THINK-ISRAEL

There be established a homeland for the Palestinian Arabs who currently reside in UNRWA-run refugee camps and in the Territories: Samaria, Judea and Gaza.

This entity is to be established on unused land in the Middle East within the holdings given or assigned to the Arabs and endorsed by the League of Nations after the Ottoman Empire was dissolved after World War I.

Palestina could be 10X the size of Israel (including Samaria, Judea and Gaza) and still not make a dent in the Arab land holding. The 22 Arab League states have 42% more land than the 50 United States of America. The Arabs currently have over 99.9% of the Middle East, while Israel has less than 1 tenth of 1 percent (0.1%).

The Arab states would have an opportunity to translate their often-expressed sympathy for their Palestinian brethren into useful action. Palestina would also redress an old injustice — the Arab states created the Arab refugee problem when they urged the Arabs in Israel to flee when they invaded Israel in 1948. These people and their descendants are still in refugee status. The Arab states also created another group of refugees. Almost a million Jews — Jews living in Arab countries — were harassed, deprived of human rights, had their stores, schools and homes ransacked and destroyed, saw hundreds of Jews murdered in riots and pogroms, and were forced to flee their homes and leave their property behind, because of Arab anger at the creation of the State of Israel. But Israel has already solved that problem by absorbing most of these Jewish refugees at its own expense.

PM Netanyahu has asked for 'out of the box thinking', perhaps as a substitute for the 1state-2state controversy that goes nowhere. We believe implementation of this proposal has a realistic chance at bringing peace and stability to the Middle East.

Nature of the Land Region to be assigned to the Palestinians

• Palestina should be isolated from Arab population centers. PLO behavior in Lebanon and Jordan suggests the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) has a tendency to try to take control of host countries.
• It should not be in Jordan, because that is too close to Israel. With sufficient separation, it would not be as easy to attack Israel by missile or individual acts of terror.
• The Jews who fled from Arab states left behind property some 4 to 5 times the size of all of Israel. That should compensate the host Arab country in establishing Palestina.
• For some set period of time, Palestina would receive the funds now expended by E.U., UNRWA and the U.S.A. on the Arab refugees.
• For the Arabs now living in the Territories and the refugee camps, it would be about as much a culture shock as moving from Worcester to Boston. They would remain in the Arab culture, Muslim religion and Middle East geography; they would enjoy familiar foods and life styles, and speak the same language.
• Sympathizers will have the opportunity to come to Palestina and help develop the infra-structure for administering a viable state.
• Palestina will be monitored -- likely by drone planes, satellite imagery and internet traffic statistics -- only to the extent of preventing the training of the native population and foreigners to commit acts of terror outside Palestina. If they continue to prefer thug government and fighting each other by clan/tribe/religious sect, that is their decision. It will be countenanced as long as it remains within the confines of the state of Palestina.

Why Is This a Propitious Time?

American attitudes:

• In general Americans support Israeli as against Arab claims; this is particularly true of the conservatives, both religious and secular. (The further the individual is to the left, the more anti-Israel he tends to become.) For the next year or two, people who never voted for conservative candidates will do so to show anger towards the current administration's policies.
• The majority of Congress is sympathetic to Israel. At present, however, the American Congress can't really say anything when Israeli leaders keep pretending that all they want for Chanukah is another Palestinian state neighboring Israel.
• However, years of unrefuted claims that Israel is occupying Palestinian land have taken their toll. The demands for divestiture and boycotts against Israel grow. The Arabs have captured the support of influential elements of several mainstream churches. Too often, university administrators let their activist Muslim students determine which speakers holding what political ideology will have access to the student body. More people, especially students at college, accept — or at least do not challenge — the Palestinian claims. And Anti-Semitic statements are made more openly, often in the guise of anti-Zionism.
• To refute the assertion fueling this hostility — namely, that Israel is occupying Arab land — Israel's ownership of Mandated Palestine must be broadcast loud and clear. Simultaneously, restructuring the Palestinian problem as one of providing the Palestinian Arabs with a viable space — not a particular space — would change the dynamics.

Israel's Internal Enemies Are Losing Power:

• A few years ago, the authority and opinions of pro-Palestinian NGOs including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and strong anti-Israel groups like Peace Now were unquestioned. That is no longer true. Their own conduct is now under examination. Simultaneously, there are more pro-Israel blogs that disseminate the facts and correct misleading and false statements made by pro-Palestinian groups.
• Israeli Marxist leftists have been exposed as undemocratic; their highly selective definition of freedom of speech is under attack. And Israel is finally introducing patriotism into its school system. Israelis aren't as easy to persuade to give up land as they used to be, especially after the Gaza expulsion debacle.

Middle East (ME) politics and current crises:

Considering the political events in the Middle East and the growing strength of the enemy, Israel can no longer rely on temporizing measures, or waste her time and resources on inadequate measures to keep the enemy at bay. Nor should she be flirting with suicidal actions such as considering creating an enemy state in her tiny space.

The major and growing problems in the Middle East are:

1. increasing instability in an already volatile region. This is accentuated by the increased brazenness of Hamas (founded by the Muslim Brotherhood) and Hezbollah (founded and funded by Iran).
2. Iran's outspoken intent to destroy Israel by weapons of mass destruction.

These problems are exacerbated by "random" terrorist acts such as those committed by the West Bank Palestinian Arabs. These add perturbations to a situation that could easily go ballistic. It would reduce the problem of how to handle ME instability to take the Palestinians out of the equation.

Other considerations:

• Turkey has joined Iran — and/or is challenging Iran for Number 1 Position of Power in the Middle East.
• It is likely the Arab States all still want to kill off Israel. But that's a long-term project. And Saudi Arabia inter alia has more immediate concerns. Right now Iran and Saudi Arabia (S.A.) are at (proxy) war. S.A. needs Israel's help as much as Jordan and the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) do. Moreover, S.A., which has lavishly sponsored religion-inspired terrorism abroad, is now confronting the fact that the terrorist movement it helped create has turned its deadly operations on Saudi Arabia itself.
• The Muslim Brotherhood is a major consideration. Like the Saudis. it, too, is strongly anti-secular. Much of its funding has gone into promoting a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. The MB had the educated personnel to supply S.A. with its teachers and intellectuals. In consequence, as Gilles Kepel put it, "the interaction [between MB ideas and Wahhabi teachings] ... lead to the rise of a new, internationalist form of Salafism, which is...in important ways, the dominant cultural force in the Arab ME."

President Mubarak of Egypt is old and in poor health. When he dies, the Muslim Brotherhood (which was founded in Egypt almost a century ago) will be under less restraint in exerting its influence. It is popular, well-organized and its members currently hold 19% (88/454) Assembly (lower house of the Parliament) seats. It plans to fight for the 30% at-risk parliamentary seats in the next election scheduled for late 2010. Its ex-UN opponent/ally, Mohamed El Baradei, has a weaker tactic: he calls for boycotting the election.

The Egyptian MB also has some affiliation with Iran's rulers and they have influenced each other in shaping their religion-based ideological and political views, though, practically speaking, their major intersection is their mutual involvement with Hamas. And the MB is a growing threat to the "moderate" Arab countries. Jordan's King Abdullah, though protected by Israel, has no compunction about trashing Israel whenever possible. He is, however, deferential toward the MB and recently conferred honors on two of their leaders.

Increasing its dominance in the Middle East will enhance the Brotherhood's sophisticated programs around the world, which are directed at demonizing Jews and substituting Sharia law for local laws and regulations. It has said its goal was jihad to destroy the USA. The MB has extensive financial and political resources, and is constantly developing and supporting new groups and techniques for spreading Islam (See here.) They have infiltrated the educational system and the media in the West; and they are expanding the construction and control of mosques everywhere. They do not hesitate to do whatever they think is necessary, legal or illegal. Allowing the MB to increase its power in the ME would have direct repercussions on the West.

• P.A. and Hamas leaders continue to bluster that they will not be satisfied with anything less than returning to their old homes in Israel. But In the fall of 2010, Andrew Whitley, the New York director of UNRWA, put out what may be a trial balloon. He said that Palestinian refugees "must discard illusions they will return one day to their homes;" Arab countries must resettle them. He said Palestinian refugees needed to start "debating their own role in the societies where they are rather than being left in a state of limbo where they are helpless." When the involved groups protested, he recanted. Nevertheless, he had voiced openly what diplomats and Arab leaders have long known: Israel isn't going to allow itself to be flooded by Palestinian refugees.

Why Not An Arab State Neighboring Israel?

An Arab state can not be developed in, around, from, through or next to Israel because

• There isn't room for two viable states in that confined space, particularly when the Arabs are determined to destroy the Jewish state.
• Israel has title to all of Mandated Palestine — Israel, Samaria, Judea, Golan and Gaza. By the Bible. By maintaining residence through thick and thin. By history. By devotion and the ability to make the land become alive again. By an irrevocable trust authorized by international law (Start with this, this, this and this). And by right of conquest after surviving multiple Arab invasions.
• Samaria and Judea (aka the West Bank) are Biblical Israel. They are the soil in which Judaism developed. A proud people does not throw away its inheritance. Were Israel to become a rootless nation and allow the Arabs to control its holy sites, its people would lose what made them a people. The State would lose its purpose: the redemption of the Land of Israel. And the sympathy of its millions of Christian friends and many of its strongest Jewish supporters in the West would be lost.
• Israel can not allow another state to control its mountain aquifer in Samaria-Judea; especially when the Arabs — despite all the money and technology available to them from foreign benefactors — mucked up the Gaza portion of the coastal aquifer, under their control since 1995, by overpumping, digging illegal wells and ignoring raw sewage pollution. Importing water has become impractical, especially now that Turkey has become unfriendly. Reverse osmosis desalination has relieved some of the water problem and is the method of choice for brackish water. But its capital costs are high, it doesn't completely remove all the contaminants, it impacts the environment and it has problems disposing of the extracted material. Moreover, northern desalination plants can be crippled by sewage dumped into the Mediterranian from Gaza polluting the intake water; and all plants are susceptible to terrorist attack. Israel can not operate a comprehensive solution including conservation and recycling with the Arabs attacking some of the sites and digging illegal wells.
• Gaza is already host to various terror gangs. It is a certainty that if Israel gives up Samaria and Judea, Hamas will soon control the area, making it easier for Hamas and Hezbollah and the splinter groups to coordinate their ongoing war against Israel and link to like-minded groups in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.
• The once small cottage industry where Palestinian Arabs manufactured small explosives and smuggled in small missiles has evolved. Currently, rockets and missiles in the Territories can reach everywhere in Israel, including air traffic coming into the Ben-Gurion airport. Given their current rocket range, aside from reducing Israel's tourist industry dramatically because people will be afraid to come to Israel, the downing of a plane is a certainty waiting to happen. More generally, with less land in which to create a safety margin, Israel's ability to safeguard her population becomes near impossible. Maj-Genl (res.) Giora Eiland has pointed out that a shift in the borders that Israel controls would (1) give the enemy the 'lines of visibility' that would enable their weaponry to cover Israel's roads and strategic positions; and (2) block Israel's ability to deploy its anti-missile defense systems, which need more distance than the 9-miles width of the 1949 cease-fire lines.(See here.)
• The weaker Israel becomes, the greater will be the sequential pressure to surrender additional pieces of Israel: Syria will claim the Golan; the Arab farmers in the Jordan valley, already favored by the police and the judiciary in disputes with the Jewish farmers, will demand autonomy or absorption by the Palestinian state; and the Beduin, who have not been restricted from illegally building in the Negev, will effectively control the Negev, not matter what the political structure is called.
• Israel cannot rely on third party promises of safeguarding Israel. The U.N. has been consistently hostile; its Goldstonian anti-Israeli decisions have become a caricature of truth and justice, but because these decrees are from the U.N., they are taken seriously. The E.U. has expended emotional and financial capital in improving the lives of the Palestinians. The Europeans are unlikely to give up their benevolent self-image, no matter what the facts. Americans genuinely like Israel, but that doesn't guarantee that a particular Administration, Democratic or Republican, will help Israel in a crisis. It speak volumes about the attitude of the current administration that reports that the USA will lease land from the Palestinians for Israel are credible (See Here). The wars the U.S.A. has fought in the Middle East have been to protect Arabs.

Won't the media and "the world" react violently?

Of course. Don't they always? About everything. About anything.

PR can not be an after thought. It can not be delayed. It must be integrated with implementation. It must be sustained. It must be repeated over and over and over again. In straightforward language.

PR will be simplified

• when Israel finally starts rebutting Arab claims that they own the Land of Israel and when Israeli spokesmen stop shilling for a Palestinian state along side Israel. Most of the Arabs in Israel themselves are legal/illegal immigrants or are the descendants of Arabs who came into Israel after 1900 for economic reasons. Altogether, the majority of the Palestinians in Israel and in the Territories are descendants of illegal/legal immigrants, not natives.
• when Israel and its spokesmen in the West start and continue to point out that Israel, through no desire of its own, finds itself in the front lines fighting a war that Radical Islam is waging against the West.
• when the case is made that Israel is passionate about its land and will not give up an inch of it. Offering to share arouses suspicion that the land does not really belong to Israel. Offering to share provides an irresistible opportunity for everyone to voice an opinion on whether Israel is a legitimate state or not.
• when the transfer to Palestina is presented as the second stage of population exchange. The first stage occurred when Jews were forced to flee from the Arab countries and most came to the new state of Israel. Click here for "The Case for Population Exchange" of the Jewish and Arab populations in context of the history of population exchange.)
• when people are presented with a clear set of alternatives: supporting Israel which, in a few short years, has significantly contributed to medicine, science and technology to benefit humanity OR, alternatively, destroying Israel for the sake of an ersatz people (see here, here and here for starters), whose major contribution to civilization is the development of techniques for beheading, dismembering, and multilating human beings.

Dealing with Hamas as well as the P.A.

How can this peace plan handle Hamas and the P.A., Hamas versus the P.A., Hamas instead of the P.A., and the possible installation of a strict Muslim terror government to replace a secular Muslim terror government?

When negotiators smoke the peace pipe in Washington, they tend to ignore the reality that half the Arab population in the Territories live under Hamas rule, where emerging terrorist gangs are welcome but Christian Arabs and Fatah supporters are under attack. To cut a tunnel between Gaza and Samaria-Judea would create easy passage for Hamas to access Jewish targets in Israel and P.A. targets in Samaria-Judea. It would also encourage Hamas and the P.A. to wage internecine war or to unite and wage war against Israel — or to do both. To leave the areas separated means essentially to create two Arab states, both determined to destroy Israel, one by terror and violence, the other more subtly by propaganda and using third party support, while nibbling away at Israeli land. Meantime, Abbas's term of office expired in 2009.

Can you expect cooperation from Hamas and P.A. in making a move to Palestina?

It is possible that Hamas will see the advantage of moving and Fatah will not. But Fatah is less capable of independent action, because it is totally dependent on the U.S.A and Israel. Suppose Hamas, being more independent and less reliant on Western handouts, refuses to leave Gaza. Given that the majority of the Palestinian Arabs from the camps and Territories are sequestered in Palestina, the problem reduces to how to defang Hamas. Israel won't be in the ambivalent position of fighting Hamas while trying to make friends with it.

Can you put Hamas and P.A. in same place, in Palestina, and expect them to cooperate?

Perhaps not. But we will not have an investment in teaching them democracy or trying to control their political future. If Hamas transfers peacefully to Palestina, we can live with Hamas winning by ballot box, if that's what the Palestinians want as their leaders. It will affect no one but themselves.

It won't be just a question of what Hamas, Fatah and the Territory Arabs will do. They will be joined by the large population of refugee Arabs, some of whom may have ideas of their own.

If the Arab States have vowed to destroy Israel, why would they agree to transfer out the Palestinian Arabs?

First, the Palestinians are beginning to make the Arab countries uneasy. They have been more successful at fighting Israel than the Arab countries and might become successful at overthrowing Arab states, as their model, Hizbullah, is doing in Lebanon. They are getting better all the time: Hamas is acquiring sophisticated weapons and Fatah is being trained by the Americans.

Both are affiliated with regimes not sympathetic to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States — the major oil producers. Hamas, which is popular with the Palestinians, is a creation and creature of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is working to take over Egypt and has its eye on Jordan. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard was midwife to Hezbollah. Hezbollah has taken over Lebanon. Hamas and Hezbollah are — at the least — loosely affiliated. Sequestering the Palestinians with a wide separation from Arab population centers will make a dent in their ability to do mischief. They won't be able to walk over to bomb a neighbor — at least not a non-Palestinian neighbor — or drive a short distance to shoot a sleeping mother and her children.

It is assumed that some Palestinians now living in Arab countries will continue living there as individuals, not as wards of the U.N. Potential Palestinian sedition is an important consideration. We still have vivid images of the delight on the faces of the Palestinians who had been living in Kuwait for many years when Saddam Hussein's invaded Kuwait. People who saw pictures of the Arabs dancing in the streets of Paterson, New Jersey, and celebrating in Gaza when the Twin Towers were destroyed are not sanguine about taking a Palestinian's patriotism on faith. It can be written into the establishment of Palestina that Palestinians that attempt civil insurrection in the Arab countries in which they currently reside will be deported to Palestina. Israel will also be able to deport seditious Israeli Arabs to Palestina, without involving the other Arab countries.

Second, Israel provides the military support that keeps King Abdullah of Jordan on his throne and keeps Hamas from taking the West Bank and removing President Abbas and Fatah from power. Yet both Abdullah and Abbas speak derogatorily about Israel. Israel's elder peace partner, Mubarek of Egypt, acts like a member of the Palestinian negotiation team — the one that warns that the sky will fall if Israel doesn't immediately capitulate.

Israel is the only ME country capable of stopping Iran from becoming Numero Uno in the Middle East and imposing its brand of Islam on the region. And the Arab countries know it, particularly Saudi Arabia, which is currently at war with Iran in Yemen.

It is time that Israel changed the rules: no tickee, no washee. King Abdullah and Mubarek need to read from a different script and start sounding respectful of Israel. Saudi Arabia has the power to "persuade" key member states of the U.N. With this new script, the Arab states won't like Israel any better, but they'll respect it.

Transferring out the Palestinians could be seen as doing it for their own safety, because Iran is threatening to nuke Israel.

The Palestinian leaders should have no problem in seeing advantages to a move, particularly if Israel annexes Gaza, Samaria and Judea, as it is entitled to do. The new state is an upscale move to better living quarters and expanded opportunities. Contrary to the fables their media weave, the "Palestinians" do not have ancient roots in the Territories. And they are guaranteed a steady income for some time to come.

There will be no squabble about borders and settlements, because Israel annexes the Territories, which belong to Israel.

Conclusion

It is the tenor of our times that presumably moral people are silent when the Palestinians slaughter Jews. They are however highly distressed if a Palestinian is detained at a check-point. They do not see the appalling immorality in equating inconveniencing Arabs with murdering Jews. The self-declared friends of the Palestinians allege, contrary to fact, that Israel is apartheid. It does not bother them that the Arab countries do not allow Jews to vote or to buy land or to build synagogues. Technically, the Arab states can not be accused of apartheid because, except for the remnants of ancient Jewish communities (many of whom predate the arrival of the Arab invaders), they don't have Jews in their states. They don't have Jews because they won't allow Jews to live in their states. In fact, the P.A. and Hamas subject Arabs who sell land to Jews in the Territories to capital punishment.

We are proposing moving an unsettled, unstable group of people to a home that they can make their own. We recognize that transferring a population is a charged term. It lends itself to connotations of racism and to depriving people of their civil rights, and to charges that it is a class action that injures members of the class that might be innocent. No matter how attractive the proposed new home, some people will insist that the Palestinians -- unlike all other refugees -- must be returned to a land that they claim but have never owned. Never.

There are, however, other considerations. And these are based in reality. We must consider that the Palestinian Arabs have vowed to destroy Israel. They don't just talk. Israelis have suffered severely from continued Palestinian terrorism. Israel has tried hard for peace. The more they sacrificed for peace, the more warlike the Palestinians became. Israel is entitled to take actions that will prevent sabotage, sedition and terrorism. One precedent is that after we won our independence from England, those who had remained loyal to Britain were considered traitors. Given the mood of the country, the loyalists saw it was pointless to demand restitution and restoration of their properties; they left and went North. Another precedent is after WWII, when Czechoslovakia (Sudentenland), Romania, Hungary and Poland expelled millions of resident Germans, after some of these Germans had proven to be a fifth column, who helped the Nazis. The expulsion also reduced the possibility of Germany again claiming territory as the Nazis did on behalf of the Sudenten Germans. (See statistics.)

Considering the current crises in the Middle East, arguing about the fairness or justice of transfering populations is meaningless.

There is a continuous constriction of Israel's options as her enemies come ever closer to encircling her militarily and weakening her diplomatically.

In the near future, one way or the other, there will be a transfer of population. Either there will be a mass movement out of Samaria-Judea and Gaza of Arabs or there will be a mass movement out of Samaria-Judea of Jews.

The two processes are not similar. In the first case, it is a part of moving large groups of Arabs living in different parts of the Middle East in coordinated maneuvers to a new land with a large number of U.N. and E.U. agencies doting on them, eager to set them up in a style befitting the new Palestina people in the new land of Palestina. They're moving up. They are bettering their condition.

The process of moving a quarter to half million Jews out of the land where Judaism was born will not be upbeat. It will be a horror show. It will be the Gaza expulsion of 1995 multiplied many times over, with one major difference: this time, the Jews are unlikely to engage in passive physical resistance. Consider also that successive Israeli governments and their bureaucracies have not been capable of dealing competently with the aftermath of the expulsion of some ten thousand Jews. Most of the Gazan Jews have still not been permanently settled. Where once they contributed to the gross national product, now, through no fault of their own, they are a drain on the Treasury. Imagine a quarter of a million to half million more Jews made homeless and jobless, a drain on Israel's financial resources. The only funds will have to come from Israel's coffers. The U.N. will not help. America is in no position to spend money. And it unlikely that pious Jews in the Diaspora or Pro-Israel Christians will help Israel commit suicide by leaving Biblical Israel. The expulsion will bust the bank. It will also excite the incoming Arabs to attack a demoralized and shattered people.

Some of you reading this are thinking this is an exaggeration — there's been rumours and fantasies masquerading as information that Abbas will graciously let some settlements remain, and so some Jews will stay. Actually, he has insisted he will allow no Israelis -- Jews or Muslims -- to settle in his state; and his vision of a Palestinian state includes all of Israel. Even if some Jews were to remain, consider the cost of guarding them. Recall, a major reason for clearing out of Gaza was the cost of maintaining IDF forces in the Jewish areas, when the size to be guarded was 10,000 people in a circumscribed area. In Samaria and Judea, the patches of Jewish settlements are not contiguous. They will be isolated and scattered, and the population much, much larger. A nightmare to guard. A focal point for arab terrorism. A guarantee of constant battle that drains resources and is a distraction from concentrating on the hostility coming from Iran-sponsored terror troops.

The proposal in this document is a plan for a 2-state solution that has a real chance of working.  

APPENDIX: WHAT ISRAEL NEEDS TO DO

by Richard H. Shulman

A. CHANGE JEWISH ATTITUDES

Before Israel can adopt and implement a plan for dealing with its Arab enemies, it must get its own mental house in order. That means general unity. Israeli unity once seemed impossible. The decades of failed appeasement, the thousands of Muslim Arab murders of Jews that it produced, and the extreme unfairness of the outside world have strengthened Israeli public opinion against the leftist advocates of appeasement.

1. Jews should revise their mental outlook

Normal people uphold their interests reasonably. To what degree is a matter of opinion. Israeli appeasement of the Arabs and of the U.S. demands of it have been extreme. This attitude has risked national security and survival. It enabled thousands of murders of Israelis. That is not normal. Nor is it normal when people accuse Israelis who would defend themselves and their national interest of being extremist.

Jewish people are too other-directed. Centuries of powerlessness and oppression have imbued them with a craving for gentile approval. Whereas every nation acting in its own interests tries to present its actions as decent, the Jewish people tries to present itself as decent by acting against its own interests, by not being decent to themselves.

Appeasement fails. Anti-Semites cannot be placated, because they hate Jews for being Jews. The reasons they cite for hostility are rationalizations. Jews address the rationalizations, but facts from Jews cannot persuade people afflicted with the psychosis of anti-Semitism or with indoctrination in religious jihad. Likewise, the stubbornness of State Dept. anti-Zionism over the generations has proved impervious to the American need for Israeli support against first the Soviets and now the jihadists. Moreover, a Saudi prince once boasted that the prospect of lush, post-retirement consultancies with Saudi Arabia keeps State Dept. diplomats still employed by the U.S. in line with Saudi policy.

Jews act against their own interests in many ways. One example will have to suffice. Consider checkpoints. Israel has set up checkpoints to block terrorist access to Jewish communities. The U.S. demands that Israel remove the checkpoints. To please the State Dept., Israel removes many of them. Terrorists then get through and murder Jews. Israel often had to restore the checkpoints. The U.S. renews its demands. Israel complies. More Jews murdered. Israel did not act in its own interests. Israeli officials must have forgotten the Talmudic advice that if they act mercifully towards the unmerciful (terrorists), there will be no mercy for the merciful (Israelis).

Israeli officials also seem to have forgotten to study Arab culture. The officials believe that if Israelis are nice to the Arabs, the Arabs will be nice to them. Unfortunately, the Israelis confuse being nice with being obsequious. When Israel makes concessions to the Arabs, Arab culture interprets this behavior as weakness. And isn't it? The Arabs then become contemptuous and demand more.

An example is Israel having given the Muslim Waqf the keys to the Temple Mount. The Waqf abuses its custodianship by preventing Jews from praying on the Mount, by illegal construction that gradually usurps the whole Mount, and by destroying ancient Jewish artifacts as they excavate. They threaten to riot against Jews who ascend the Mount or even pray at the Wall below it. The Israeli police acquiesce, contrary to court orders. In the face of that Israeli demonstration of weakness, the Arabs riot anyway, egged on by the supposedly peaceful Palestinian Authority. Thus the pot of war keeps boiling!

2. Israeli reforms, prerequisite for asserting Jewish rights

Although the Israeli people have rediscovered the justification and value of Jewish nationalism, the Left remains sufficiently powerful there to block most nationalist reform. Therefore, Israel needs democratic reforms of the abuses described below, as well as the previously mentioned change in its emotional attitude, before it could set up our proposed steps in dealing with the Arabs.

a.The High Court is a self-perpetuating, far-Left clique that has usurped power unrestricted by U.S.-style separation of powers. It overturns law in favor of its members' personal preferences, however unjust, in behalf of the Arabs. The Court does not follow the rule of law. Lower Court justices often follow its line, in order to be considered for promotion.

The Court's justices should be nominated by the Prime Minister and ratified by Knesset. Politics would intrude, but it would be more democratic.

b. Let the Knesset limit judicial power to overturn legislation! We recommend that the new Court welcome Jewish Law as precedent. The leftist majority ignores Jewish Law.

c. Israel has proportional representation. That system sounds democratic but is the opposite. In combination with a low minimum vote for Knesset representation, it gives disproportionate power to minority parties to extort from the majority. Worse, it aligns parties with party bosses who place favorites higher in the slate of candidates for Knesset.

To better reflect the will of the people, Israel needs Knesset districts. Although not perfect, this would be a great improvement.

d. The Attorney-General has usurped power much as has the Supreme Court. A balance should be restored.

e. The media is controlled largely by leftists. The government should grant radio broadcasting rights to nationalist groups, not solely to leftist groups.

f. Israeli lower education mostly has ignored Zionism and Jewish history. It sometimes even teaches the Arab doctrine that the formation of Israel was a tragedy for the Arabs and based on evil. It does not monitor the seditionist textbooks used in Arab-language schools. That may be changing now, but not enough.

g. Israeli higher education in social studies is dominated by leftists. They hire poorly qualified fellow leftists, who abuse their positions to indoctrinate students in anti-Israeli theory and to repress dissent. Propaganda is not education.

h. Israeli police do practice brutality, but against Jews. Israel is partly a police state, with pre-emptive detention of Jews, beating of lawful and peaceable demonstrators, lengthy detention without trial, false accusations, framing of dissidents (as revised verdicts proved), etc.

Past regimes instituted special harassment of Jews in Judea-Samaria and Gaza. Altercations between Arabs and Jews there usually arise from Arab stone-throwing or attempts to destroy Jews' crops or rustle livestock or usurp fields. The government arrests Jews on the word of Arabs whose testimony is patently false, and rejects the word of Jews. Without checking, police take the word of Arabs on whose land is involved. (This discrimination may be because Israeli governments usually strive to exchange land for the broken and still unreliable Arab promise of peace. Jewish residents are in the way of that striving.) We acknowledge that in reaction to Israeli government failure to protect Jews in the Territories, a small number of Jews there have been taking revenge on Arab property.

i. Foreign governments and NGOs have been subsidizing Israeli Arab and fringe leftist organizations to engage in subversive projects up to and including expressing bigotry against Jews and calling for the destruction of Israel.

Israel has begun reacting. A proposed bill would require such subsidies to be declared. In such a small country struggling for survival, the threat of those subsidies to national security may outweigh the problems of censorship in banning such subsidies. Just as boots on the ground invade, so, too, in a sense, do hostile masses of immigrants and subversive subsidies invade. A country has a right to resist any type of invasion.

In the related matter of illegal foreign subsidy of Israeli elections, two Israeli Prime Ministers, Barak and Sharon, were involved, but only underlings were convicted. Since national independence is at stake, judicial crackdown should be sweeping and severe.

j. Many foreign countries, being pro-Arab, oppose most Israeli measures of self-defense. We propose more such measures. If adopted, more foreign countries or companies are likely to boycott Israel. Therefore, Israel must strengthen its economy to withstand the anticipated pressure.

Two ways of strengthening the economy, some of which were started by Benjamin Netanyahu when Finance Minister, are to eliminate unnecessary government regulation and spending.

B. STOP ASSISTING THE ARABS TO ENTRENCH THEMSELVES

1. Israel collects and remits Palestinian Authority (P.A.) excise tax revenues. Why help finance a government that endorses terrorism and threatens war?

2. Israel sometimes arms P.A. forces, and P.A. forces sometimes open fire on Israelis. This treachery is predicted and repeated. Crazy, isn't it, to continue arming the P.A.?

3. Israel allows foreign governments to train P.A. forces in counter-terrorism and in infantry operations. But the P.A. is terrorist and threatens to attack Israel. It can use its training to counter Israeli counter-terrorism. When PM Rabin told the P.A. the names of Israel's Arab agents in the P.A., the P.A. hunted them down. What does that tell you?

4. As mentioned before, PM Netanyahu risks Israeli security by removing checkpoints, in order to facilitate the P.A. economy.

5. For college admission and scholarships and for certain government jobs, Israel discriminates against Jews and in favor of Arabs.

6. Most Arabs living in Jerusalem are not citizens. Israel grants them welfare benefits and permits to travel in Israel. If they move away for some years, they are supposed to forfeit their Jerusalem residency permits, but protest embarrassed Israel into not rescinding the permits. Israel must learn to stand up to, and parry, attempts to embarrass it.

7. The central government of Israel encourages municipal profligacy by covering municipal over-spending. Arab towns are known to forfeit tax collection from their residents, and then bill the central government for the difference between expense and income.

8. Israel has not fully reformed the law permitting Arabs from the Territories to marry Israeli Arabs, sometimes sincerely but sometimes as pretext for gaining residency. This increases Israel's Arab population and pressure against survival of the Jewish state.

C. ENFORCE THE LAW AGAINST ARAB VIOLATORS

1. Israel prides itself on being a country of law, but as mentioned earlier, Arabs threaten riots unless they get their way, which they often get. Israel should face down Arab riots despite ensuing criticism from the hostile European press. A few years ago, Israeli Arabs attacked Jews and started crowding in on a few policemen. To save themselves, the police opened fire. Under great and indignant protest domestically and from abroad, Israel condemned the police. How much law enforcement against Arab violators can one expect from police now?

2. Israeli tax collectors fear entering Arab towns. They need protection. Arabs should pay their fair share.

3. Arabs in Israel and in the Israeli-administered territories have usurped thousands of acres of public and private land. On that land and on some land that they actually own, they have built tens of thousands of houses without building permits. Israel has been discouraged by foreign critics from enforcing the law.

By contrast, domestic and foreign anti-Zionists encourage the government to demolish the small number of Jewish houses they call illegal, but which are not. They are built within authorized municipal boundaries and with authorization for almost all of the many, bureaucratic stages of official approval. (Note that we are not referring to outposts -- a fancy name for what most often are a couple of trailers -- usually built without permits. But why are they denied permits when built within municipal bounds?) Most are, up to the last stage, approved by the Defense Minister. Defense Minister Barak heads the Labor Party that opposes Jewish retention of the Territories. For that political reason, he withholds approval and demolishes houses. Arbitrary abuse of power! Such discretion should be modified to prevent demolition orders for politics and without cause.

4. Ban the Israeli Islamic Movement, which organizes Arabs in support of terrorism, though it may not engage in it much.

5. Remove radical imams, who, under cover of religion, incite to war in Israeli mosques.

D. EXPAND NATIONAL SERVICE REQUIREMENTS

Israel offers some religious Jews a national service alternative to military draft. The national service draft should be extended only to the Arab sector, presently exempt from the draft. This would test Arab loyalty to their country. It also would entitle them to veterans' benefits and the resulting higher ranking on job applications.

The IDF set up a few ultra-Orthodox units to meet their religious requirements. As the Jewish population becomes increasingly Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox, the Army needs its full participation. So does the economy.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews have been stretching the limits of student exemption, to a great extent because the military generally is hostile-secularist with an atmosphere of too much sexual libertinism for those Jews. Let the IDF make military service comfortable for ultra-Orthodox and then expect them to enlist.

Ending subsidy and discrimination in favor of the Arabs, enforcing the law against their wholesale seizure of land, illegal building, tax evasion, and rioting, and extending national service requirements to the Arabs would prompt many to emigrate. This is the opposite of PM Netanyahu's policy of building up the P.A. economy, which has helped raise that economy without lowering P.A. bigotry and pro-terrorist sentiment.

If Israel ends its appeasement, and if it pursues the Jewish national interest, and if the Muslim Arabs become less of a "critical mass," the Arabs might lose hope of taking over an Israel that they now perceive as weak. They certainly would pose less of a danger. The fewer their numbers, the less likely is war.

Bernice Lipkin (editor@think-israel.org) and Lewis Lipkin (l.lipkin@comcast.net) are editors at www.Think-Israel.org.

The Appendix was written by Richard H. Shulman, who comments on current events of importance both to the U.S.A. and Israel. The Appendix is a section from Shulman, "A New Plan For Resolving The Arab-Israel Conflict", which is available here.

_________________________End of Story___________________________