Think-Israel

THINK-ISRAEL

EXPULSION, NOT TRANSFER

by Gil Ronen

As the Palestinian Terror War enters its fourth year and the initial shock wears off, we are starting to get a sense of where this is all headed. I mean, it's clear that we cannot accept this life - a life routinely invaded by news of midtown massacres, of dozens of soldiers and civilians killed every month, of rockets fired at towns, of buses and restaurants turned into death chambers. It is obvious, too, that the Jewish communities in Yehuda, Shomron and Gaza will not be uprooted and that no fence will stop the flow of Jewish blood, just as Arafat's death or expulsion will not stop it. If less Jews are murdered in Tel Aviv and Haifa, more Jews - soldiers and civilians - will be killed in Yehuda, Shomron and Gaza. If the terrorists are unable to slip suicide bombers into the cities of 'smaller Israel,' they'll lob missiles at them or use Israeli Arabs. It won't end.

The Arabs have created a murder machine in our midst, a murder machine that goes by the name "The Palestinian People." The machine is built and programmed in a way that makes it impossible to reach any kind of peace deal with it, even a temporary one. Deterrence has no effect on it: it is made up of hundreds of thousands of living bombs that desperately want to explode. It is obvious that the only way to put an end to the daily horror of our lives is to expel this "people" from within us. There is no other way.

I'm not advocating "transfer." First of all, the term sounds bad. It has a European, German sound, and it evokes all of the associations we need to stay clear of - grainy images of Nazis and European war crimes documented on black and white film. Also, the "transfer" that people usually talk about involves forced transportation on trucks and/or buses. I don't believe in trucks and buses. We'll never get the crazed Palestinian mobs to board buses: they aren't exactly European Jews. And we aren't Germans. We (thankfully) don't possess the coldness and horrible mechanical efficiency that characterize that people.

Transfer is "cold" expulsion. What we need to set in motion is a more hot-blooded version of this: something that is obviously the result of great rage, a temporarily semi-crazed state of a tortured nation that simply cannot bear to suffer any longer. The only way to throw the Palestinians out is to be as crazy as they are - almost.

Unlike the Palestinian's mass madness, which is purposely created by brainwashing from above, our "craziness" will be a temporary state that we enter into deliberately, and it will not be suicidal in nature. The only ones getting killed will be the Palestinians, and whoever doesn't want to die will have to run. We have seen that even Palestinian "courage" has its limits: in operation "Defensive Shield," when IDF bulldozers began tearing down a section of the Jenin refugee camp, the residents preferred to run away rather than be buried alive. By the same principle, when the residents of Shchem and Ramallah find that IDF shells are coming down on them at a rate of 100 per minute, most of them will flee.

There is no need for buses: the Arab residents of Yehuda, Shomron and Gaza have, after all, equipped themselves with tens of thousands of stolen Israeli cars in the post-Oslo years. These cars were new and in excellent condition when they were stolen, and they should suffice for transporting all of the fleeing Palestinians. If they don't - there are always horses and donkey carts, and people can walk. This is a very narrow country, the weather is good, and all they need to do is reach the Jordan river. This is not an impossible mission, and there is water on the way. When they reach the Jordan they will have to cross it. From that moment on, they are King Abdullah's problem, not ours. If he wants to give his soldiers orders to gun down all of the refugees and prevent them from entering his kingdom, let him. The Palestinians will find a way into Jordan in the end.

It's hard to imagine an Israeli prime minister or chief of staff giving a direct order to the IDF's artillery to begin a massive, undiscerning and unceasing barrage of the Arab towns in Yesha. But it is easier to imagine a gradual, seemingly involuntary devolution into such a situation, taking place over several years. Every year of blood makes our soldiers' trigger fingers itchier, as is only natural. As time goes by, the killings will become less targeted. Nobody needs to take the law into his own hands: it is enough that officers and soldiers interpret their orders as widely as possible, and employ maximum force. I mean, after all, you can use a commando ground team or a missile from a helicopter to take out a wanted man - or you can use artillery to bomb his house, and the ones next to it (because he could be hiding in one of them, you never know). You can bomb an entire procession of "Al Aqsa Martyrs," because they are all wanted (but that trick will only work once, and then the processions will stop).

Gunfire on Gilo from Beit Jalla? The artillery officer can order a preventive barrage on the rows of houses he believes the shots were fired from. He has the right to use his own judgement - let him exercise it. No one will be able to prove what houses were used by the Arab snipers and which streets they used to try and escape.

The world will scream "massacre." Let it. It is screaming anyways. The Israeli spokesman will be asked what the IDF soldiers think they are doing, behaving in this criminal fashion. Let him feign shock. Let him condemn. Let him promise an investigation. Or let him say the truth: that the Palestinians have brought this catastrophe upon themselves. That the people of Israel are simply fed up. That some of the boys in that artillery battery have lost relatives to Palestinian terror and that they apparently want to kill as many Palestinians as possible, and who can judge them? Let him say that we are sick and tired of seeing buses blown up.

"Why is the bombardment still going on for a third straight day," the panic-stricken journalists will ask.

"I don't know," the spokesman will answer. "I'm trying to find out. It seems the threat has not yet been removed."

"I'm trying to get the response of the commanders on the ground," the spokesman will say. "As soon as I have something I'll let you know."

In Europe and the US, anti-semitism will reach horrible peaks. Let it. Dozens of synagogues will be set on fire, Jewish shops will be boycotted, Jews will be attacked on the street. We will have enough room for the millions of Jews who will come to us from New York and Los Angeles, London and Paris - in Elon Moreh and Tapuach, in Betar Ilit and Netzarim. And yes - when it's all over and we can get some renovation work done " in the stone houses of Shchem, Hebron and Beit Lechem. The tens of billions of dollars that the new immigrants will bring with them will help us weather the international embargo we will doubtless have to face (again).

On the other side of the Jordan, a Palestinian state will probably replace the Hashemite kingdom. We will have to deal with it eventually - but at least we will do so from behind a strong, defensible border. Pakistan, Iran, the Arabs, the UN, the Europeans, even the US - all of these will threaten us, but it is highly unlikely that they will take military action. Firstly, because unlike the Muslims, we really do not see the West as an enemy. Secondly, because everyone knows we have hundreds of nuclear, biological and chemical bombs, and the means to detonate them anywhere on the earth's surface. And thirdly, because it will have become patently clear that we have gone mad, and nobody messes with madmen who can annihilate him.

Let's not forget that the US is in the middle of its own bloody war with global radical Islam. The expulsion of the Palestinians will stir up tidal waves of anger in the US - but we will also get many sympathetic and encouraging reactions. It's hard to imagine the US crossing over to the Arab side. Remember, too, that there is a large and important current within the US, of people who are very disappointed with the restraint Israel has been showing in the war until now. These people actually expect the people of the Bible to be at their right, to show leadership, and to point the rest of the world - the US included - in the right direction.

Do I look forward eagerly to this scenario? No. Am I wary of the dangers? Of course I am. But I see no other way. I'm sure Herzl's "Altneuland" was not met with uniform acclaim when it came out, and that many "sane" Jews deplored his ideas as dangerous, even crazy. Well, we know how that argument ended: the sane" Jews ended up as clouds of ash over the skies of Poland, and the "insane" Jews filled the Land of Israel with the issue of their loins.

Note: This article originally appeared in Hebrew on the Arutz-7 website (Oct. 30/Nov. 1, 2003) but was taken off the site and its archive following a complaint by MK Zehava Gal-On of Meretz that it constituted "racism and incitement."