The recycled Arab
League peace proposal, based on the Palestinian right of return and the
1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps, is nothing more than an
attempt to sell oceanfront property in Arizona. If Israel buys it, the
Arab League will throw the Golden Gate Bridge in for free.
Those who welcome the
Arab League proposal are suspending their disbelief. They subordinate
reality to wishful thinking, urging Israel to assume tangible lethal
risks in return for an intangible agreement. They ignore the lessons of
the 1993 Oslo Accords, which came with intensified Palestinian hate
education, terrorism and the abrogation of agreements, as well as the
last three years on the tumultuous, boiling, seismic Arab street.
Fans of the Arab League
proposal ignore fundamental Middle East constraints, as demonstrated by
the non-existence of a single Arab democracy, the absence of intra-Arab
comprehensive peace, the lack of intra-Arab agreement on all borders
and the failure to comply with most intra-Arab agreements for the last
1,400 years. Why would anyone assume that Arabs would shower upon the
"infidel" Jewish state something they have never shared among themselves
-- a long-term comprehensive peace carved in stone?
Western policy makers
and public opinion shapers call on Israel to make "painful concessions"
in the most conflict-ridden region in the world. They would never make
such concessions in their own in less violent regions. Yet they expect
Israel to accept an Arab League peace proposal in a region that has not
tolerated non-Muslim sovereignty since the seventh century. They provide
a tailwind to a recycled Arab League "peace" proposal in a region where
Christians, Jews and other non-Muslim minorities are systematically
oppressed, persecuted and annihilated.
Western promoters of
the Arab League initiative are oblivious to inherent characteristics of
the Arab world. These have been on display during the last three years
from North Africa to the Persian Gulf: violent intolerance of the other
Muslims/Arabs, fragmentation along tribal, ethnic, religious,
ideological and geographic lines; shifty, unpredictable and unstable
regimes, policies and alliances; and the tenuous nature of agreements,
which are usually "written on ice."
Contrary to the world
view of Western policy makers who embrace the Arab League proposal, the
Arab street has not experienced an Arab Spring. There has been no
transition to democracy, no Facebook or youth revolution, no
reincarnation of Gandhi or Martin Luther King. The Arab tide,
independent of the Arab-Israeli conflict, has been predominantly
anti-democratic, anti-American, violently Islamist and dramatically more
threatening.
A Palestinian state in
Judea and Samaria would import the turbulent Arab Street into the Judean
and Samarian suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It would establish
another rogue terrorist state, doom Jordan's pro-American Hashemite
regime, add another anti-American vote at the U.N. and enhance the
Russian, Chinese and North Korean profile in the eastern flank of the
Mediterranean. The establishment of a Palestinian state would reward
those behind the flight of Christians from Bethlehem, Beit Jallah and
Ramallah.
Palestinian Arabs have
systematically attempted to annihilate the Jewish presence in the land
of Israel since the anti-Jewish pogroms of the 1920s through the 1948
war and the sustained campaign of terrorism since 1949. The Palestinian
track record also highlights their alliance with Nazi Germany, the USSR,
Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and other enemies
and adversaries of the free world. Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat and
their allies were expelled from Egypt (1950s), Syria (1966), Jordan
(1970), Lebanon (1982-3) and Kuwait (1991) for subversion, hence the
limited Arab support for the Palestinians.
The Arab League
proposal distorts, once again, the positive elements of land for peace,
as displayed at the end of the World War II: deterring future aggression
by punishing the aggressor (Nazi Germany) and rewarding the intended
victims (France, Poland and Czechoslovakia) with land. Land for peace,
as promoted by the Arab League and Western political correctness, fuels
aggression by punishing the intended Israeli victim and rewarding the
Arab aggressors.
To survive, the Jewish
state must control Judea and Samaria, the cradle of Jewish history. To
withstand Middle East challenges, Israel must control the mountain
ridges of Judea and Samaria, which tower over pre-1967 Israel, a 9- to
15-mile sliver along the Mediterranean Sea. Judea and Samaria are the
Golan Heights of Israel's soft belly, overlooking Jerusalem, Tel Aviv,
Ben-Gurion Airport and 80 percent of Israel's population and
infrastructure. The higher the level of Middle East violence and
unpredictability, the stricter our security requirements must be. The
mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria are irreplaceable.
The Arab League proposal for Israel to leave Judea and Samaria is not a peace plan. It is an invitation to commit suicide.
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