Posted on 12/17/2004 4:48:52 AM PST by SJackson
Israel's passivity in the face of Palestinian corruption, authoritarianism and hate indicates that what Israel needs most desperately is for a movement of Israeli neoconservatives to arise and "take control" of Israel's foreign policy.
Speaking at the Interdisciplinary Center's Herzliya Conference on Monday, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon said that Israel's "interest is to separate the general Palestinian population from those involved in terrorism." This, of course, stands at the core of all anti-guerrilla and counterterror operational thinking.
Ya'alon noted the economic devastation that the Palestinian terror war has wrought on the general Palestinian population. Repeated suicide attacks at the Erez Industrial Park, where some 4,000 Gazans worked each day to support some 35,000 people, forced Israel to close the park. This week's attack against an IDF outpost on the border between Gaza and Egypt forced the army to close the border-crossing terminal, preventing Gazans from conducting business in Egypt. Suicide bombers disguised as ordinary workers have forced Israel to stringently limit the number of Palestinians working in Israel and to erect roadblocks throughout Judea and Samaria.
Israel has, over the past four years, and indeed since the first Palestinian suicide bomber introduced himself to Israeli civilians back in 1994, tried to develop methods of screening cargo and workers that would make Palestinian economic activity possible while preventing the infiltration of human bombs. Additionally, as Ya'alon noted, Israel has worked to ensure that the health and education systems in Judea, Samaria and Gaza have continued to operate. This, in spite of the fact that terrorists have hidden in maternity and cancer wards from Bethlehem to Jenin and that the Palestinian school system teaches children that their life goal should be to become a suicide bomber.
Yet, in spite of all of Israel's attempts to separate the broader Palestinian population from the terrorists, Ya'alon admitted that support for the terrorists had not waned, nor had enthusiasm for terrorism in general. In his words, IDF counterterror operations over the past two years "have decreased the ability, not the motivation" of Palestinians to carry out attacks against Israelis.
And so it can be said that the IDF, and Israel as a whole, have failed in the mission of separating the general Palestinian population from those involved in terrorism.
How can this be the case? After all, Israel's leaders have never declared war on the Palestinians. To the contrary, every time it seemed there was a break in the clouds, Israel moved quickly to embrace any opportunity to begin discussions with Palestinian officials – whether at the political level or among the various official Palestinian militia commanders.
An answer to this seeming paradox was provided by The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh in a dispatch from Gaza earlier in the week. Toameh reported the case of Dr. Hassan Nurani, a psychologist from Gaza City who wished to run for the PA's presidency. Nurani composed a platform calling for the building of a "civilized and moral society." He was able to collect the requisite 5,000 signatures to submit his candidacy but couldn't afford the $3000 needed to register for the election. Desperate to run, Nurani tried selling off his small parcel of land and his home furnishings. But he still wasn't able to raise the sum, which is the rough equivalent of an annual salary in Gaza.
It is possible that Dr. Nurani supports terrorism. It is possible that he is not willing to live in a Palestinian society which exists alongside a strong and vibrant Jewish state. It is possible that he insists that Israel allow millions of foreign-born Arabs to immigrate freely into Israel as a condition for peace. But we'll never know, because he is too poor to tell us.
And then we have the frontrunner for the Palestinian presidency, new PLO head Mahmoud Abbas. He's the only show in town. It doesn't seem to bother anyone that Yasser Arafat's deputy of 40 years has refused to call for an end to the Palestinian terror war, saying just Wednesday in Saudi Arabia that he didn't mean to offend anyone when he said the day before that violence against Israel is counterproductive.
"All I meant," Abbas explained, "is that we are in a phase that does not necessitate arms because we want to negotiate." And in the meantime, he decried Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's call earlier in the day for the international community to build permanent housing for the millions of Arabs, whose ancestors may have once lived in Israel, who have been interned in UN refugee camps in the Arab world for the past 55 years. "Any proposal regarding the resettlement of the refugees is completely rejected," Abbas, the soon-to-be-democratically elected Palestinian leader, said.
Shalom's call for the rehabilitation of the residents of the UN refugee camps was given in the course of his address to the Herzliya Conference. Aside from daring to raise the possibility of letting these poor people finally be free of the burden of living their lives as political symbols, his speech was actually wholly supportive of the combative, rejectionist Abbas.
Shalom devoted much of his address to calling for the convention of a second Aqaba summit with US President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Abbas right after the January 9 elections. In his words: "The lead actors from the first Aqaba summit, which took place in June 2003 – Sharon, Bush and Abu Mazen [Abbas] – are the same actors today, but stronger."
So, in the run-up to the Palestinian election, which is supposed to be the first step toward the liberalization and democratization of Palestinian society, the presumptive winner – who stands opposed to any action against terror operatives or compromise on the so-called refugees that would enable peace to be achieved – is embraced as a positive development, a window of opportunity and a foregone conclusion.
In an interview with the Post's Ruthie Blum appearing today, Palestinian apologist extraordinaire Hanan Ashrawi assailed Bush for adopting "the neocon agenda" in calling for the transformation of Palestinian society from a terror-supporting and -engendering society into a peaceful democratic one before the establishment of a Palestinian state. In her words, "You don't use democracy for justifying the existence of states. You would then have to remove many states. Self-determination for Palestinians is a right that has to be implemented as a way of bringing peace and stability to the region. Therefore, you don't make a state dependent on its system of government."
And Ashrawi isn't alone. In his speech at the conference on Tuesday, Labor party leader and soon-to-be acting prime minister Shimon Peres assailed the notion that democratic reform is a necessary condition for peaceful relations.
Indeed, the very thought that Palestinian society must be democratized meets its staunchest opposition from Israeli elites. In his column in Yediot Ahronot last Friday, Nahum Barnea, Israel's journalistic supremo and proud socialist, wrote scathingly of Bush's attachment to the notions of democracy and morality. Speaking of Bush's reading of Minister-without-Portfolio Natan Sharansky's book, The Case for Democracy, which argues that peaceful relations are contingent on individual freedom and democracy, Barnea sneered, "The book publisher can now advertise it as 'the only book the president has read in the last 10 years.'" He then went on to witheringly criticize Sharansky's book, describing it as "clear, easily digestible, unburdened by doubt, moralistic, very positive and totally simplistic."
Israel's elitists, like Barnea and Peres, and their sheep-like followers like Shalom, no doubt took comfort in the obnoxious responses evinced toward the Bush administration's policy doctrine of bringing democracy to the Arab world during last Saturday's conference on the topic in Rabat, Morocco. There, US Secretary of State Colin Powell was barraged by angry statements from the Egyptian, Saudi and Libyan foreign ministers, who claimed that the US can't talk about democracy until "the peace process" goes forward and US occupation of Iraq comes to an end.
Even German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the champion of the Israeli Left, said that progress toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians "will lend all reform and modernization efforts in the Arab world unprecedented momentum."
It isn't surprising that the same people who demonize their political opposition in Israel as warmongering extremists and potential political assassins would have such a low opinion of the possibility that Arabs might, if given the opportunity, choose to live freely and at peace with Israel and the rest of their neighbors.
And yet, as The Washington Post's editorialist noted on Wednesday, even as the Arab potentates were berating the Americans for daring to discuss democracy with them, Arab human rights activists who also participated in the conference insisted that the Americans continue to pressure their governments and that "Palestinian and Iraqi issues should not be used as excuses for not launching reforms."
And what did these people want? They demanded that their governments "allow free ownership of media institutions and sources; allow freedom of expression and especially freedom of assembly and meetings; ensure women's rights and remove all forms of inequality and discrimination against women in the Arab world; and immediately release reformers, human rights activists and political prisoners."
The American neoconservatives, who have been the most visible proponents of democracy in the Arab world and who Barnea, echoing Ashrawi, alleges "control the foreign policy of the Bush administration," have often been accused of working for Israel. Yet, as our elites' revulsion with democracy and our government's silence on the issue shows, American democracy advocates have almost no one to talk to in Israel. Indeed, Israel's passivity in the face of Palestinian corruption, authoritarianism and hate indicates that what Israel needs most desperately is for a movement of Israeli neoconservatives to arise and "take control" of Israel's foreign policy.
no offense but I usually ignore peace talk articles.
In my humble opinion all the palestenians should have been pushed out during the last war into the desert to drop dead. When the wall gets complete it will be to the effect of severing all ecconmic links of support from the palestinian state. Unemployment will go to 80% and they will either move or starve waiting for UN to help. Personally I would prefer a carpetbombing and then say it was an accedent.
Alway nice to have an new intellectual on board, at least for awhile :>)
There we go. Will the media report that now? Or will they stick with the headline from a few days ago saying that Abu Mazen renounced terrorism?
I appreciate your response to the questions. I guess we can agree to disagree on a few issues, but it doesnt seem like you are a confirmed member of the rabid anti-semite club to me, so please accept my apologies.
Yes, there were Christians all over the Middle East, for centuries. Lebanon was envisioned as a Christian state, and partitioned as such. Unfortunately, it was overthrown and occupied by Islamists a few decades back, and the rest of the Middle East Christians have been living in persecution for decades. The real guiding question concerning Middle East Christians is where do they go to escape religious persecution- The Copts, Marionites, Palestinian Christians, etc who live in countries in the Middle East that are extremely hostile to them and keep them in virtual dhimmitude. This is a perplexing question, and one that deserves to be given some real attention.
I know of few committed Zionist Christians or Zionist Jews who wish to commit genocide to solve the Palestinian problem. I can see where it would be easy to draw that conclusion from extremist statements of some of them make, but I have learned to consider the source when I see or hear these statements.
There are admittedly some who are maybe a little more attached to the cause than is healthy, but true practitioners of both religious traditions call for preservation of human life, and no one advocates or even wants to be associated with a perverted 21st century version of the "Final Solution" when the Palestinian issue is addressed.
Anyone who is well read and knows any history at all knows the drumroll of anti-semitism is the prelude to a totalitarian movement with designs on world control. The only difference between the Hitlerian anti-semites of the 1940's and the Islamic/Leftist anti-semites of today is the fact todays anti-semites include both Jews and Zionist Christians on the list to be dealt with, as well as the nation of Israel, in their version of the "Final Solution" which is apparently still being cooked up.
The huge flaw in their logic is the fact that the actions they take to disestablish and weaken the nation of Israel could eventually result in a genocide of epic proportions if the Arabs took advantage of the results their actions gained and drew Israel into a prolonged war.
Thats my reason for my committed defense of Israel. I dont want to see this end up in genocide-which it very well could if this isnt addressed and is allowed to grow.
This is a rather doctrinaire statement. I think in the vast majority of cases it would be more intellectually honest to admit these people have concluded the Palestinians are absolutely intransigent, and are willing to play by Palestinian rules, instead of claiming they "wish to commit genocide."
I have never heard of any "Kach" members or other "extremists" advocating genocide of the "Palestinians". The most "extreme" solution that I have ever heard is equally distributing the "Palestinians" among the Arab and Muslim nations and letting them take care of the Frankenstein monster that they created.
The "Palestinians" and their supporters openly advocate genocide of all the Jews.
What people say and what they are actually capable of carrying out are different things, especially when they are frustrated by the actions of a ruthless foe with no regard for human life and do not function by any known standard of civilized society.
I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. It may be an exercise in benevolence on my part, but I learned a long time ago to look at the actions of individuals before I generalize all members of a certain group. It may be charitable and naive to do so, but its just how I am.
Hello
Can you explain to me why the Israel simply declares War on the "Palestinians" and have them beg for peace.?
Exactly Alouette.
Israel seeks justice for murders committed on members of its society.
The Palestinians seek the murder of Israelis for political and national goals.
There is no ethical dilemna here. Israel is right.
Can you explain to me just what the heck this sentence is supposed to mean?
There is no such thing as a "Palestinian", just as Yasser Arafat was an Egyptian, not a "Palestinian."
Israel was a verifiable nation long before Rome annexed it, and Jews lived there since the Roman annexation.
"Yeah, and driving bulldozers through refugee camps is a really accurate means of targetting - come to think of it, why are these people living in such camps, could it be the ethnic cleansing the Israelis undertook back in the late '40s?"
So, blowing one's self up in a pizza place filled with Israeli teenage GIRLS is okay with you?
"Well I suppose it would be an improvement on the current policy of indiscriminate slaughter."
If you're referring to the Pali's terror campaign, yes.
If you're referring to the targeted takedowns of HAMAS, and Hezbollah leaders, you're off your rocker.
Palestinians are a manufactured peopel.
Think "Krimpendorf's Tribe."
Last time I checked, it was Syria, Jordan, and Egypt that started wars of aggression and LOST.
Hello.
Explain to me why Egypt, Jordan, and Syria started an unprovoked war on Israel way back in the past and lost, and everyone asks for Israel to apologise for being attacked?
Explain to me why you think the terrorists haven't 'declared war' first?
What makes you think the terrorists even have a legit claim on any land there?
Newbies who show up and spout liberal crap are easily spotted.
Notice he never answered your question about blowing up teenage girls in pizza parlors. The jew-haters always end up exposing themselves. Give them enough time.
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