Anyone who has ever
suffered from a sore throat and fever and didn’t get well within two days
surely went to see a doctor. The doctor took a light and tongue depressor, saw
a pair of red, swollen tonsils with white dots, and concluded that the patient
had a throat infection. And even though such infections are usually viral
rather than bacterial, the doctor prescribed antibiotics to be on the safe
side. The patient took them (or didn’t), and usually got well in a few
days. If not, the doctor
could try a different antibiotic, and then a third and a fourth, until the
patient died of old age. But any reasonable doctor would stop and ask himself:
What’s wrong here? Why is the patient not getting any better despite my
wonderful treatment? The
answer is logical: a mistaken diagnosis. That would explain the lack of
response to the treatment, and the frustration. I wouldn’t have bothered you with this introduction
about bacterial throat infections (somewhat anachronistic, I know, since
nowadays there are throat cultures) if we didn’t find ourselves in this very
situation in the diplomatic sphere. The war between Jews and Arabs in the Land
of Israel has been going on for more than 100 years, and most onlookers,
analysts and mediators are convinced that it’s a territorial conflict: Jews and
Arabs are fighting over the same piece of land, so the logical solution is to
divide the land.
This is a reasonable assumption,
and therefore (and also for other colonialist reasons), Churchill came to the
Land of Israel/Palestine in 1922 and divided the land. He gave the
three-fourths of it east of the Jordan River to the Arabs, while the rest
remained a British Mandate for establishing a Jewish national home.
The Arabs weren’t enthusiastic,
and their response has gone down in history as the 1929 Arab riots. After that,
the British sent additional committees that proposed additional divisions of
the land, based on various maps. But every effort ended in a bloodbath: waves
of terrorism, “incidents” (aka riots), wars and intifadas. Some 23,000 Jews
were killed and more than 100,000 Arabs, but no statesman ever stopped and
asked himself why every attempt at dividing the land merely increased the war
and bloodshed. The answer, of course, is a mistaken diagnosis.
The conflict isn’t territorial
(even though it has many territorial symptoms, and we fight over every acre and
every house), but a war of religion, a clash of ideologies. And such a conflict
can’t be solved by drawing lines on a map. To Muslims, the Land of Israel will
forever be waqf land – land that is part of a Muslim religious trust. And even
David Ben-Gurion, who wasn’t “religious,” appeared before the Peel Commission
in 1937 and brandished a Bible as the source of our absolute right to the Land
of Israel.
But despite this,
all the “peacemakers” among us keep prescribing the same medicine of “dividing
the land” for the wrong disease. Even today, the only diplomatic plan on the
table is negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, yet this is
the one that has failed time and again.
Next week, a plan called “Two states for two peoples
on two sides of the Jordan – is this alternative feasible?” will be placed on
the negotiating table. Granted, this will happen only at a conference organized
by Professors for a Strong Israel, which will take place at the Menachem Begin
Heritage Center in Jerusalem. But the conference will hold an in-depth
discussion on the following topic: When the “Arab Spring” reaches Jordan, that
country will become a Palestinian nation-state. Thus even if the conflict isn’t
solved, at least a new factor will have entered the diplomatic equation, which
is currently stuck in a blind alley.
If not, the doctor could try a different antibiotic,
and then a third and a fourth, until the patient died of old age. But any
reasonable doctor would stop and ask himself: What’s wrong here? Why is the
patient not getting any better despite my wonderful treatment?
The answer is logical: a mistaken
diagnosis. That would explain the lack of response to the treatment, and the
frustration.
I wouldn’t have
bothered you with this introduction about bacterial throat infections (somewhat
anachronistic, I know, since nowadays there are throat cultures) if we didn’t
find ourselves in this very situation in the diplomatic sphere. The war between
Jews and Arabs in the Land of Israel has been going on for more than 100 years,
and most onlookers, analysts and mediators are convinced that it’s a
territorial conflict: Jews and Arabs are fighting over the same piece of land,
so the logical solution is to divide the land.
This is a reasonable assumption, and therefore (and also
for other colonialist reasons), Churchill came to the Land of Israel/Palestine
in 1922 and divided the land. He gave the three-fourths of it east of the
Jordan River to the Arabs, while the rest remained a British Mandate for
establishing a Jewish national home.
The Arabs weren’t enthusiastic, and their response has gone down in
history as the 1929 Arab riots. After that, the British sent additional
committees that proposed additional divisions of the land, based on various
maps. But every effort ended in a bloodbath: waves of terrorism, “incidents” (aka
riots), wars and intifadas. Some 23,000 Jews were killed and more than 100,000
Arabs, but no statesman ever stopped and asked himself why every attempt at
dividing the land merely increased the war and bloodshed. The answer, of
course, is a mistaken diagnosis.
The conflict isn’t territorial (even though it has many territorial
symptoms, and we fight over every acre and every house), but a war of religion,
a clash of ideologies. And such a conflict can’t be solved by drawing lines on
a map. To Muslims, the Land of Israel will forever be waqf land – land that is
part of a Muslim religious trust. And even David Ben-Gurion, who wasn’t
“religious,” appeared before the Peel Commission in 1937 and brandished a Bible
as the source of our absolute right to the Land of Israel.
But despite this, all the
“peacemakers” among us keep prescribing the same medicine of “dividing the
land” for the wrong disease. Even today, the only diplomatic plan on the table
is negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, yet this is the
one that has failed time and again.
Next week, a plan called “Two states for two peoples on two sides of the
Jordan – is this alternative feasible?” will be placed on the negotiating
table. Granted, this will happen only at a conference organized by Professors
for a Strong Israel, which will take place at the Menachem Begin Heritage
Center in Jerusalem. But the conference will hold an in-depth discussion on the
following topic: When the “Arab Spring” reaches Jordan, that country will become
a Palestinian nation-state. Thus even if the conflict isn’t solved, at least a
new factor will have entered the diplomatic equation, which is currently stuck
in a blind alley.
About the
author: A former member of the Knesset, Dr. Arieh Eldad is a plastic surgeon
who headed the burns unit at Hadassah hospital for twenty years; including, at
the height of the Intifada. He has personally treated
Arab-"Palestinian" suicide bombers, only to see them come back after
their treatment with bombs strapped to their chests to blow themselves up in
the very hospital that saved their lives. One of the key principles Dr. Eldad
applies to his Middle East analysis is that, “When states have missions that
are bigger than life, they are not obeying the basic rules of logic that
Western civilization obeys.” In regard to Iran, that translates to: “The world
should know that we will be ready to destroy the nuclear infrastructure of Iran
at whatever the cost it takes.”
Thanks
to Israpundit
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