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Israel's Diminishing Options
By George Brewer
The recent spate of suicide
bombings in Israel has created ferment among those writers who labor
under the conceit that nations take direction as a result of their
scribbling. The cacophonous chorus of jeremiad journalists, mostly
found in the pages of the Washington Post, and with
the honorable exception of Richard Cohen, has been to call for ever-increasing
brutality against the Palestinians. Far from recognizing that a
cycle of violence exists, their simplistic remedy is, in effect,
to call for such a massive wave of destruction that the cycle will
be stopped for all time.
But one doesn't have to be a historian to see that the proposed
remedy is bound to fail. In fact, in a realistic sense, Israel has
few options of an active or destructive nature for handling the
current crisis - and it is a crisis - in which hopeless young Arabs
have chosen to destroy themselves in the most grisly manner conceivable
simply for the sake of taking some of their enemies with them. What
we propose to do here is simply list some of the non-options available,
as well as to point to what must be the only solution that offers
an opportunity for long-term peace in the region.
Search and Destroy
One favorite strategy of the columnists involves
what would be in effect an Israeli armed invasion of the scattered
territory under Palestinian control. All who favor this approach
assure us that the object would be to destroy the tens of thousands
of active or potential terrorists, along with the paramilitary infrastructure
that supports them. By a process of declawing and emasculation,
it is believed that the Palestinian lion would be reduced to a purring
pussycat.
The proposed solution would never succeed, because the cost of
human lives on both sides would be incredible. On the Arab side,
even the attempts by Israeli secret police to carry out surgically
precise assassinations has frequently led to the deaths of innocent
civilians, at times on a one-to-one basis. The military murder of
"tens of thousands" of potential threats to Israeli security would
almost certainly lead to at least as many dead Palestinian women
and children, which would be duly recorded by the hundreds of international
journalists in the region, and would only suffice to further radicalize
even larger segments of the Palestinian population. Meanwhile, the
IDF would probably incur thousands of casualties in such an enterprise.
Nor is the loss of life likely to end there, for the destruction
of the Palestinian paramilitary infrastructure would create a state
of complete anarchy in the territories, with the result that the
reverberations of the destruction would lead to even more dire conditions.
We can easily envision how, as Palestinians begin to perish in the
strife, shortages and anomie wrought by the proposed invasion, international
interference, even if purely of a humanitarian nature, would soon
cause Israel to forfeit de facto control in the region, thereby
bringing an end to Israel's version of Oriental Despotism.
The Final Solution of the Palestinian Question
A more grisly and ironic strategy that is
frequently discussed, although not often in public, concerns the
mass expulsion of the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza,
which revisionists believe would attempt to do to the Palestinians
what the Nazis sought to do to the Jewish people during World War
Two.
The first problem, aside from the breathtaking viciousness of
the solution, is that many lives would be lost, not only in terms
of the process and resistance to the process, but in the aftermath.
Expulsions involve the creation of stateless persons, and thus persons
without any defense against lawlessness. Although frequently practiced
in the 20th Century, expulsions have cost the lives of hundreds
of thousands if not millions of people. Regardless where one stands
on the reality of either genocide or Holocaust, there is no doubt
that the Armenians, Jews, Poles, Eastern Germans, and Ukrainians
all lost hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives as a result
of state sponsored expulsions. Since over three million Palestinians
would be involved in the proposed ethnic cleansing, there is no
reason to doubt that casualties would not be of a similar magnitude.
The second problem is that Israel cannot afford the diplomatic
isolation that such expulsions would bring about. While a great
nation, Israel, like most countries in the modern world, cannot
afford to stand alone, and it is even debatable if the United States,
which has stood by Israel at all times, would be able to contain
the wave of international and even domestic revulsion that would
ensue if such expulsions were even attempted.
The third problem is that expulsions, like invasion, and like
virtually every other force option at Israel's disposal, only serves
to further destabilize the region, and weaken the web of international
law as expressed by the United Nations on which Israel's existence
depends. No country can be an outlaw and defy the laws to which
all other nations submit: to do so is merely to invite others to
defy the law. Already, as has been pointed out by several Arab commentators,
many of Israel's actions with regard to the West Bank, Gaza and
Jerusalem stand in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Israel has been largely able to get away with these violations because
they have been usually small or episodic in nature and have been
cast as defensive measures by the largely supine and propagandistic
media. But the attempted expulsion of the Palestinians would create
a sow's ear of such gross dimensions that no amount of stitching
by the likes of George F. Will, Michael Kelley, Charles Krauthammer
or Jamie Glazov would make it appear as a silk purse.
There is the further possibility that a drastic response - like
either invasion or expulsion - would terminally radicalize the populations
of the rest of the Arab world, already chafing under the pressures
of eroding feudal governments. Destabilization, and even revolution,
in this part of the world, which the United States, Europe and even
Israel find as the source of oil, would have consequences so far
reaching that we can scarcely envision the nightmare that would
ensue.
No Pollyanas Need Apply
In arguing the inapplicability of violent
responses by Israel, and recognizing the strength of pro-Israel
propaganda, we shouldn't pretend that the Palestinian side of the
equation is blameless or that it doesn't have its own propaganda
machine that has been fairly successful in recent times.
The Palestinian Authority has shown little leadership in the
present crisis, nor has it shown an ability to control, or provide,
for its population. To be sure, the PA cannot provide without the
means, and Israel largely controls these. Even so, the Palestinian
Authority can be legitimately criticized for tolerating the endless
demonization of Israel, and Jews in general, through the constant
repetition of offensive libels about Jewish child murder, blood
usage, world conspiracies, and so on, in their media. Such manifestations
of hatred, especially when they are encouraged by the official media
outlets, strongly suggests that the Palestinian leadership has little
desire to share the land with Israel, or to make peace with their
Jewish neighbors. This must be said.
However, while the inability of the Palestinian Authority to control
their people does not bode well for an independent Palestine, it
must also be said that Israel's conduct, at least on an individual
basis, is toppling on an abyss. Many news stories, including columns
by the Englishman, Robert Fisk, leave no doubt that some Israelis
are gradually making a descent into uncontrolled sadism. Meanwhile,
photographic evidence tells its own tale. A series of photographs
by an Egyptian journalist in Hebron - home to two hundred thousand
Palestinians and about 400 privileged Israelis - presents a sequence
of a small Jewish boy, apparently aided by his mother, in an attack
and attempted humiliation of an Arab woman in a public street. To
be blunt, these are images that we know very well from Nazi Germany,
where young German punks burned the beards of pious Jews, or from
the American South, where in the 1950's wholesome-looking white
boys and girls could be seen brutalizing black boys and girls who
wished to attend integrated schools.
No Water, No Peace
The last strategy that has been much bruited
by our pundits has been for the Israelis to simply build a wall
around the territories they choose to control, and keep the Palestinians
out. However, as a related article in
The Revisionist shows, this cannot be done, since
the Israelis have, over the past 34 years, come to be heavily dependent
on the water resources in the West Bank. As a result, not only can
Israel not build a wall, it cannot even abandon its settlements,
because to do so would expose its people to water shortages that
they would not long tolerate.
Of course, the intertwining of water resources in Israel and
the Occupied Territories tells us something else: it tells us that
the current situation cannot long continue without basic changes.
It is only a matter of time until the parched peons of Palestine
rise up against the water masters of Tel Aviv. No water, no peace.
Conclusion
The current situation has tried the spirits
of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. Military or violent
solutions are impossible due to the diplomatic and possibly revolutionary
consequences that would ensue, which in turn could wreck the global
economy. On the other hand, the interrelatedness of the water resources
make it clear that segregationist panaceas are unworkable, and that
even a two state solution not built on mutual trust and hope for
the future is bound to fail. Yet neither side has done much to promote
such trust and hope: the Israelis through their continued exploitation
of the land and water, and through their brutal application of collective
responsibility, and the Palestinians through their noxious propaganda
and their terrorist acts.
It is hard to believe that the Palestinians would settle for
less than equality: but that would mean the end of the Jewish state,
if not in the short term, certainly in the long term, since the
Arab birth rate is far greater than the Jewish. Yet it is doubtful
if the Israelis will settle for anything less than survival, and
that almost seems to require a state that follows the rhythms of
Jewish law.
Yet that assumption may need to be tested. One of the very few
encouraging things about the current controversy is the absence
of Holocaust manipulation. No longer is it being claimed that the
Arabs want to emulate Hitler's alleged policies, or that the Nazi
mass destruction of the Jews somehow justifies Israel's conduct
today. This suggests that a turning point has been reached in the
political maturation of the Israelis. Perhaps Israel will now be
more receptive to the only possible future in the region, one in
which Jew and Arab stand side by side on the basis of equal opportunity
and complete social and political equality, to create a shared future
in the Holy Land. A secular Israel, under civil laws, and based
on the principles of individual freedom and democracy, is the only
path for lasting peace.
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Bradley R. Smith, Publisher 