The Gathering Storm

One of the most spectacular triumphs of the Arab propaganda machine is the fact that it has succeeded in seducing even the most savvy among us into believing that a second Palestinain-Arab state in Judea, Samaria and and Gaza is inevitable.

You see this belief expressed everywhere. On Wednesday, August 28, 2002, my PBS station (WNPI) aired David Shipler’s film, “Arab and Jew: Return to the Promised Land”. One Israeli Jew, an immigrant from the US no less, stated quite explicitly that we all know the end game, and we even know the approximate borders of the two states to be, so why go on shedding blood?

Another example: In his recent book on Israel (dated May, 2002), journalist Anton La Guardia states,

Over the decades of struggle, the Palestinians have fought, rioted, hijacked and bombed their way back into western conscience... [T]here is also realization that Palestinians need a country of their own. That country is not Lebanon or Jordan, but a piece of historic Palestine.

[Cited from p. 9 of:
La Guradia, Anton. War Without End. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, May, 2002.]

This success of the Arab propaganda machine even found its way into the White House, with George Bush being the first US president to openly and explicitly endorse the creation of a second Palestinian-Arab state in Judea, Samaria and and Gaza. And today’s news brings another sign of the gathering storm, as the EU-niks go into overdrive in their attempts to repeat the folly of Munich, September 1938, this time at Israel’s expense. Here is the bad news as presented on September 1, 2002, by AFP, under the headline, EU envoy to head to Mideast with new peace "road map":

A senior EU envoy heads to the Middle East on Monday for a three-day trip to present a new peace "road map" hoping to take advantage of a relative lull in violence, diplomats said.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, secured support for the plan at a weekend meeting of EU foreign ministers in Denmark...

The three-page EU document is based on ideas including [sic!] from the Americans but also specifically from France, Germany and Saudi Arabia, officials say.

According to a copy of the plan seen by AFP, the first stage of the EU plan would involve negotiations later this year, leading before the Palestinian elections next January to a security agreement allowing the withdrawal of Israeli forces from re-occupied Palestinian areas.

The second stage of the process "starts after the Palestinian election in January 2003 and ends with the conclusion of an agreement on the creation of a Palestinian state with provisional borders by August 2003."

The third phase of the plan, after August 2003, would involve a final phase of negotiations aimed at the formal creation of a full Palestinian state "with limited arms" by 2005, according to the Danish presidency document.

For the sake of Western democracies, if not for the sake of Israel, this plot must be defeated, and public opinion in North America must be marshalled against it.

As my humble contribution to averting the calamity embedded in the EU meddling, I am reproducing below a “catalogue” of reasons to oppose the creation of a second Palestinian-Arab state. In future articles, I will expand and document each of the 23 reasons cited.




Reasons to oppose a second Palestinian-Arab state: list in point form

A. Arguments based on fundamentals and principles




• 1. Palestine belongs to the Jews as their ancestral land, a land inhabited by Jews continuously for thousands of years. The Jewish “ownership” of Palestine was recognized by the “International Community” in the form of the League of Nations.
  
  
  
• 2. With Britain accepting the mandate over Palestine, subject to the conditions of the League of Nations, Britain committed herself to establishing the Jewish National Home in Palestine by encouraging Jewish immigration and settlement.
  
  
  
• 3. The mandatory power, Britain, betrayed her mandate by slicing off the majority of the territory allotted to the Jews by the League of Nations; the Jewish people should not now be required to relinquish sovereignty over more territory.
  
  
• 4. The Jews have further established their right to the land by developing a desolate, barren, virtually abandoned territory into a flourishing country.
  
  
  
• 5. The notion of the Palestinian Arabs as a nation is a recent invention. Palestine's Arabs are indistinguishable from the Arabs in neighbouring countries, especially Jordan, which is in effect a Palestinian state. Creating a second Palestinian state, and a 22nd Arab state, is unjustified.
  
  
  
• 6. "Palestine" is a geographic term, assigned to a region, and has never referred to an Arab state; during the 400-year Ottoman occupation, which ended with the British mandate, Palestine was divided into several administrative regions. This underscores that a "Palestinian nation" does not exist except as an anti-Israeli propaganda card. Hence, creating another sovereign Arab state in is unjustified.
  
  
  
• 7. Israel is in possession of Judea, Samaria and Gaza as a consequence of the 1967 defensive war that Israel was forced into. The areas were previously occupied by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, from 1948 to 1967, but no calls for "Palestinian sovereignty" were heard during that period. Since Jordan and Egypt have relinquished their rights to these territories, Israel has the strongest claim to these territories. The term "occupied Arab land" is propaganda.
  
  
  
• 8. The Palestinian Arabs had at least three opportunities to establish their own state by peaceful means: the Peel commission plan of 1937 which the Arabs rejected; the UN partition plan of 1948 to which the Arabs reacted by engaging in war; and the Barak/Clinton offer of 2000, to which the Palestinian-Arabs reacted by igniting Intifada II. (The Oslo Accords of 1993, stipulated self-government, i.e., autonomy and not sovereignty.) By their actions, the Palestinian Arabs have forfeited any right they might have had to a sovereign state.
  
  
  
• 9. The growth of the Arab population in Palestine was, in great measure, a consequence of Arab immigration, attracted to Palestine from the surrounding Arab lands because of the development initiated by the Jews. The British authorities turned a blind eye to this migration, while placing severe restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine.
  
  
  
• 10. Creating a second Palestinian-Arab state will reward terrorism and in this respect is a blow to all Western democracies.
  

B. Arguments based on Middle East realities




• 1. Creation of a second Palestinian-Arab state will not solve the Israeli/Arab conflict. Palestinian-Arab spokesmen leave no doubt about their intention to eliminate Israel.
  
  
  
• 2. Creation of a second Palestinian-Arab state and will not pacify the region. Destabilizing internecine wars among the region's countries, such as the Iran/Iraq or the Iraq/Kuwait wars, are unrelated to the Israeli/Arab conflict or to the absence of a second Palestinian-Arab state.
  
  
  
• 3. Creation of a second Palestinian-Arab state will obviate Israel's ability to defend herself in time of war. In fact, weakening Israel by creating the second Palestinian-Arab state may precipitate another war against Israel.
  
  
  
• 4. Given the record of the Palestinian Arabs regarding Iraq, and considering the joy in the Palestinian-Arab street when 9-11 occurred, one should deem a second Palestinian-Arab state, which could form alliances with leader such as Saddam Hussein and which could station WMD on its soil, as a potential threat to the entire world, and particularly to Western democracies.
  
  
  
• 5. Similarly, recalling that the Palestinian-Arabs turned their bases in Lebanon into international terrorist training grounds, the West is in danger of coming under attack in the future by Bin Ladens trained in a sovereign Palestinian-Arab state.
  
  
  
• 6. The size and the lack of resources in Judea, Samaria and Gaza do not permit a viable sovereign state to develop.
  
  
  
• 7. The scarcity of water in the region underscores the non-viability of a second Palestinian-Arab state; water shortages also ensure that such a state will be a permanent threat to Israel.
  
  
• 8. The record of the Palestinian Arabs, and to a great extent the record of the Arab states, proves that they continually breach agreements. Even if a second Palestinian-Arab state were created under restrictive terms, the record suggests that the terms will not be adhered to.
  
  

C. Other consideration




• 1. Since Judea, Samaria and Gaza are not "occupied Arab lands", as established in Section B1, the settlements are not "illegal". And in any case, it is incomprehensible that Jews be allowed to live in any European or North American city, but not in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
  
  
  
• 2. An undivided Jerusalem rightfully belongs to the Jews. Jerusalem is the heart of the Jewish state but of secondary importance to the Palestinian-Arabs, except as a propaganda tool.
  
  
  
• 3. The very talk about a second Palestinian-Arab state encourages terrorism, giving terrorists hope that if they persist they will be vindicated, displace the Jews and succeed in enlarging the area they will eventually control. The proposed state reeks of appeasement, reminiscent of Munich, 1938. And just as "self-determination" for the Germans in the Sudetenland spelled the demise of Czechoslovakia, so will a second Palestinian-Arab state spell the demise of Israel.
  
  
  
• 4. An alternative to a sovereign Palestinian-Arab state is autonomy within a sovereign Israel for the Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. This will safeguard the civil and religious rights of the Arabs, rights that no one disputes.
  
  
  
• 5. Islamist hatred towards the West will not diminish with the creation of a second Palestinian-Arab state, since this hatred has far deeper roots: “a clash of civilizations”, in the words of Bernard Lewis.
  

[The foregoing “catalogue” was posted, inter alia, on July 29, 2002, on CitCUN.]