peace-loving Palestinian state, there will only be Qassams on towns outside Tel Aviv and Katyusha rockets directed at Ben-Gurion airport.

No fence and no separation will hold, and no Palestinian leader will renounce the right of return or make do with the 1967 borders. We already tried it 10 times. Since Oslo, every Israeli withdrawal, either with or without an agreement, only gave rise to terrorism and bloodshed, and every period of diplomatic impasse created a period of calm.

Every time we made a step towards realizing the two-state vision, the result was casualties on both sides. The further we distanced from this vision, the lesser the bloodshed became. It is not the "enemies of peace" or the "radicals" who are perpetrating terror against us. Our partners in the peace talks are doing it, the Arafats and the Barghoutis. Those are facts, not theories.

Why do logical people cling to such an unrealistic vision, which has crashed time and again against reality, and always with bloodshed and suffering? The answer is fear and despair. Fear of the Arab population about to drown us in a dark demographic sea, and despair over the State of Israel's ability to rule and control its own fate.

Those who seek peace and life should first of all stop fearing. The Arabs will not drown us and won't become the majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, neither today or in 50 years. Their birthrate is declining, and it is already quite close to our birthrate. Their emigration numbers are higher than ours and it has been going on for 60 years now, during all periods and under all conditions. Even if we annex all the Arabs residing in Judea and Samaria to Israel and all of them become Israeli citizens, Israel will still be the Jewish State and it will continue being that way and be both democratic and just.
 

In the Middle East, we are the minority and they're the majority. We are 5.5 million Jews surrounded by 250 million Arabs. In terms of land, we are one of the poorest nations on earth, while the Arabs are amongst the wealthiest nations. We are right in our demand for a Jewish state, and we are right to struggle for every hill and every plot in the land of our forefathers, the very little that has been left for the minority.

Nobody will wrest away the Jewish people's state from them, and nobody will be removing the nation that belongs to the State of Israel. Even if we have a very large Arab minority in Israel, one quarter or one third of the population, it will not be allowed to take away the state from the Jewish people, because in a broader perspective Arab citizens in Israel do not belong to the minority, but rather, to the large and wealthy Arab majority, part of which lives in the only state of the Jewish minority. Natural and democratic justice will require the Arabs to live in the state of the Jewish people as citizens with equal rights who are loyal to their country.

Of course, in the post-modern world and vis-á-vis the post-Zionist conscience we have a Palestinian narrative that clashes with the Jewish-Zionist narrative. The problem is that they cling to their narrative, while we aim to represent both us and them, both the UN and the International Court of Justice.

If we rid ourselves of this despicable habit and cling to our justice, the decent people of the world will stand by us, because we are more just, and also because we're the minority, and a decent person stands by the minority. And mostly, if we want a state of our own and a government of our own, we must realize that we have the right to rule; that we have no choice but to rule.

Dr. Eli Tzur is a senior lecturer at the Kibbutz Seminary in Tel Aviv and author of the book. "Guardian of Israel" about the life of General David Shaltiel. This appeared June 11, 2008 in Ynet News
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0%2c7340%2cL-3554019%2c00.html

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