The Palestinians: Ten Points The U.S. Needs To Consider

You've made certain statements in your comment that are incorrect. Hamas does not, and has never, recognized Israel in the pre-1967 "borders" (actually, these are the 1949 armistice lines between Israel and the Arab states surrounding it). The Hamas charter calls for war against Israel until it is destroyed entirely as a Jewish state. Fatah, Abbas' party, maintains the same goal. The difference, and Hamas was created in reaction to this difference, is that Abbas will accept the "peace process" as a strategy to destroy the Jewish state in steps. This is the "phased plan" developed by Arafat: Negotiate concessions from Israel until Israel refuses, then call for riots ("intifada") in order to bring Israel back to the table to negotiate more concessions, etc., etc., until Israel is so compromised that it can be defeated militarily. Based on this cruel reality, younger Israelis, who are not fooled by the false hopes of Oslo, have decided to move on, and look for other ways of dealing with their enemies. Gathering steam is a move to annex Judea and Samaria and grant civil rights, but not citizenship, to the Arabs living there. There are many other nations that have similar policies, and it would allow the Arabs to govern themselves, but not vote in national elections or hold seats in parliament, thus eliminating the treasonous influence of the anti-Israel parties in Israel.

Haaretz newspaper on March 26, 2013 has an article entitled "Hamas Accepts 1967 Borders," and when Israel invaded Gaza in 1967, it was crossing a border. Also, look into the Jewish Virtual Library, and you can see the letter from 1993 of Yasser Arafat sent to Yitzhak Rabin saying the Palestine LIberation Organization recognizes the State of Israel. I have seen Hamas Doctrine numerous times, and also you can see that Hebrew is now being taught in Gaza schools. I do not think it is being done to tell an Israeli "You are dead," but it seems to be for talking to Gaza's future customers. Like Israeli farmers in the Negev, where Gazan farmers just recently attend an agricultural show at the Eshkol Agricultural Expo. If Israel was to annex the West Bank, and not give Palestinians there the right to vote, it would be doing a South African-style of apartheid; thus be banned from numerous international organizations, such as the International Olympic Committee. That would not be fair for Israel, so I do not think Israel will be going through with it. Also, Israeli settlers in the West Bank are a minority: the Palestinians there outnumber them by 10 to 1. The only other nation to have citizens, but not allow them the right to vote, is South Africa; but apartheid ended there in 1991, thus giving all South Africans the right to vote. Also, during the intifadas, six times more Palestinians were killed than Israelis. So if the Palestinans lauched another intifada, it would just result in more Palestinian deaths. With Israel's massive military, it does not seem likely that the Palestinians can militarily take over Israel. Because after all, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria could not overtake it.

Tim, you have fallen, hook, line, and sinker, for the deception of Hamas. The Ha'aretz article mistakenly, or perhaps intentionally (Ha'aretz is a left-leaning newspaper) substitutes "accepts" for Hamas' statement that it "recognizes" the 1967 borders. The difference is significant. Hamas was merely acknowledging reality; that there is a different legal status to the areas within the pre-1967 lines and those disputed areas outside those lines. That is hardly the equivalent of accepting a permanent Jewish state within any borders. The letter from Arafat, likewise, was a canard. It was never fully endorsed within the Palestinian charter, which still claims all of what is today Israel, along with the disputed territories, as its own. Look at any map produced by the Palestinian Authority of the region. There is no "Israel," only "Palestine," which includes all of the area known as Israel plus the disputed territories. Rabin was decieving Israelis so that would not fear the creation of an enemy state carved out Israel's ancestral homeland, and I would bet that the State Department was behind that particular lie.

While Hebrew may be taught in Gaza schools (most likely an expediency), hatred of Jews and Israel is a constant feature in Hamas and P.A. textbooks and children's television programming. This has not attenuated, but actually intensified over time. Civil rights without citizenship is hardly apartheid. Switzerland does it, Kuwait does it, as do many other sovereign nations. Stated simply, residency does not entitle one, de facto, to citizenship. As long as civil rights are protected by law, Israel is under no obligation to grant citizenship to a hostile fifth column whose stated goal is to shove the Jews off their land and grab it for themselves. There is no obligation to tolerate the intolerant. To insist otherwise is to committ national suicide.

Your claims regarding populations is also subject to debate. Your figures suggest a West Bank Arab population of up to 5 million! In fact, both the P.A. and U.N. inflate Arab population figures via double-counting: An Arab residing in Judea or Samaria is counted once as a resident of the P.A., and once as a resident of Jordan, since most hold Jordanian citizenship. Competing demographic studies suggest that Israel has little to fear from Arab population growth. Additionally, annexation would most likely include cash incentives to Arab families willing to relocate to Arab countries (and with cash in hand, they would be welcome). Surveys show that many Arab families would accept such an offer, and doing so would be more cost effective than policing a hostile Arab population, as Israel must do now.

And, please, Tim, don't start with the proportionality of war in the intifadas. We both know that non-uniformed Palestinian Arab combatants routinely use civilians as human shields, launching attacks from populated areas (including schools and hospitals) with the intention of causing civilian casualties for publicity purposes. No country has ever excersized more restraint and caution in an effort to avoid civilian casualties than the IDF does today, even though it places its own troops at higher than necessary risk. If the Arabs would simply stop attacking Israel, there would be zero Arab casualties. But Israel has a duty to protect its citizens, as does any sovereign nation. When those enemies use humans as shields, those civilian casualties accrue to those who used them as shields. That's according to the UN and the Geneva Conventions.

Perhaps for you, civilian Israeli casualties are acceptable as long as Israel survives, in rump-state form, as a nation; but I would think the families of those civilians maimed and killed, like Adelle Chaya's mother, would beg to differ.

What is so classic about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is that one side is viewed as victims and martyrs, and the other side is viewed as subhuman, cutthroat murderers. Israel has been around for 64, almost 65 years. This killing the Jewish people off, and trying to drive them into the sea, is getting to be so old. Let us keep this resting in peace along with Golda Meir. I have worked with Bereaved Families in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. They are all Jews, Muslims, and Christians who have had a relative killed by the other side. So instead of embracing anger and vindictiveness, they have embraced "We cannot live like this anymore, this has got to stop." Yes, they are right. Moshe Feiglin has offered to give each Palestinian family in the West Bank, U.S. $500,000 if they leave voluntarily. But what Moshe Feiglin does not realize, is that it would take all of Israel's GDP for four years, to come up with the money to pay these Palestinian families to leave. Bankrupt Israel, just to get rid of Palestinians. In Switzerland, all Swiss citizens have the right to vote in national elections, irrespective if they are German, French, Italian, or Romansch speakers. It is just that Switzerland did not give women the right to vote until 1971. Kuwait does not even have democratic elections.

What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about is sectarian violence - a sectarian violence that needs to stop, and it stops by not taking one side, and dehumanizing the other. So the answer does not lie in getting rid of one group of people, but how these two groups of people can live together. The catalyst is already there, with Israel and the Palestinians doing over U.S. $6 billion dollars worth of business with each other now (which is the reason why Israel gets nervous over a weak Palestinian economy). Benyamin Netanyahu personally authorized U.S. $60 million dollars to the Palestinian Authority. So is Netanyahu a Hamas weakling for doing so? No, because he realizes that if the Palestinian economy collapsed, it would pull Israel right down along with it; and Israel would not be able to decouple to make up for that loss of the Palestinian market. Netanyahu said he is committed to a two-state solution, but hopefully he was not just saying that because Obama was standing right there next to him. When Anwar Sadat made his historic visit to Jerusalem in 1977, he shook Golda Meir's hand, and said "I always wanted to meet you." Her response was "What took you so long?" If Anwar Sadat and Golda Meir can shake hands, which led to an Israeli-Egyptain peace accords in 1979, then can there not be a day when Shimon Peres and Khaled Meshaal shake hands, and set up an Israeli-Palestinian peace accords? But take into consideration that Shimon Peres is almost 90 years old. He may not live to see an Israeli-Palestinian peace accords, but we sure can. For it will not come about by making one side into victims and martyrs, and the other side into subhuman cutthroat murderers. Both are human beings, and both have to be recognized as human beings, if peace is to be achieved.

Tim's math is wrong. First of all, what Moshe Feiglin actually said was that it has cost the state of Israel $500,000 per Arab family in the disputed territories to police these areas and keep Israelis safe since 1967. So, the figure needed to induce anti-Israel Arabs to emigrate could be significantly less than $500,000 per family. Secondly, every family that leaves would lessen the burden on the IDF, reducing costs. Thirdly, the payments need not be made in one lump sum. In fact, it would make more sense to annuitize the total payment over time, making the financial burden much more practical. In the long run, a West Bank largely free of anti-Israel militants would save Israel billions of dollars annually, not to mention the lives of many Jews.

If the Arab families you speak of who have suffered because of the Arab war against Israel were a significant portion of the population of Arabs in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria, the surveys would not show that 80% of Arabs in these areas think violence against Israel is justified. Just because a small minority of Arabs seek a genuine peace with a Jewish state does not change the political and military realities with which Israel must deal. My point about citizenship stands. Israel is under no obligation to grant full voting rights to a hostile fifth column who openly calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. That they wish to accomplish this via the ballot box rather than war is meaningless.

I have rarely seen Israelis demonizing Arabs. All Israelis need do is quote the leaders of the P.A. and Hamas. If you call that demonization, Tim, then you are blind to reality. On the other hand, the P.A. and Hamas have institutionalized anti-Semitism, teaching it to their children as soon as they can understand Arabic. There is no equivalent to this on the part of Israel. You can claim that all Arabs are decent human beings at heart all you like, but there are no Arabs who can say the same about Jews without risking their lives. It is not up to Israel to change this. If and when the Arabs truly desire change, it will happen. But I see no indication that the trend is in that direction. On the contrary, your Arab victims' families are angry because the Jews fought back and they suffered a casualty as a result. But when an Arab dies as a martyr, killing Jews, he is hailed as a hero by the Palestinian Arabs, including its leaders and the attacker's own family. When an IDF soldier is forced to kill an Arab combatant, I see no such celebrations in Israel. Even when that combatant is known to have been responsible for many Israeli deaths, his death is seen as justice and an unfortunate necessity, not an occasion for handing out candy and shooting guns into the air. And if that combatant could have been apprehended rather than killed, he would have been entitled to a fair trial and imprisonment, with no risk of execution. Is this evenly matched by the P.A. or Hamas, Tim?

As for the importance of the Palestinian economy, I would remind you that money is fungible. Every dollar the P.A. receives for pills and soap is a dollar that can be added to the P.A. military budget. Do you feel that having a viable Arab trading partner is important enough to accept terrorism aimed at Israeli civilians? Why don't you ask that question to the Israeli families you work with who have suffered at the hands of Arab terrorists. Bibi gets no pass from me for this very immoral propping up of the Palestinian Arab economy. If Israel would annex these territories and apply Israeli civil law, the economy would not require any propping up.

I will repeat that for the Arabs, the Two-State Solution is only another step in the phased program of destroying Israel and ridding it of all Jews. You can deny this all you want, but it is the truth, and a handful of Arabs disagreeing with this does not make it any less valid. Your shaking hands symbolism is a joke, Tim, at the expense of the Jews. Anwar Sadat said he chose "peace as a strategic option." A strategic option for what, Tim? Why would he have said such a thing if true peace was actually his goal? You are willfully blinding yourself to what Sadat said plainly for all the world to hear.

I think that after decades of war, we must face cruel reality and accept that Muslims can never live peacefully as a large group in a non-Muslim state. It is anathema to their culture, religion, and history. Separation, as in other conflicts throughout the world, is the only viable solution.

If you read Ynetnew.com of January 2, 2013, it will outlined that Moshe Feiglin at a news conference in Jerusalem would allocate U.S. $500,000 dollars each to every Palestinian family if they left the West Bank voluntarily, and went somewhere else - not that it would cost the State of Israel U.S. $500,000 per Palestinian family to police the West Bank. The Israeli administration of the West Bank only takes 10% of Israel's GDP, and Moshe Feiglin acknowledged that in his new conference. Not every Palestinian in the West Bank is an anti-Israeli militant, considering the fact that Areas A, B, and C of the West Bank purchase over U.S. $3 billion dollars worth of Israeli commodities every year.

As for saving the lives of Jews, we do not want anyone to die, regardless who they are. But in the intifadas, the death rate is 6 Palestinians for every 1 Israeli. So any Israeli death is bad, but a Palestinian death is good? Maybe you should get on the website of the Jewish Defense League, if you are not already. Meir Kahane's Kach Party was eventually outlawed in Israel, because he advocated the forced removal of all Arabs out of Israel and the West Bank. His successor Irv Rubin committed suicide in prison, after he was arrested for plotting to kills Muslims in the United States, and Americans of Arab descent. Who would want to kill Marlo Thomas? Just kill people, because of what creed they belong to. Sounds very reminescent of World War II. So other people did that to us, so we in return have the right to do that to them? Not how I identify myself as being a Jew, even though I am the product of a mixed marriage, and only my mother was Jewish. But you do not find you Jewish identity by being violent and hateful towards other people.

Maybe the "price tag" attackers have by vandalizing churches, mosques, destroying Palestinian olive trees, performing violent acts against Palestinians, and even trying to lynch a Palestinian teenage in Jerusalem, but was saved and revived by a passing Israeli medical student. So obviosly, that passing Israeli medical student was a Jew who did not hate Arabs, and neither am I. It is not really Israelis that demonize Arabs, but American Jews - because 55% of them in the United States are married to non-Jews (my parent were married in Hungary), and do not attend a synagogue, and do not get a Jewish education. So they find their acculturated and assimilated Jewish identity by epousing radical right-wing support of Israel, like Meir Kahane and Irv Rubin did (and keep in mind that the Jewish Defense League is an American invention too).

The police force of the Palestiinian Authority got all their weapons from Israel. So is Israel sponsoring anti-Jewish activity? Israel already has civil law over Area C, and handles all security for Area B. So keep these, but just expel all of the Palestinians living there? It sounds like you are binding yourself to what Meir Kahane said: "The Arabs must go!" So how are they suppose to go? Forced removal or physical extermination? Peace is a stragetic option, because it is the opposite of on-going sectarian conflict. The Muslims will have to accept Israel, because Israel is there, and it is not going anywhere. But at the same time, the Muslims are there, and they are not going anywhere. If you compare the Muslims to Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany only existed for 12 years, and it was militarily defeated. The Muslims have been there for 1,438 years. Israel defeated the surrounding nation-states in four wars, but Israel did not destroy Islam. Now it is time to move forward on how Israel and Islam can coexist. Because it is like what Mohammed Morsi said, he will honor the 1979 peace accords with Israel, and called upon Hamas to follow them as a role model for coexistence. Egypt's relationship with Hamas has not been very harmonious lately. Maybe it is a way to pressure Hamas to follow them as a role model for coexistence.

My information regarding Feiglin's compensation plans come from a bulletin he wrote, and is available at the JewishIsrael.org web site. A study did conclude that, since 1967, it has cost Israel $500,000 in security expenses per Arab family in the disputed territories. I never claimed every Arab in the territories is an anti-Israel militant, and Arabs willing to live in a Jewish state without working as a fifth column to destroy it or turn it into a Muslim state would be welcome to remain. But as I have stated, some 80% of Arabs in the territories feel that violent resistance against Israel is justified. That's a high percentage, Tim.

Tim goes back to the porportionality argument: If more Palestinians are being killed than Israelis, then the Israelis must be blamed for excessive aggression. This is false. Israelis are not the people hurling rocks and firebombs at Palestinian Arab civilians. The Arabs are in a declared state of war with Israel, as both the P.A. and Hamas charters clearly state. In a war, even a defensive war, you must kill those who are attacking your nation, or you will lose the war. You cannot cease fire just because you have killed the same number of Arabs as the Arabs have Jews. You counterattack until the enemy loses either the will or the ability to strike. Again, Tim, if the Arabs stop attacking Israelis, I tell you that there will be no more Arab casualties. Not a single one. Are the deaths of Palestinians a good thing? If it saves Israeli lives, yes. We do not rejoice over such deaths, as the Palestinian Arabs rejoice over Jewish deaths, but it is reassuring to know that a terrorist will no longer be able to target Israelis. Does that bother you, Tim? If so, I think you need to check your moral compass; it is off a bit.

Your assertions about Irv Rubin are hardly established facts, and Rav Kahane did advocate the separation of the Jewish people from the people sworn to destroy the Jews. Nobody was talking about killing Arabs, the way Arabs were, and still do, talk about killing Jews. Again, your moral equivalence attempt is a failure.

Being hateful to people who wish you no harm, I agree, is undesirable. But I believe one must harbor hatred for those who wish to kill them. It is a normal emotional response, and a part of the human survival instinct. I say one cannot defeat an enemy if one does not hate that enemy; and hatred for people who want to kill you, your family, and your people, is very much justified. You should spend some time reading the Koran, Tim.

Your list of Jewish vandalism to non-Jewish facilities in Israel is very funny. So some law-breaking Jews deface a mosque. You know if they are caught they will be prosecuted and punished if found guilty. Where's your equivalent rule of law for the P.A. or Hamas, Tim? And, seriously, are you trying to tell me that these very minor crimes are equal to the actions of Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Brigades? Really? I did not see the story of the attempted lynching, but I would be surprised to learn that that Arab was completely innocent and did not have any evil intentions towards the Jews that may have tried to lynch him. When the state fails to secure its citizens and apply the rule of law to them, people will exercise their human right of self-defense.

You are way off base on American Jews, Tim. It is the more assimilated Jewish Americans who generally support the Palestinian Arabs and their efforts to destroy Israel. It is the roughly 20% of Jewish Americans that are observant that understand the Arab threat, support a strong Israel, and understand the threat represented by a "Palestinian" state. Nothing would make me happier than to not feel that there are millions of Muslims all over the world that want to kill Jews as directed by to by Islam. But one cannot wish away reality. A Holocaust survivor once remarked that he survived because he was a pessimist. The optimists were murdered, he said, but the pessimists survived. Ponder that, Tim, as you try to get Israelis to bare their necks for their good Arab friends.

You may find it hard to believe that Israel has armed its mortal enemies in the name of "peace." But those of us on the right understand this as a pathetic and deadly concession for peace that only costs Jewish lives. Could you imagine South Korea providing arms to North Korea in the name of "peace?" This is why the younger generations of Israelis are replacing the old guard Oslo politicians with people like Feiglin and Lapid, who are not blinded by some fantasy of peaceful coexistence with a mortal enemy.

You missed the point on Sadat's statement, Tim. He did not choose peace as a goal, but as a strategic option to defeat Israel. It was cleverly worded, but a clear signal to Arabs that he was not reconciling himself to the existence of a Jewish state - only that the military option had failed, and new approach was needed. Even that was insufficiant for the Muslim Brotherhood, which took him out shortly afterwards. Nobody here is talking about eliminating Islam. But its followers must understand that the non-Muslims of the world will not just submit to their demands of worldwide hegemony and Sharia law. As for Israel, it has no more obligation to tolerate a fifth column of Muslims than the Arabs have to welcome Jews with full civil rights. It is Israel's government's responsibility to protect the Jewish nation and its national homeland, not Muslim supremacy. If that requires aggressive, defensive vigilance and military strength, then that's what Israel will have to use.

As for the Arabs, yes, the Arabs committed to violence against Jews and Israel must go, and that number is a lot higher than you seem to acknowledge, Tim. They can go to any one of 22 Arab Muslim countries. There is no obligation to welcome people who want to kill you and steal your land, Tim. If you disagree, then save your life and leave Israel now.

Moshe Feiglin was even disdained by the Likud Party. He tried running for the Knesset under the Likud Party, but was arrested for blocking roads; so he formed the Manhigut Yehudit, and ran under that. In 1997, he was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison for sedition against the State of Israel. He has been banned from Great Britian, and the man is nothing but a petty criminal. He is a supporter of the late Meir Kahane, who had his Kach Party outlawed by the Israeli Supreme Court. So criminals are supposed to be running the State of Israel? Sick! Sick! Sick! Sick! Even Benyamin Netanyahu is meeting with John Kerry now, on resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and said right in front of President Obama that he supports the two-state solution. Even Yair Lapid, the Minister of Finance, supports Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and the two-state solution. Let Moshe Feighlin go back to prison where he belongs, and his followers can send him a cake with a file in it; that way him and his loony blog that he writes can be left to rest in peace.

Peace shmease. Arafat turned down the best offer they're ever going to get. The "Palestinians" don't want peace. They want to kill Jews.

1. For the reasons cited in the article and others advanced by the readers' comments, little movement on the moribund 'peace process' can be expected at present. 2. Israel cannot withstand indefinitely the continuous pressures from the surrrounding, increasingly volatile, radicalized countries without the support of the US. 3. President Obama must base American foreign policiy on US interests in the region, which, beyond the Israel-Palestinian conflict, includes Iran's nuclear activities and its involvement in other countries' 'affairs.' 4. The settlements are a major obstacle to any likelihood of a successful American initiative towards a peaceful solution. 5. On the other hand, at present the demand for a right of return for the Palestinian diaspora relegates negotiations to failure; until an alternative to it is formulated, neither side can change its long-held position. Thus the current 'no peace, no war' situation will prevail until the next crisis.

Point-by-point:

1. There is no peace process. A peace process requires two parties willing to negotiate compromises in order to permanenty end hostilities. That condition does not exist.

2. Israel's strong economy and technological excellence enables Israel to be very self-sufficient. Prior to 1967, Israel did quite well defending itself without any help from the U.S. Without being tied-down by State Department pressure, Israel would do whatever is necessary to rebuild its deterence.

3. By now, Israelis are under no illusion that the US will not act on Israel's best interests. Too bad the US does not realize that after the mullahs finish off the "Saturday people," they will turn their aggression towards the "Sunday people." Israel must act on its own regarding both the Palestinian-Arab issue and Iran, and not submit to foriegn pressure where it conflicts with the interests of its own people.

4. False. The Arab-Israeli conflict has never been about settlements, borders, or a "Palestinian" state. It is, and always has been, about the survival or the destruction of the Jewish state. The Arabs will say this to anyone willing to listen. See Arafat's phased plan, now adopted by Abbas, for specifics.

5. There is no right of return for the third generation of descendents of the original Arab refugees. According to the UN, only refugees and their children qualify, unless, that is, those refugees happen to be Palestinian-Arabs, in which case there is no limit. This is a ridiculous double-standard that Israel is right to ignore. There is also the question of whether these "refugees" were forced out of Israel or left on their own, which would disqualify them from refugee status. Let the Arab host countries absorb the grandchildren of these refugees, as Israel absorbed the 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands.