Expel Arafat – and
Then What?
Elyakim Ha’etzni
An imaginary scenario:
The Americans allow Sharon to drop a one-ton bomb on the entire top brass of
Hamas, killing them all and leaving Hamas with no leadership.
Let’s say we’ve also conquered the Muqata`a and expelled Arafat and his
entire Oslo bunch back to Tunisia. Now what? Does this lead to the vision of
Eretz Yisrael Hashleima (Whole Land of Israel)? Is there at all in
official Israel, with the Likud at its helm, such a political option?
Let’s try to
understand what the Americans were thinking when they allowed us to drop a
small bomb on Sheikh Yassin, and what they will be thinking when they finally
allow us to expel Arafat. The answer was stated by Condoleeza Rice in two
words: “Nation building”. She explained: We struck the Serbs, enabling us to
build the Bosnian nation; we beat the Taliban and built the Afghan
nation; and we will now build Palestine. In the meantime she has also managed
to smite Saddam Hussein, enabling her to busy herself with building the Iraqi
nation.
But the Palestinian
thing is missing something. After all, to build the Bosnian nation, NATO
defeated the Serbs. And against the Taliban and Saddam, the US army
stepped in. To build a pro-American Palestinian state here, terrorism must be
smashed – and somebody has to do it.
After all, if George
Bush knew that the choices
were between a Saddam-like Palestinian terror-state
or nothing at all, he would certainly give up on his Palestinian vision. Bush
is well aware that in the real world – unlike the hallucinations of Peres’
peace sect – the use of force precedes political
“solutions”. So who’s supposed to use the necessary force in the Holy Land to
uproot terrorism from amidst the Palestinians to make them safe for the
American vision?
Unlike the Europeans,
Bush is serious about terrorism – and in fact sees eye-to-eye on this issue
with Sharon. For this reason, he needs a strong army to fight and smash Arab
terror – not only in Iraq or Afghanistan, but here too. It’s not for naught
that dismantling the terror infrastructure is the first station on Bush’s Road
Map. But he’s certainly not going to send his own boys out to die in
the
kasbah of Shechem
(Nablus) and the alleys of Gaza
– certainly not when body-bags are coming in from Iraq and Bush’s
re-election is doubtful.
In other words, it’s
up to the IDF to clean out the area and thereby pave the way for the
Palestinian state.
It won’t be the first
time that Gentiles used Jews to undo Jews. But our blind Israeli leaders
imagine that they’re fighting only on behalf of our security, without seeing
that at the same time they’re serving another purpose, namely proceeding along
the Road Map from the dismantling of terror, to dismantling settlements, to
general elections, to the international conference designated to declare a
Palestinian state with temporary borders on Jan. 1, 2004, which will
immediately be accepted into the United Nations.
This entire vision,
which for every Zionist Jew loyal to his nation and land is a nightmare,
depends on the IDF first eliminating terror. Small wonder that now even many
leftists realize that this depends on the disappearance of Arafat. They
realize that only one last step is required from the Zionist state, to fulfil
its historic task of building the Palestinian nation and the Palestinian
state.
This process began
when Zionism triggered off the reaction within the Arab mixed-masses living
here with no national identity, that they, too, are a people. It is then that
they conceived the brilliant gimmick of adopting the name of the land that was
destined to be the Jewish national home – “Palestine”. Then, in 1967, the
Zionist army came and freed them from Jordanian rule – under which they never
would have received independence. If this is not enough, Israel then spent the
next several decades building them up: giving them universities and colleges,
teaching them trades and administration and also building networks of roads,
water, electricity and health-care, and as a result, raising life expectancy
and lowering children mortality. Under Jordanian rule, masses of them had left.
Under Israeli rule, hundreds of thousands came back to the jobs created by the
Jews. Good ol’ anti-Semitism caused all these facts to be virtually unknown in
world public opinion.
And finally, for full
measure, the Zionist state equipped them with arms, ammunition, military
training and much money. Then, to drive out the Jews, who had outlived their
usefulness, the Palestinians made use of the snake called terror. But they
could not free themselves from the stranglehold of this snake without the help
of the Jewish army. So it came to pass, that the last favor required from the
Zionist state in the service of nascent Palestine is fighting Palestinian
terror.
Our saving grace is
the fact that the Arabs, though a smart people, can’t control their instinct
for terrorism even for a few months, during which the Road Map would have done
all the work for them. The Americans, on the other hand, as in other places,
didn’t think things through. If they had, they would have allowed Sharon to
drop the one-ton bomb on Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and to
expel Arafat, thereby employing the IDF in the fulfilment of the Bush vision
instead of that of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Amos .
It is not my intention
to recommend to the IDF not to fight. I wish rather to warn of the trap that
is intrinsic in the very words “war on terror”. This term implies that we do
not have a war with the Palestinian people, even though they are those who
make use of this weapon against us. The notion of fighting a virtual concept
like “terror” is calculated to distract the mind from the real essence of this
war: The 120-year old blood-soaked struggle between the Jews and the Arabs for
this land.
The virtual war
against “terror” was not invented without reason. Since Oslo, Israel
officially has no enemy, at most it has – “the other party”. Israel is not at
war but in a “conflict”. Consequently, “victory” is not its war-aim. The
Defense Minister and Chief of Staff tell the soldiers that they are fighting
to bring “the other side” to the negotiating table, after having renounced
“terror”. They are not fighting to win the war.
Not so the Arabs.
They are clearly at war, and we are the enemy. They also have a burning desire
for victory, and their victory is our destruction.
Facing this, the
Israeli establishment does not offer its people, who are compelled on a daily
basis, to confront the full wrath of Arab hatred, bellicosity and lust for
blood, any vision or ideal. At the end of the dark tunnel which is the War of
Terror, nothing awaits us. Sharon and Peres, together, see no other
destination for Israel except the Road Map, whose target is a Palestinian
state in Western Eretz Israel.
And this leads us to
the depth of the tragedy, for the more we succeed in our war against
Palestinian terror – which is indispensable for our survival – the sooner we
reach its final outcome – namely, the delivery of the heart of our country
into the hands of our enemy.
Those who are
horrified by this deed of historical dimensions – the People of Israel
betraying the Promised Land, a promise which embodies the only justification
for our existence here – do not need further arguments. But even those who do
not understand such “sentimental” language should think at least one step
ahead. What will life be like with an independent Palestinian neighbor at the
doorstep of every town in Israel. Do they sincerely believe that behind the
armor of sovereignty, terror will not prevail? And
that the Palestinian state will not arm and conclude treaties with Israel’s
enemies? And that they won’t fill their state to the hilt with “refugees”, and
march them towards the 1947 boundaries to make good on “the Right of Return”?
The Road Map might
grant us half a year without casualties, but its supporters don’t ask
themselves: How many victims will this cost us in the future, when the
Palestinian terror has the backing of a state? Have they forgotten the
ceasefire on the Suez Canal in 1973, and our forbearance, tired from the war
of attrition, when Egypt advanced its anti-aircraft missiles, thereby
preparing the ground for the Yom Kippur attack? We spared a few losses in the
immediate present but paid with almost 3,000 dead a few months later! And what
about the Jibril-deal, by which we extricated a handful of soldiers in return
for 1,100 terrorists, and created the trigger for the Palestinian wars which
have cost us already thousands of losses?
Peres in Oslo and on
the White House lawn, and Sharon in his speeches in Latrun and in Aqaba, have
placed us in a bind. We have no choice but to continue fighting against the
Palestinian enemy and to kill its leaders, but we also have no choice but to
ensure that our war be on behalf of the Land of Israel, and not for
“Palestine”. We must therefore define clear national goals for our war. We
dare not lead to a situation in which historians will write that the State of
Palestine was established in the Land of Israel on the bodies of our dead. We
must break through an opening in the tunnel – for Jewish sovereignty.
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