Posted on 04/08/2002 10:56:44 AM PDT by gordgekko
I spent time working in a factory in Israel near Gaza in 1988. During that time, I became friendly with several Palestinian Arabs who would come in from Gaza to work. My impression, based on discussions with them, was that while they insisted on a Palestinian state, they also liked and respected Israel and hoped that their state would co-exist peacefully alongside Israel. I doubt if they feel that way today and I no longer believe that their dream, one that I shared at the time, is now possible or probably ever was.
This is because the Palestinian elite, along with their Arab and Islamic allies, will never give up their dream of annihilating Israel. As Muslims, the Arabs view Israel as a non-Islamic state in the very heart of the "Ummah" or the Islamic motherland. The true believing Muslim believes that all of the Ummah must be under the rule of Islam, which, in Arabic, means submission. In this context, Arab rulers view any "peace" treaty with Israel as simply a temporary way station on the road to eventual conquest. Palestinian statehood and identity is nothing more than a ruse to incite jihad. The Arabs are willing to wait hundreds of years to achieve this end and they will never give up.
The Arab rulers have won the propaganda war against Israel by shrewdly forming an alliance with the international left and their media mouthpieces. The left has transformed the Arab struggle to destroy Israel into one in which the Arabs are cast as the victims of a big and cruel Israeli "occupation." Leftist intellectuals and savants, either wittingly or otherwise, have sold the world on the idea that Israel is "occupying" the West Bank and Gaza while the Arabs consider any part of Palestine that has not "submitted" to Islam to be "occupied." The left media provides an echo chamber for Arab atrocity propaganda while providing a "scientific" justification for Arab atrocities.
How should the State of Israel deal with this ongoing threat? First of all, Israel is Palestine for the same reason that British Honduras is Belize or Rhodesia is Zimbabwe. Upon independence in 1948, the Palestinian Jews adopted the name of Israel because this was the ancient and indigenous name of the land of the Torah. Israelis are as Palestinian as Arabs as both populations immigrated en masse to the area around the same time. For reasons that are interesting and worth studying, Israel failed to achieve sovereignty in all of Palestine west of the Jordan in 1948. This failure is the cause of today's conflict and confusion regarding who is a Palestinian. In addition, Jordan is also actually Palestine east of the Jordan.
If Israel had achieved sovereignty in Palestine west of the Jordan in 1948, the Palestinian Arabs would be Israeli Arabs today. Israel is now backed into a corner and is probably going to be pressured into recognizing yet another Palestinian state west of the Jordan. If this state comes into being, it will probably continue to agitate for conquest regardless of who is in charge and, therefore, Israel will have to go to war periodically, at great sacrifice to all parties, in order to maintain the peace. This may be a moot point, however, as the Palestinians will, no doubt, not budge from the same positions they've maintained all along which is that Jewish cities and towns will have to be evacuated, Jerusalem will have to be surrendered, and millions of Palestinian Arabs will have their right granted to return to Haifa and Tel Aviv.
While I don't think this will happen in the near future, I do believe that Israel will eventually have no choice but to annex the West Bank and Gaza. If and when this happens, it would be appropriate for the Palestinian Arab residents to be given the option of becoming Israeli, Jordanian, or Palestinian citizens. The Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza should, at that time, be granted as much autonomy as possible with Israel maintaining overall control.
Palestinian Arabs should be allowed to return to live behind the pre-1967 Armistice lines as long as they agree to swear a loyalty oath to the State of Israel. A violation of this oath, such as engaging in subversive activity, should be cause, if a conviction occurs after a civil proceeding, for expulsion.
Chuck Morse is a talk show host on WROL 950 AM in Boston.
If you want on or off me Israel/MidEast/Islamic Jihad/ ping list please let me know. Via Freepmail is best way.............
Doe you suppose GWB has figured this out yet?
But I guess I could just be some religious fanatic. I wonder how many "fanatics" out there knew Israel would once again be granted their homeland before 1948?? Looky what God did....
That was a long time ago. Damascus is no longer the capitol of the Islamic State.
While it sounds good, the above is unrealistic and impractical. If Israel were to annex the West Bank and Gaza and make them part of Israel, the Muslims would outnumber the Jews. They would then vote in a Muslim government and that would be the end of the Jewish state. It will never happen. Israel does not want to annex the West Bank and Gaza. They just want the Palestinian Arabs to stop killing Jews and let everyone live in peace each with their own state. That will never happen either because the Arabs won't let Israel live in peace, so there will be war between the two peoples for a long time.
First of all, consider the fact that Israel came back to their land after 2000 years. You don't see the hand of God in that? Secondly, the story is still being written - it isn't over yet.
You should probably point out this obvious oversight to the Creator at the judgment...
Heh heh...
Within a year, Britain split off the area east of the Jordan River, calling it Transjordan (and the part west of the Jordan River - now mostly Israel - was then called Cisjordan) and later setting up a Saudi family to rule it as the Kingdom of Jordan; Transjordan amounted to approx 78% of the area of the original Palestine Mandate. A year after that, Britain handed the Golan Heights over to the French Mandate for Syria.
So Jordan is most of what was Palestine, and apart from its "royal family" (made royal only by British political appointment), its population is ethnically indistinguishable from the Arabs west of the Jordan ... a fact that the Jordanian govt emphasized repeatedly over the years.
Of course, if you're old enough to remember the Middle East before 1967, you remember that, before Israel won the West Bank and Gaza in the Six Day War, nobody ever mentioned a "Palestinian" people. For the 19 years that Jordan held the West Bank and Egypt held the Gaza Strip, there was no mention of another Arab nationality with any entitlement to an inch of that land; Jordan claimed the West Bank for itself, imposed its own laws and taxes and troops on the Arabs there, and Egypt did much the same on the Gaza, and the UN (and the White House and the rest of the world) did not talk about "Jordanian-occupied West Bank" or anything like that, nor did it breathe a word suggesting that the Jordanians were squatting where another Arab nation had a right to be. Only after the Jordanians and Egyptians were ousted did this mythical "Palestinian nation" get mentioned ... as an excuse to pry the land away from Jews. Even then, the crucial Arabs were sluggish about it; Jordan persisted in claiming the West Bank for itself until about 1988.
As long as both sides are so attached to their religion, and even want to kill themselves for it, we will never see the end of this. It is so simple; just give up religion as a part of the state sponsored programs. Having a secular nation is "good" just look at America, and Europe, people of all faiths coexist.
If the US continue to disregard the heat and hate of religions as a big part of this, we will be fooling ourselves thinking of peace. The only way out is FORCE THE ARABS AND THE ISRAELIS to give up their drive to push their religions through the state governments. Preferential treatment is never good, and will never contribute to harmony among people. At least Israel has Arabs in their legislation body. I don't think there is single Jew in any Arab government.
ppaul: Doe you suppose GWB has figured this out yet?
I suspect he has. I suspect he has also figured out that Sharon is looking for an opportunity, such as the chaos of American's upcoming war with Iraq, to drive the Palestinians across the river into Jordan. I finally suspect Bush doesn't know what to do. If the solution were so simple someone would have found it by now. And there'd be peace and calm in the Middle-East.
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