I really want to get beyond the Israel topic as a topic of this blog, and it seems the only way for me to do this is to hash things out once and for all.
The modern state of Israel should never have come into existence. It did so because many centuries of prejudice within mostly Christian communities culminated in the Holocaust, and Western guilt saw the creation of the modern state of Israel as a workable solution, if one may use the word in this context. This is, of course, half the story. Zionist writers and enthusiasts, writing after a thousand years of European anti-Semitism, had encouraged a wave of Jewish immigrants to Palestine; these settlers bought land from the Palestinian Arabs, and began setting up shop. As these waves of immigrants grew larger, with the sad example of the Holocaust in the background, Jewish terrorists attacked British interests. The UN mandate followed, setting up a tiny Israel in British Palestine in 1948.
War followed immediately, with Syria, Jordan and Egypt invading the region’s youngest state. The nation was invaded on the very day it declared itself a sovereign state, with the full imprimatur of the UN. Israel quite correctly saw the Arab opposition to its very existence, and routed its neighbours immediately. Some twenty years and another war later, Israel saw that it was about to be attacked from several sides again, and launched the pre-emptive Six-Day War in which it annexed the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Gaza strip from Egypt, in addition to the Sinai Peninsula.
The Yom Kippur War in the early seventies began as a surprise attack by the Arab states of Egypt and Syria; after initial setbacks, Israel repulsed the invaders, who attacked Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Within the same decade, Egypt made peace with Israel in exchange for the return of the Sinai Peninsula; Egypt ceded control of the Sinai Peninsula, as Jordan would do some years later with the West Bank. Syria never gave up its claim to the Golan Heights.
It was during this time that Israel began to expand the settlements into the West Bank and Gaza Strip in earnest. The reasons were obvious: with decades of proven animosity on the part of its Arab neighbours, the Israeli government felt compelled to try to widen its narrowest places. At the same time, the ultra-Orthodox desired to settle all of “‘eretz Israel.”*
In time, the Palestinians launched, under the control of the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization (which had itself threatened Jordan’s King Hussein), the First Intifada. Israel responded with various measures, and the situation went downhill.
In the Oslo Accords, the PLO’s leader, Arafat, was offered a two-stated solution, but was not offered East Jerusalem as a capital city; this provided him the excuse he was looking for. After carefully building up strength, the Palestinians launched the Second Intifada, complete with numerous suicide bombings of Israelis in ordinary places, such as bus stops, pizza restaurants, and an old folks home, within Israel proper. I will never forget the lynching of the two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah: the Palestinian mob who killed them tortured them to death and waved their blood-stained hands in the air. Then they picked up the soldiers’ phones and taunted their families.
Now, I happen to think Israel should have been willing to cede East Jerusalem (Arab in demographics anyway), but the fact is it didn’t. Still, that wasn’t a good excuse for the Palestinians to reject the accords. In time, the Palestinian position, not weakened in the slightest, would be buttressed by increased arms, mostly provided by Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and in Palestine by Hamas.
Hamas’s stated goal is Israel’s destruction. Both the PLO and Hamas have provided a school curriculum that glorifies suicide bombers and encourages hatred of Jewish Israelis. Hamas made it illegal for Palestinians to sell land to Israel–now a capital offense. Suspected collaborators are tortured and killed. Amidst numerous suicide bombings, Israel built the infamous security wall in the West Bank. Saddam Hussein, who provided $10,000 US for the families of suicide bombers, was killed in the second Iraq war, and Israeli civilian casualties plummeted as Israel tightened its grip on Gaza and West Bank. The latter would be somewhat quiet, while literally thousands of rockets over the next decade would fall on Israeli soil from Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon and Hamas-controlled Gaza.
So much for the history. I think we can say Israel should not have expanded the settlements it did. It should have offered the Palestinians East Jerusalem. The country should never have existed at all.
But all that said, the Palestinians have now to accept the presence of a Jewish state in Israel–it has existed since before most of them, and most Israelis–were born. The Palestinians have been programmed by their terrorist government to see the extermination of Jewish Israel as the only solution. With each gap in the regular hostilities that now take place so often, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon arm themselves with ever deadlier weaponry.
The international community, routinely led by the Middle Eastern Arab countries and Iran, routinely condemns Israel. Israel is hamstrung in its ability to defend itself.
As I see it, either total military victory, or a total Jewish withdrawal from Israel, would end the conflict–though hardly satisfactorily, obviously. I see the only hope in the so-called international community strong-arming the Arabs into recognizing Israel with no “right of return” for the displaced generations of Palestinians, millions of them, who have been raised in, but never welcomed by, the countries that have hosted them for sixty years. The issue isn’t so much the principle, but the logistics: an influx of that size into a country the size of Vancouver Island just could not be absorbed. The Palestinians, now wanted by neither Jordan nor Egypt, must recognize Israel’s right to exist. If Gaza and Lebanon continue to be the source of attacks on Israeli soil, as they are, then Israel must be permitted to deal them permanent blows to force them to cease their hostilities; Gaza must then be put under direct rule. Lebanon is trickier, as it is the proxy of Syria, itself the proxy of Iran. Israel cannot easily strike at Iran, but it should give Syria and Lebanon an ultimatum: no attacks from your soil, or else. No other sovereign nation would be denied the right to defend itself, and any other nation would have responded with far more power than the Israelis have. At some point, the much-vaunted “international community” must cease its putative support for the terrorists so that all parties in this tiny strip of land can recognize that where they are now, minus some recent settlements, is where they will have to be, in peace.
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*The Ultra-Orthodox, who demand the entire land of Palestine and move into settlements in Palestinian areas, refuse to serve in the military forces that all Israeli young men must be a part of. They are despised by many secularists in Israel as provokers of the Palestinians who refuse to accept the consequences of their actions.
