Thomas, this will help you to learn the topic:
MORE OF THE SAME MALARKEY ?, by David Basch
"The Arab goal has never been the establishment of a Palestinian State, which they could have had right off the bat in 1948. Their abiding goal is of course the destruction of Israel...."
"Decisive Israeli victory is the solution to the conflict and is the surest way to save the most lives on both sides...."
President Bush in his speech before the UN General Assembly yesterday (11/10/01) affirmed his support for a Palestinian State
just like Sharon did. If by this the two hoped to bring peace to the Middle East, they are living in illusion.
The Arab goal has never been the establishment of a Palestinian State, which they could have had right off the bat in 1948. Their
goal is of course the destruction of Israel. If anything, a Palestinian state is a tool for the Arabs to defeat Israel. In fact, it was only after the 1967 War, which the Arabs initiated when they had all the lands they now say they want for this Palestinian state, that the idea of such a new Arab state emerged and the concept of a "Palestinian people" was invented. For example, UN Resolution 242 in 1967 does not even mention such a people, referring only to "refugees." Had there been a "Palestinian people," it would surely have been mentioned.
As quoted today in the Jerusalem Post (11/11/01), President Bush said the following at the end of his speech to the UN:
"The American government also stands by its commitment to a just peace in the Middle East," said Bush near the end of his
speech. "We're working toward a day when two states - Israel and Palestine - live peacefully together in secure and recognized borders as called for by Security Council resolutions. We will do all we can to bring the parties back to the negotiating table, but peace will only come when all have sworn off, forever, incitement, violence, and terror."
However, what President Bush left off was that all such earlier proposals were rejected by the Arabs in favor of launching wars
and are now defunct as resolutions. If President Bush wants to reinstitute this idea, he will be insuring that there will be
continued war as the Arabs use the gain of such a state as merely an early stage of their program to reverse the existence of
Israel.
But, then, support for a Palestinian state is not the first of blundering US policies in the Middle East that insured the continuation of the conflict. Among these, the following can be listed:
1. US funding of Arab refugees since 1948 (about 600,000 then) that now supposedly number in the millions and which today pose a contentious irreconcilable issue, a deal breaker, as Arafat refused the state Barak offered since Barak would not agree to allow these refugees into Israel proper.
2. The arming of Egypt with modern US weapons that make war between Israel and Egypt ever more likely and insure that one day the world can look forward to a bomb on the Aswan Dam destroying Egypt -- you don't even need a nuclear weapon to accomplish this -- if the Jewish state is mortally threatened.
3. The establishment of dangerous Arab military enclaves within Israel as a consequence of Oslo and Israeli acquiescence, which has added enormously to Arafat's legitimacy and military capability that enables terrorist attacks against Israel and great internal vulnerability in case of war with neighboring Arab states -- an advent that was itself fostered by the Israeli vulnerability created.
But what is the unkindest cut of all is Sharon's tepid response to Arab terrorism and military attacks and his ironic support for
such a Palestinian state. At best, such a state will be irredentist in its demands for the reclamation of all of Israel's lands and will form a nucleus for the rallying of Israeli Arabs to join the fray against Israel and it will be a way station for a torrent of the Arab "refugees" that will flow from outside into the heart lands of Israel on their way into Israel itself, devouring and destroying like locusts Israeli vital resources like water.
The Arab goal of Israel's destruction will not be averted by such a dubious kindness to the Arabs but this goal will be sustained
and enhanced. Hence Israel's acquiescence in this development must betray ignorance or indifference to Israel's own future. It
bespeaks of an insane leftist leadership -- if it is not a leadership that is riddled with clandestine CIA agents -- that seeks after a non existent figment of a super, universalist morality that must consign Israel to defeat and destruction.
Truly, if Israel will not be for itself and be mindful of its own vital interests, none others will. Israeli leaders may one day find the same indifference coming from former supporters disgusted at Israeli cravenness. Israel will at that time seek vainly for allies that it had long ago disappointed and offended. Israelis must seriously question the wisdom of Sharon's leadership that betrays the nation as it inflicts leftist policies on the nation -- the policies of support for Arafat that had been defeated at the Israeli polls in their last election.
If the intention is to bring in Boo'bi -- as in boob, dunce -- in readiness as a leader, Israelis may be trading one betrayer for another, unless Netanyahu comes out unequivocally before any election in opposition to a Palestinian state and the decisive destruction of Arab capability to challenge the existence of Israel, policies which Sharon has failed to carry out.
This does not mean that such an Israeli goal is doable at this late date. Nevertheless, the Israeli people have got to face the facts that unless this Palestinian state can be averted, Israel's future will remain plunged in war and its existence in jeopardy since the Arabs will not willingly quit the struggle.
Israeli self-delusion must be rejected as a policy of their government as a first step in saving the nation. Pleasing questionable allies cannot be a viable approach if the result is that Israel is called on to sacrifice its future. Instead, Israel's future must be kept firmly in Israeli hands and policies must be designed to attain that secure and safe Israel through the destruction of enemy capabilities to challenge such a reality.
Interestingly, this condition of Israeli invulnerability is the only condition that Islam accepts for calling off jihad against Israel, namely, the sure outcome of Muslim-Arab defeat and great devastation to the Muslim side, leaving them with great losses. In fact, decisive Israeli victory is the solution to the conflict and is the surest way to save the most lives on both sides.
There is no hope that peaceful conditions can happen by a miracle of a new willingness of Muslim-Arabs to call off a warfare that they think will bring them victory.
David Basch is a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
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