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A WIN-WIN SOLUTION TO THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT

by Rachel Neuwirth

A true solution requires confronting two fundamental issues: 1. Current proposals, including the Road Map, are totally unworkable and should be abandoned. 2. An entirely fresh approach is required that is free of imposed constraints. The purpose of this essay is first to briefly challenge the entrenched mindset and then advance a win-win solution for both Jews and Arabs.

Before proposing the proper solution it is necessary to first demonstrate the falsity and futility of some of the main arguments intrinsic to the Oslo Accords and to the Road Map.

Demonstrably false argument 1. - Israel should trade 'land for peace' to create yet another Arab country.

There are 22 Arab countries and only one Jewish country. The land-rich Arabs already occupy over 5 million square miles and land-poor Israel, including all of its territories, comprises only about 10,000 square miles. The Arab areas are thus 500 times larger than Israel and the Arabs already possess 99.8% of the total land. The so-called West Bank and Gaza areas combined total 2,300 square miles and comprise a miniscule 0.046% of the entire Arab empire - and to seize this speck of land the Arabs are adamant and willing to fight and die forever! Only a mind, hopelessly out of touch with reality, can seriously suggest that the Arabs need still more land, carved out of Israel, to create yet another country.

Demonstrably false argument 2. - The 'Palestinians' are a separate people who deserve their own country.

There are no authentic 'Palestinian' people and there never was. Even the name of Palestine is a historic fraud perpetrated by the Romans, to permanently erase the original name of Judea, following the Jewish revolt against Rome of two thousand years ago. As recently as the 1940's the name 'Palestinian' clearly meant a Jew in the land of Israel and Arabs were simply called Arabs. After Israel's rebirth the local Arabs appropriated that now-available title for themselves and created a new identity. This was done for purely hostile political purposes to undermine Israel's legitimate right to its biblical homeland. In all of history there never was a Palestinian nation, or country, or people, or language, or religion, which was distinct from the existing Arab counties in that region. Repeated attempts to rewrite history must never be allowed to corrupt the truth. To fully expose the 'Palestinian' hoax in modern times one should read Joan Peter's critically acclaimed book, From Time Immemorial - The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine.

Demonstrably false argument 3. - We can have a viable 'Palestinian' state in the so-called West Bank and Gaza next to a viable Israel.

Proponents of the Road Map offer NO development plan whatsoever. Any genuine plan must include a comprehensive environmental impact study covering: population growth; water resources; agriculture resources; economic development; social and political considerations; etc., with projections extending through at least the next century. Proponents offer NO plan because it is impossible to design any plan that enables both peoples to live viably in so tiny an area along with normal population growth. Below are projections for population growth in Israel and the territory of the proposed Palestinian state, based on current growth rates:

Inside Israel. Assuming continuation of their current growth rates for the next hundred years, Israel's Jews at 1.5% per year become 28 million and Israeli Arabs at 3% per year become 23 million. That totals 51 million Jews and Arabs living on less than 8,000 square miles with a density of 6,500 per square mile. The Israeli Arabs have double the Israeli birth rate and are already 23% of the total population and gaining. They remain mostly hostile and will soon be able to gain political control and they already hold about 10% of the Knesset seats. Israel will thus be unable to remain permanently Jewish and the Israeli Arabs will always be seeking to advance their Arab identity in conflict with Israel.

Inside the territories. At their present high growth rates the Palestinian Arabs, inside the West Bank and Gaza, growing at 3-4% per year become 120 million in 100 years. Including all the Palestinian refugees, who could migrate in from outside, would add another 47 million. Thus there are a potential total of 167 million Arabs in the projected Palestinian state in 100 years in an area of only 2,300 square miles for an astronomical density of 72,500 per square mile.

Many fail to appreciate the awesome power of compound growth until it is too late. These are only projections but long before those numbers are reached the area will explode in misery and conflict based on a crushing burden of population overload, aside from any political conflict. It is totally impossible for that many people to survive, much less thrive, in such a tiny area. That should be obvious to all.

Demonstrably false argument 4. - Arab possession of their 22 countries and 5 million square miles is legitimate and not to be challenged.

Just how did the Arabs come to control such vast territories? They got it the old fashioned way - by conquest! Before Mohammed, 1,400 years ago the Arabs lived in the Arabian Peninsula. Mohammed founded Islam and with it the zeal for jihad to conquer and convert, often by force. During the period following Mohammed the Arabs conquered vast areas in North Africa, southern Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia and spread Islam far and wide. Today Arabs directly control 5 million square miles and 22 sovereign states, while non-Arab Islamic countries control nearly another 5 million square miles.

The Arabs often claim that they were the original inhabitants in the land of Israel. Actually Arab invaders did not enter the land of Israel until about the year 638 C.E. while Jews had established their first commonwealth under King David, with Jerusalem as their capital, over 1,600 years earlier. Archaeologically, the entire land of Israel gives testimony to the ancient Jewish presence, but there is no evidence of any ancient \x{201C}Palestinian\x{201D} Arab settlers presence. And most of those 22 Arab States, including Iraq and Jordan, were first created by England, France or Italy during the past century to further their imperial interests, and with no historical justification.

In summary, advocates of these senseless schemes seriously propose to: invent a people that never was; seize land from Jews having virtually no land; transfer that Jewish land to those with too much land and unrelenting murderous hatred; and then let them all grow in numbers and suffocate together inside of a coffin-size territory - all in the name of peace and justice! That is what passes for thinking in this insane world. The Road Map guarantees a lose-lose outcome - we need a win-win outcome.

A far-sighted Arab-Jewish agreement was arrived at 85 years ago but was never fully implemented. This still-legal agreement provides the basis for a solution today and should become widely publicized and supported.

In 1919, following the end of World War I, an international Paris Peace Conference was convened by the victorious Allies to settle international questions. Delegations attended from around the world including an official Arab and Zionist delegation. The Arab delegation was led by Emir Feisal I, who agreed that the entire Palestine territory of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 would become the Jewish national home and expressed that position in separate letters to Zionist leaders Dr. Chaim Weizmann and Felix Frankfurter. In return for Arab support the Zionists promised economic and technical assistance to the local Arabs and the Allied powers agreed to grant eventual sovereignty to many of the Arab peoples in the region that were previously under control of the former Turkish Ottoman Empire.

This conference, and a subsequent one at San Remo Italy, amicably settled the issues among the parties with voluntary, legally binding, international agreements. In 1922 the League of Nations assigned Britain as the Mandatory to faithfully carry out these agreements. It was British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill who unilaterally divided Mandatory Palestine into an exclusively Arab sector (Trans Jordan) and a Jewish sector. The Arabs received 76% of the original territory, comprising 35,000 square miles, located east of the Jordan River. That left the Jewish sector with only 10,000 square miles out of their original 45,000 square miles, which was still less than 1% of the combined Arab areas of 5 million square miles. That remaining Jewish sector is today contested with the 'Palestinians' claiming the 'West Bank' and Gaza to create, in effect, a second Palestinian state. (Jordan is mostly Palestinian.) It was the British, in 1919, who began to undermine their own Mandate and to instigate the Arabs against Jews.

The Ariel Center for Policy Research in Israel (www.acpr.org.il) has a policy paper no. 147 titled, "Legal Rights and Title of Sovereignty of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel and Palestine Under International Law" by Howard Grief, author of the forthcoming book. It ably summarizes the post-World War I settlement of the Palestine question and its subsequent betrayal by the British government entrusted with implementing it.

A few extracts from the executive summary
(www.acpr.org.il/publications/policy-papers/pp147-xs.html)
will indicate its importance.

It has been argued, by scholars of international law, that the agreements of the international Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and their formal assignment to Britain as the Mandatory by the League of Nations, continue to be legally binding on all parties under international law. In addition to Jewish legal claims based on the 1922 law a case can be made that it is also morally binding and that England is guilty of bad faith and for having engaged in deliberate sabotage of that agreement. A most promising beginning for Arab-Jewish relations in the Middle East was deliberately undermined by England and this part of history must be brought to bear upon the present conflict. Israel has a right to make full land claims under that 1922 Mandate by the League of Nations. The Arabs should also be made aware that it was England that instigated them against the Jews in pursuit of British imperial interests and to the disadvantage of both Arabs and Jews.

Significantly, Arab support for a Jewish state was clearly manifested at the Paris Peace conference of 1919. This should also be part of the legally binding Arab obligations to acceptance of a Jewish state with full rights. Emir Feisal I, son of Hussein, Sheriff of Mecca led the Arab delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Excerpts of two letters from Emir Feisal to Zionist leaders Dr. Chaim Weizmann and to Felix Frankfurter indicate their friendly relations and high hopes for Jewish - Arab cooperation. Also note in the following text the term 'Palestine' clearly refers to the Jewish national home and not to any Arab entity or people.

What remains now is for all parties to courageously and boldly cast off the mindless schemes of Oslo and the Road Map and return to the sanity and statesmanship of the 1919 agreement. Those Arabs who have an acquired identity as 'Palestinian' should be given a far better alternative option than to be buried alive inside a non-viable illegal micro-state carved out of the Israeli heartland.

Contrary to popular belief, the Arab-Israeli conflict has a reasonable solution. An orderly resettlement elsewhere of the so-called Palestinian Arabs would solve this long-standing 'intractable' problem. To propose this solution today elicits automatic rejection by almost everyone and perhaps even anger and hostility at its very mention (although attitudes may finally be changing). This is because the minds of many have been so thoroughly conditioned, with layer upon layer of repeated falsehoods, such that open-minded reconsideration is almost impossible. But resettlement could become the basis of a win-win solution for both sides.

For example Saudi Arabia comprises some 750,000 square miles. It has a very low population density of only 33 per square mile vs. 1,000 for Israel including the territories. A modest 4% of Saudi Arabia, some 30,000 square miles, should be set aside for a new Palestinian state. That state would be 13 times the size of the present Palestinian area proposed under the Road Map and would now have ample space for natural growth. All of the intractable problems facing both Jews and Arabs, arising under the present schemes, would be eliminated. The Palestinians could now construct their own state with full political independence, self-rule and full dignity. The sources of friction between them and Israel would now be removed along with all the immense human and material costs associated with the current conflict.

Palestinians could begin using their legitimate 'right of return' to exit the territories, and the refugee camps, and migrate back to their ancestral home in Arabia and thereby also be closer to Mecca and Medina. A fraction of the countless billions spent on weapons by the Arab governments could fund the cost of establishing new settlements for the Palestinians. Israel would be free of Arabs, and the Palestinians would be free of Israel. The deep wounds of both peoples would now have a chance to heal.

In early 2004 a poll by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion shows 37% willing to emigrate in return for a home, a job and $250,000. And this is before a far better deal has been offered, including true self-rule, peace and security, plus their own ample territory. What if 'Palestinians' were offered a homeland territory, drawn from lands donated by one of the more spacious Arab countries, one expressing continuous concern, love for, and outrage at the treatment of these very same folk?

Israeli Arabs could play a constructive role in this because of their higher level of education and their experience living as full citizens in democratic Israel. They would become the managerial and entrepreneurial class and provide valuable assistance and leadership for fellow Palestinians who were stagnating in refugee camps inside other Arab countries. This crime was committed by their own brother Arabs, who refused to allow them to settle.

Once the migration starts toward a far better future the movement could well accelerate voluntarily because the first ones to relocate would receive the best 'ground floor' opportunities and the last ones to move would get what remains. Today there are tens of millions of people on the move around the world in search of better living conditions, so relocation is a long established and viable option for everyone.

Another important advantage is that Israeli-Palestinian interaction would be limited to the selling of Arab homes in the territories and an orderly exit. No more frustratingly complex agreements as with Oslo where Israel honors all commitments and Arabs violate all commitments, and even U.S. assurances often prove worthless. The less need for Israel to depend on agreements with Arabs, Europeans and even Americans the better.

Part of the problem are those Arab governments who deliberately keep the Israel-Palestinian conflict alive to divert attention from their own corrupt regimes. Also, western governments still pander to their corrupt Arab clients for purely expedient reasons. But new progressive voices are emerging among Arab intellectuals and even among some Moslem clerics that call for Arab societal reform, and who also recognize Jewish rights in the land of Israel. These voices need to be encouraged and enlisted in this quest for sanity.

What is also needed is Saudi cooperation and active support. The Saudis have long been responsible for promoting anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, and anti-American hatred along with funding terror and the teaching of a hateful form of Islam. With their 'royal' family of thousands of princes living lavishly, off of oil income and the labor of foreign workers, they are a cesspool of corruption that even Osama bin Laden finds offensive.

It is time to demand that the Saudis make a major contribution to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. They caused much of the problem and they must now assist with the solution. It is time for the Bush administration to make the Saudis 'an offer they can't refuse' and have them realize they have a direct interest in providing 'land for peace'.

For too long many people have labored under a collective mindset resembling a bad dream where big lies become entrenched wisdom and truth is constantly strangled. Unless we change direction there will be dire consequences extending well beyond the peoples of the region. Those who still have minds and morals intact now have an obligation to think clearly and with sanity and support this approach to finally resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Rachel Neuwirth is a Los Angeles-based analyst on the board of directors of the West Coast Region of the American Jewish Congress and the chairperson of the organization's Middle East committee.

This article appeared as a guest commentary in MichNews.com July 26, 2004 and is archived at http://michnews.com/artman/publish/article_4466.shtml. Contact the author at rachterry@sbcglobal.net.