Two
weeks ago, US Congressman Joe Walsh published an op-ed in the The
Washington Times in which he called for the US and Israel to abandon the
two-state solution.
After
running through the record of Palestinian duplicity, failed governance,
terrorism and bad faith, he called for Israel to apply its sovereignty
to Judea and Samaria. In his words, Israel should "adopt the only
solution that will bring true peace to the Middle East: a single Israeli
state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is the
only country in the region dedicated to peace and the only power capable
of stable, just and democratic government in the region."
The
evidence that the two-state paradigm has failed is overwhelming. The
Palestinians' decision to reject statehood at Camp David in 2000 and
launch a terror war against Israel made clear that they had not
abandoned their refusal from 1947 to accept partition of the Land of
Israel with the Jews.
So,
too, the Palestinians' election of Hamas in the 2006 elections, and
their missile war against Israel from Gaza in the aftermath of Israel's
complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, all made clear that they are not
interested in a Palestinian state. Rather, their chief desire is
Israel's annihilation.
Consequentially, there is no chance whatsoever that the two state paradigm can work.
Indeed,
the fact that there is no Palestinian leader willing to recognize
Israel's right to exist makes clear that if a Palestinian state is
established in Judea and Samaria - in addition to the de facto
Palestinian state in Gaza - that state will be in state of war with
Israel. All territory under its control will be used to attack the rump
Jewish state.
Given the abject failure of the
two-state paradigm, it is abundantly clear that for all the
complications that may be associated with the application of Israeli
sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, it is a better option for Israel
than Israeli surrender of the areas.
Walsh's
op-ed is not his first statement of support for Israeli annexation. Last
September, ahead of the UN general assembly, Walsh authored Congressional Resolution 394
supporting Israel's right to annex Judea and Samaria in the event that
the Palestinians asked the UN to recognize a Palestinian state outside
the framework of a peace treaty with Israel. Forty-four other
congressmen co-sponsored the resolution.
And this makes sense.
The
Palestinians' decision to turn the issue of Palestinian statehood over
to the UN constituted a substantive breach of the treaties the PLO
signed with Israel. Those agreements stipulated that both sides agreed
that their conflict would be solved through negotiations and not through
unilateral actions. By ending negotiations with Israel and turning the
issue of statehood over to the UN, the Palestinians canceled their
treaties with Israel. Consequently, Israel is no longer bound by those
accords and is free to take its own unilateral actions, including
applying its laws to Judea and Samaria as it did in Jerusalem and the
Golan Heights in the past.
FOR HIS unstinting
support for Israel, Walsh has been subject to an unbridled assault by
leftist American Jews. Ron Kampeas from JTA, for instance, attacked Walsh,
accusing him of being no different than Israel's enemies who seek to
destroy Israel by ending its ability to define itself as a Jewish state
through what they refer to as the "one-state solution."
Kampeas
blasted Walsh for suggesting that Palestinians unwilling to live under
Israeli rule could move to Jordan which, with its 75-percent Palestinian
majority, is effectively the Palestinian state. To back up his
condemnation, Kampeas quoted Robert Wright's excoriation of Walsh in The Atlantic.
There
Wright wrote, "Offhand, I don't recall a member of Congress in my
lifetime saying anything so grotesquely at odds with American ideals
about ethnic relations and for that matter basic human rights."
For its part, the Jewish-run anti-Israel lobby J Street is mobilizing its supporters
to bring about Walsh's defeat in the November elections by soliciting
contributions to his Democratic challenger. J Street executive director
Jeremy Ben-Ami wrote that "Walsh's prescription amounts to a call for an
end to Israel as the democratic home of the Jewish people."
It
is hard to know where to begin a discussion of this assault in which
Jewish Americans attacked one of Israel's strongest supporters simply
because he had the temerity to recognize reality and call for the US to
support an Israeli victory against our enemies who seek our destruction.
First,
it is important to consider the claim that Walsh went against the grain
of American ideals by suggesting, "Those Palestinians who wish to may
leave their Fatah- and Hamas-created slums and move to the original
Palestinian state: Jordan. The British Mandate for Palestine created
Jordan as the country for the Palestinians. That is the only
justification for its creation. Even now, 75% of its population is of
Palestinian descent."
The fact of the matter is
that the two-state paradigm rests on the assumption that the
Palestinian state will be ethnically cleansed of Jews before it is
established. Whereas Walsh somehow stands in opposition to American
ideals for suggesting that the Palestinians may voluntarily immigrate to
Jordan, Kampeas, Ben- Ami and their cohorts have no problem with the
concept of a Jew-free Palestine and the forcible expulsion of up to
675,000 Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem
simply because they are Jewish.
Aside from
their pernicious hypocrisy and moral blindness, what stands out in their
assaults on Walsh is that they cannot tell the difference between
Israel's enemies that seek its destruction through the so-called
one-state solution, and Israel's friends, who want it to defeat its
enemies and live with security and peace. For the likes of Kampeas and
Ben-Ami, there is no difference between Walsh and Israel's worst
enemies.
PART OF this problem is their apparent
unquestioning acceptance of the myth of a demographic time bomb. They
seem not to have noticed that the Palestinian claim that by 2015 there
will be an Arab majority west of the Jordan River is a complete
fabrication.
The truth is that if Israel
applied its laws to Judea and Samaria tomorrow and all the Palestinians
in those areas received Israeli citizenship, Israel would still retain a
two-thirds Jewish majority. Moreover, all the demographic trends for
Israel, including increasing birthrates and positive immigration rates,
are positive. And all the demographic trends for the Palestinians,
including decreasing birthrates and negative immigration rates, are
negative. According to Israeli demographic researcher Yoram Ettinger, by
2030, Jewish will likely comprise 80% of the population of Israel,
Judea and Samaria.
So Ben-Ami's argument that Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria means the end of Israeli democracy is simply incorrect.
But
aside from their hypocrisy and refusal to accept simple arithmetic
realities, what stands out most clearly in these leftist American Jews'
assault on Walsh is how they have become addicted to the fable of the
two-state solution. Their addiction to this fable - that argues that
after a century of Palestinian devotion to the annihilation of Israel,
the Palestinians are suddenly willing to meet Israel halfway - is what
propels these Jewish activists to attack anyone who points out reality.
It is what drives them to brand as a foe anyone with the temerity to
suggest a better way forward.
The beauty of the two-state fable is that it puts the onus to make peace on Israel's shoulders.
If
it is true that the Palestinians want to make peace, then Israel must
make peace. And if all the Palestinians require to make peace is for
Israel to quit Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, then that is what Israel
must do, together with the 675,000 Jews who live there.
The
real tragedy is of course not that the likes of Kampeas and Ben-Ami
maintain faith with the fairy tale of Palestinian willingness to live at
peace with Israel. The real tragedy is that this myth has been the
official policy of the government of Israel for the past 19 years. Since
then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin launched the peace process with
Yasser Arafat in September 1993, to greater or lesser degrees, every
Israeli government has kept faith with the two-state solution lie.
It
hasn't mattered that the Palestinians rejected statehood and peace not
once, but twice. It hasn't mattered that the Palestinians received Gaza
lock, stock and barrel with no strings attached and used the territory
to launch an illegal missile war against Israeli civilians. The fact
that both Arafat and his supposedly moderate successor Mahmoud Abbas
rejected partition and maintained their devotion to Israel's destruction
did not stop Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from bowing to US
pressure and embracing this fool's game.
People
like Kampeas are the first to bemoan Israel's sorry state in the realm
of public diplomacy. They decry Israel's hasbara efforts as pathetic and
failed. But what they fail to acknowledge is that it is the two-state
trap that makes the construction and execution of an effective public
diplomacy strategy impossible.
To maintain
faith with this failed policy, Israel's leaders and representatives are
not merely required to ignore the history of the past 90 years of
Palestinian rejection and aggression.
They are required to ignore current events.
They are forced to ignore not just what happened in 1947, but what happened at 7 o'clock in the morning.
And
this brings us back to Rep. Walsh. There may be things to criticize
about Walsh's policy argument. For instance, he calls for the conferral
of "limited voting power" on the Palestinians under Israeli sovereignty.
In truth, there is no reason for them to receive anything but full
voting rights.
But you have to be blind to reality to view him as anything other than a friend of Israel.
Happily,
not everyone in Israel remains paralyzed. Members of Knesset have
launched repeated attempts in recent months to debate legislation
calling for Israel to apply its sovereignty over all or parts of Judea
and Samaria. Next Wednesday, MK Miri Regev is holding a conference to
launch a new Knesset caucus calling for the adoption of this policy.
IN
RECENT years, poll after poll has shown that the majority of Israelis
do not believe that the two-state paradigm will bring peace or that if a
Palestinian state is formed, it will live at peace with Israel.
And
yet, because of the choke-hold that Kampeas and Ben-Ami's Israeli
counterparts have held over the national discourse, the Israeli people
have been given no other option to consider. Rather, we have been told
over and over again that giving our enemies a veto over our rights, land
and security is the only alternative.
Walsh
and the 44 congressmen who co-sponsored his resolution are Israel's
friends. We should take heart in their willingness to buck consensus and
support us. And we should give careful and responsible consideration to
their reasonable and supportive policy recommendations.
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