NATIV Online        

  Vol. 4  /  June 2004                      A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS      

The human context of a paper such as this, must be the horrific attacks on so many, so often, including that on heavily pregnant 34 year old mother Tali Hatuel who was a social worker for the Gush Katif Regional Council. Part of her job was to comfort and assist victims of terrorist attacks. Tali Hatuel was driving with her daughters, Hila (11), Hadar (9), Roni (7), and Merav (2), when her white Citroen station wagon spun off the road after the initial shooting. The attackers then approached the vehicle and shot its occupants at close range.

This atrocity is anything but an isolated event, yet it stands out for its calculated cruelty and barbarism like the gloating on the cellphone at Ramallah.

Some brief facts about Gush Katif:

  • 21 communities, most of them founded some 20 years ago with close to 8,000 Jewish residents;
     

  • Over 20 yeshivot, schools and other educational institutions (not including nurseries and kindergartens);
     

  • 900 acres of greenhouses growing pest free lettuce, cherry tomatoes, organic vegetables, spices, flowers, plants and more;
     

  • $60 million a year in exports – an average of $7,500 for every man, woman and child;
     

  • Manufactures 70% of all of Israel’s organic produce grown for export;
     

  • Has faced over 4,000 mortar shells and Kassam rocket attacks, as well as 10,000 shooting incidents, at the hands of Palestinian terrorists over the past 3.5 years.

  • I will make my analysis under a number of headings:

  1. Arab Attitudes
     

  2. The Impact on Arab Attitudes of Another Retreat
     

  3. The Impact on Democracy in Israel and on the Likud Ideology
     

  4. The Effect on the Zionist Enterprise in Principle (Darom Declaration)
     

  5. The Strategic Value of a Jewish Presence in Gaza
     

  6. The significance of the Quartet, the EU and the USA wanting Gaza Judenrein
     

  7. International Law
     

  8. Concluding Comments

 1. Arab Attitudes

If one could honestly say that such hideous events could be stopped by withdrawal; that disengagement would be just that, disengagement, then I would be putting forward a case equally weighted on both sides of the argument because I would be inviting you to consider them as balanced. But in my opinion, to do so, would be a serious distortion of the reality. I am unable, therefore, to present logic and good sense for both sides. In Oxford, where good technique and undergraduate work depend on avoiding polemic, this may appear doubly unfortunate. Nonetheless, the Disengagement plan is not only misnamed and ill-founded; it is also bad for Israel.

Any Israeli disengagement requires that the Palestinians themselves want to disengage. This premise is currently, unfortunately, impossible to accept.

A study of the Palestinian opinion polls reveals a constant 60-70% support for the use of homicide bombing against Israelis. Notoriously, polls conducted in authoritarian dictatorships reveal what is thought to be the politically correct opinion, lest dissenting voices be revealed to the authorities by the pollsters. Furthermore, whenever Arafat or Khaddoumi have been reported in the West for incitement, the idea that they are only catering for their constituency is paraded as if it were exculpation rather than an indictment of their rule and the society which cringes under it!

Dr. Mordechai Nisan of the Rothberg Institute at the Hebrew University has written:

At every opportunity and signing ceremony in Washington, Arafat has declared Palestinian commitment to peace in accord with the PLO’s adoption of the peace strategy. At the White House on September 13, 1993, he declared that, “The battle for peace is the most difficult of our lives.” However the language of jihad remains as always the mental prism of Arafat’s vision. This was the case, as in 1970 in Beirut, when he addressed the Palestinians with the message of “We must fight a holy war (jihad) against the Zionist enemy.” Arafat broadcast the same message of war through the years after 1993. At a rally in Gaza in November 1994 he said that, “Our people will continue its jihad.” Addressing a rally in Hebron in February 1995 he declared, “Our people is a people of sacrifice, struggle, and jihad.” Speaking at a rally at Deiheishe near Bethlehem in October 1996, he declared that, “We know only one word, jihad, jihad, jihad.”

The West and Israel have lived in a world of trance as the Palestinians have deftly juggled the language of war and peace, mouthing their verbal commitments while in essence violating them. From the first Oslo Agreement to Wye Plantation, the PLO-PA (Palestinian Authority) has consistently refused to limit the police forces to the prescribed number, to disarm terrorist organizations, to extradite murderers of Israelis, and to stop anti-Israeli propaganda and incitement to violence. Arafat’s culture-code tactic conforms to the “Fahlawi” personality portrait proposed by Dr. Hamid Ammar for the clever person: that is, to convey “a readiness to express superficial agreement and fleeting amiability which is meant to conceal the situation and his true feelings”.

The war-and-peace strategy allows Arafat to talk of peace but prepare for war, while his Israeli partner offers territories and guns in quest of accommodation and security. This utopian experiment wins concessions and lulls the protagonist with the dream of peace.2

We have also been told by Professor Moshe Sharon, also of the Hebrew University, that,

The Palestinian program as seen in the current policies of the Palestinian Authority’s educational system, media, and literature is clear: The eye, ear, and heart of future generations of Palestinians should be recruited to one and only aim, the removal of Israel. For external consumption, this ideological bundle is covered in the necessary verbal wrapping, pleasant to the Western eye, this dish of deceit is spiced to suit the European and American palate.3

 

2. The Impact on Arab Opinion of the Disengagement Plan

In a recent poll recorded by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip (Yesha), taken between March 14 and 17, 2004, 73% of the Palestinians welcomed Sharon’s plan to evacuate 17 settlements in the Gaza Strip and a few more in the so-called “West Bank” (Judea and Samaria). Residents of Gaza were more welcoming of the plan (82%) than those of Judea and Samaria (68%). Yet, the percentage of those who believe that the plan will increase the chances for a political settlement with Israel does not exceed 32%, with 24% believing that it will decrease such chances and 39% believing that it will have no effect on the peace process...

Despite belief in Ariel Sharon’s malicious intent, two thirds of the Palestinian public see his plan to be a victory for the Palestinian armed struggle while only one third believes it is not a victory. Moreover, 68% believe that a majority of Palestinians see the plan as a victory for armed struggle. Given the actual results, the assessment of the respondents is highly accurate which indicates that this is indeed the normative attitude prevailing among Palestinians. But the percentage of those believing that a majority of Israelis sees the plan as a victory for the Palestinians is 44%, with 48% believing that most Israelis do not see it as a victory for Palestinians. The belief that the plan is a victory for Palestinian armed struggle increases in the Gaza Strip (72%) compared to Judea and Samaria (62%), in refugee camps (72%) compared to cities (61%), among men (70%) compared to women (62%), and among supporters of Hamas and Fatah (70% and 69% respectively) compared to the unaffiliated (59%).....

If Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip, the level of armed attacks against Israelis from the Strip would decline according to 41% of the public, while 30% of the public believe it would increase the number of such attacks, and 24% believe it will have no impact. The percentage of those believing that withdrawal will lead to a decrease in attacks from Gaza increases in the Gaza Strip (49%) compared to Judea and Samaria (36%). It also increases among men (44%) compared to women (38%), among the oldest (45%) compared to the youngest (36%), among professionals, the retired, and farmers (60%, 56%, and 48% respectively) compared to students (33%), among those working in the public sector (51%) compared to those working in the private sector (44%), among the married (43%) compared to the unmarried (36%), and among Fatah supporters (45%) compared to supporters of Hamas and Islamic Jihad (40% and 38% respectively).4

The Israeli casualty figures make this poll result both illuminating and sad. But not surprising. Indeed Arafat denounced the plan as he insisted that refugee rights to ‘return to their homes’ would never be given up. Other Palestinian leaders, in agreement, were reported as insisting the borders of a new state should be based on the 1967 borders – before Israel took control of Yesha. It should be remembered that the PLO was formed in 1964 and that the Oslo process and the subsequent withdrawals are all part of the Plan of Stages (1974).

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei said Mr Bush had apparently given “himself the right to make concessions on behalf of the Palestinians... we cannot accept this under any circumstances”.

“He is the first president who has legitimized the settlements in the Palestinian territories when he said that there will be no return to the borders of 1967.” This is of course nonsense if the correct interpretation of UNSCR 242 is adopted.

About 92,500 Jews live in the six settlements in Judea and Samaria that Mr Sharon wants to keep – out of a total of 240,000 – or 400,000 if east Jerusalem is included.

Another 7,500 live in enclaves in the Gaza Strip, alongside 1.3 million Palestinians.5 This might be regarded as neither threatening nor bad for relations but rather an opportunity to practice good neighborliness and peaceful inter-communal relations. This is what does not happen since the Palestinians cannot abide the presence of Jews near them or practicing the very apartheid that they accuse Israelis of, despite the fact that Arab states are entirely devoid of Jews (Jordan and Saudi Arabia to name but two). How kowtowing to this helps good relations beats me.6 It is not borne out by the figures either.

According to the IDF Spokesperson on February 5, 2003: 5,063 Israelis injured, 724 killed, 16,347 attacks from September 29, 2000 through to February 5, 2003. These figures are made up of:

  • Injured: 3,594 Civilians + 1,469 Security Forces = 5,063 Total Israeli Injured
     

  • Killed: 506 Civilians + 218 Security Forces = 724 Total Israeli Killed
     

  • Total Attacks*: 7,230 Judea & Samaria + 8,455 Gaza Strip + 662 Home Front = 16,347 Total

 * Does not include attacks with rocks or firebombs.

These, it has been pointed out, constitute one attack almost every 60 minutes 24 hours a day for each of the seven days of the week, 365 days a year.7

The current figure for September 27, 2000 through April 20, 2004 is 920 Israelis killed. Of these 715 were non combatants killed by the Arabs of whom 280 were female.8 Those horrible murders may be the first of many, if it can be demonstrated that the Israelis fled under fire and in fear, with their tail between their legs. Hizbullah showed how to do it before and they have been training the Palestinians. Since Sharon’s plan was announced there has been an escalation in the numbers murdered and the effect has, as predicted, been to encourage the Left in Israel and the world’s press to push for withdrawal all the harder – an encouraging clamour as far as the murderers are concerned and an exhortation, no less, to attack “Yaffo, Haifa...etc.” as the old Arab street cry went.

Professor Alan Dershowitz has written an important book on why terrorism works (Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge, Yale University Press, 2003). No clearer signals could have been sent than those proceeding via Oslo to the Disengagement Plan that this is so. The reward for the Palestinian campaign from the 1960s to now is statehood perhaps and Jewish and Western retreat. The frontier with Islam lay in South Lebanon and now even more so lies with the Gaza Jews and they are being sold out without respect for their views, by a plan that will cost financially, morally and strategically.

Dr. Yuval Brandstter, a veteran of IDF intelligence and a medical doctor has written of the Disengagement Plan:

On the surface, the notion appears attractive, taken directly out of the peace-troop vocabulary. “We are here, they are there.” The peace-troop seems to suffer from selective amnesia. “There” used to be under Jordanian and Egyptian and Syrian rule, which did nothing to curtail the daily fedayeen genocidal attacks on the Jews. The PLO was formed “there”, prior to 1967. Still, if we could amicably separate, go our different ways, act like Abraham, we could share this land; that is the peace-troop reasoning. A New Middle East where respect for the individual and the other community prevails.

But “here” is not exactly “us”, is it? United Jerusalem is 32% Arab, the Galilee is 50 % non-Jews, the Negev is 30% Bedouins, with the highest fertility rate in the world, and on the periphery of the Jewish demographic core of the coastal region there lurk a million Arabs in Taibe, Baka, the Irron Valley, Gisr-a-zarka, Fureidis, etc. Disengagement is apparently but a catch word.

The truth is in the reverse. Disengagement does not really mean seamless separation. It really means further friction. The first phase of the disengagement is a pullout from Gaza. Does anyone seriously think that when Gaza becomes Judenrein, the Arabs will be content? Not on your life! Gaza, strangled against the sea and the Philadelphia Road Corridor on the southern border, will explode with warfare activity. Once it is mildly sovereign, free from the daily activity of the IDF inside this territory, the production of rockets and launchers and explosives and Shahids will increase exponentially. This will drive their cohorts in Judea and Samaria to do the same, so as not to be outdone. The Philadelphia Corridor will be attacked like never before, causing an outcry for abandonment. The Prime Minister will cave in. Gaza will then be open to Sinai. The IDF will maintain a constant pressure on the sources of warfare, using all means. Militants from Judea and Samaria, instead of incarceration in Israeli prisons will be remitted to the care of the combined PLO-Hamas entity forming in Gaza. They will foment further confrontations and warfare, and will force the IDF to escalate the war. Need we say more?9

 

3. The Impact on Democracy in Israel and on the Likud Ideology

Ariel Sharon declared that the consultation with the Likud membership was the right thing to do but would not be binding on the government. Why then was it the right thing to do? Because it fractured the belief system and range of ideological commitments within the party. Why was it not binding? Because he knew what was right and the government was the policy and decision making body and anyway Sharon refused to resign because...moral decisiveness simply does not rule the roost in Israeli politics. Since at least the surrender of Hebron and the Wye accords under Binyamin Netanyahu, if not well before, the Likud has stood for compromise on many aspects of its fundamental principles. This vote against the Disengagement has shown that it has suffered more; that the threat of a Labor-Likud coalition may preserve a discredited PM and his discredited policy; and that democratic accountability is at a low ebb again. By way of example – maybe the leader of the no vote, Dr. Uzi Landau should be asked by the Likud Central Committee to stand for the leadership....Shimon Peres, as ever, stands in the wings....

Professor Paul Eidelberg, a political science expert, sometime of Bar-Illan University, has put things rather well:

Sharon, like supporters of unilateral disengagement such as Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu, poses as a “pragmatist”. Apparently, political circumstances have changed since last year, when Sharon opposed Labor leader Amram Mitzna’s plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza. Politicians who cannot think in terms of black and white must of course accommodate themselves to ever-changing circumstances. This is “realism”. It is also called “opportunism”.10

What puts the lie to Sharon’s “realism” or “pragmatism” is that it is rooted in a heart that cannot face the enormity of Evil, the Arab-Islamic Culture of Hatred, which is based on a satanic conception of God. One may see Sharon’s psychological flaw in the media, even in “centrist” writers of The Jerusalem Post: its many-sided editor-in-chief, Bret Stephens, its middle-of-the-road executive editor Amotz Asa-El, its very retired lecturer in political science, Yosef Goell – to name but three who supported the Sharon plan on “pragmatic grounds”. (Like so many other “Middle Israelis”, Goell deplores “ideological purity” – hence those who think in black and white terms.)

I mention these pundits because their “centrism” or apparent “realism” – like Sharon’s – is more dangerous than the extremism of the Left. Only the incorrigible are deceived by the likes of Messrs. Peres, Beilin, and Burg. It is precisely the “centrists” that lead people astray, for they obscure the genocidal objectives of Israel’s enemies even while admitting them. Even when they acknowledge the blood-thirsty objectives of the Arabs, they proceed, in all haste, to anaesthetize the public with placebos – self-effacing concessions or self-defeating compromises. Unfortunately accommodationism will also be found among the so-called Right.

Returning to Sharon – we really haven’t left him – is it not remarkable that this “pragmatist” so utterly miscalculated the sentiments of the Likud rank-and-file? Does this not make nonsense of his “pragmatism”? If he can so misjudge the members of his own party, must we not also suspect that he is even more susceptible to misjudging the Americans, and what is worse, the Arabs who have long cultivated the art of ingratiation, that is, of dissembling?

 

4. The Impact on the Zionist Enterprise

Professor Gerald Steinberg, the Director of the Program on Conflict Management at Bar Ilan University, has mounted a reasoned analysis of the usefulness of thinking about what best makes sense and has accused the anti Disengagement party of emotion and sentiment wrongly guiding their thinking, since in fact there is neither chance of democracy nor Arab outlooks changing even after the fall of Arafat.

...in reality, the chances of achieving a Palestinian surrender in the foreseeable future (20 to 40 years) are close to zero. After Arafat disappears from the scene, new leaders will emerge to carry on the war against “the Jews”. The incitement and hatred will continue, fueled by the firm belief that the rapidly growing Palestinian and Israeli Arab population, supported by hundreds of millions of Arabs and one billion Moslems, will eventually overwhelm “the Zionist enemy”.

Despite the IDF’s best efforts and short-term successes, terror attacks will continue to be a major dimension of this all-out war, as they have been for over 75 years. In parallel, the false prophets of the “international community”, ensconced in Europe and the United Nations, will continue to try and impose their own initiatives. In this environment, and without deep political and social change in the Arab world, Israel’s situation will not improve for very long, and a policy based entirely on a military victory is reduced to wishful thinking...

...despite the outcome of the Likud referendum, unilateral disengagement remains Israel’s least bad and most realistic option. This strategy will make terrorism more difficult to conduct, reduce the demographic threat of a Palestinian Arab majority, allow for managing the conflict through deterrence and interdiction, and reduce daily friction. When the alternatives are examined in detail, none of them are able to offer even these limited benefits. And as a result, after the emotions have cooled and rationality returns, unilateral disengagement is still the only game in town.11

But on this basis, there is no hope for the entire Zionist enterprise at all. Nor was there ever. Professor Steinberg thinks that there would be some benefits in withdrawal. I think he is badly awry. Is not the whole enterprise based on belief and reason together and the Declaration of Independence of the State itself which includes phrases such as “It is, moreover, the self-evident right of the Jewish people to be a nation, as all other nations, in its own sovereign State...by virtue of the natural and historic right of the Jewish people and of the Resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations...”?

Can we really say along with the late Yitzhak Rabin that the Bible and their prayers offer no clue as to where Jews should live as if history counted for nothing? “All we are saying is give peace a chance” – and co-existence.

Here are some estimated costs:

The immediate cost to Israelis: $7 BN (Similar to the annual defense budget).12

  • FACT: The cost of the Rafiah Salient Giveaway (to Egypt) was 15BN shekels in June 1990 (3.30 shekels per dollar), which is equal to 30BN shekels in 2004 (4.50 per dollar and a one third decrease in the value of the dollar).
     

  • FACT: The cost of the Gaza and No. Samaria Giveaway could skyrocket to 44BN shekels, since it pertains to 8,000 residents with a 30 year tenure, compared with 5,000 residents with a 5 year tenure in Rafiah.
     

  • FACT: A minimalist estimate (ignoring the Rafiah precedent) could bring the cost down to 26BN shekels: 13.5BN for homes (including furniture and improvements), a two year adjustment payment and a 30 year compensation; 9.5BN shekels for jobs infrastructure; 3BN Shekels for roads, communications, electricity, water, sewage, classrooms, community structures and relocation of military installations.
     

  • FACT: The huge cost could halt the current economic recovery, worsen unemployment, increase taxes, impose mandatory government bonds, cut infrastructure expenditures, etc. The expected rise in terrorism would impose further cost.
     

  • FACT: The added cost would not be in return for a peace accord. Rather than Land For Peace, this one will be Land For Nothing, or - probably – Land For Terrorism, or Land For Recycled Non-Binding Friendly Presidential Declarations. 

 

5. The Strategic Value of Gaza and of a Jewish Presence There and Intelligence Gathering; Water

Prime Minister Sharon:

Israeli evacuation of Gaza...would transform Gaza’s main square to a launching platform of missiles to Israel’s Ashqelon... Terrorism can be destroyed, if we control its bases...In 1970, Gaza was controlled by terrorists, because Israel evacuated the populated areas and the refugee camps...A flight from populated areas, and a failure to annihilate of the threat in its incept, would require a much longer and a more difficult effort... (Ma’ariv, June 12, 1992).

Sharon’s recommendation is doubly relevant in 2004, with a less predictable world (than in 1992), a more explosive Mideast, more armed rogue regimes, a more horrific terrorism, and a systematically and terroristically non-compliant PLO/PA.

FACT: Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff, General Earl Wheeler:

Occupation of the Gaza Strip by Israel would reduce the hostile border by a factor of five, and eliminate a source for raids and training of [Palestinian terrorists]...The Strip serves as a salient for introduction of Arab subversion and terrorism, and its retention would be to Israel’s military advantage...By occupying the Strip, Israel would trade 45 miles of hostile border for eight. (June 29, 1967 Memo on Israel minimal requirements for security).

All the intelligence chiefs disagree with PM Sharon’s statement that terrorism would be diminished. Opinion polls suggest that Likud voters agree with this view.

In the event that there was a Palestinian participation in a major conflict these communities would have to be taken first so early warning would go; intelligence gathering would go; a first target would go; observation and surveillance would go; Shin Bet information gathering would go; inter-communal information gathering would go.

There would be no north-south highway control and isolated control of port and airport facilities as well as increased difficulty policing the Rafah tunnel syndrome from Egypt. The entire hue and cry apparatus would be damaged and there would be no friendly and expert bases from which any Israeli enterprises could enforce security.

Quite apart from the change in “frontier” and positioning of Katyushas and the like, there is already clamor that Israel would be boxing in the Palestinians and not allowing an independent state free access to the outside world through airport and port security controls and the line of access to Egypt and the tunnel area at Raf(i)ah.

Once the Palestinian damage to the coastal aquifer is total the Judea-Samaria aquifer will be demanded as some kind of equally validated requirement further pressuring Israel and the communities on those regions. Not only will security have got worse but the “water war” scenario will have been brought nearer.

Dr. Plaut’s 23 points are powerful and emphasizes, inter alia, the precedent which would be set and to this may be added the link with Force 17, al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Fatah, Hizbullah and Hamas hopes for violence succeeding – exactly what drives on al Qai`dah: the very terrorism against which the West is supposed to be fighting.

 

6. A Nation that Dwells Alone? Judenrein – The Quartet, the EU and the USA

President Bush is not the Israel favoring figure portrayed by the Western and Arab press and electronic media. He is the first to espouse a Palestinian state. He has approved in a sense strikes against terrorists but that is almost impossible to avoid doing generally as well as for him. He has constantly spoken the mantra of cycle of violence and demanded restraint. He has effectively saved Arafat’s life for no good reason. And he has let the PA and its evil forces such as Force 17 and the Tanzim off as well as doing next to nothing to hammer Hizbullah, Hamas and Islamic jihad. As Dr. Ehrenfeld has shown in a series of studies, the evil funding goes on and on. The Road Map was and remains an absurdity. And anti Israeli security and UNSCR 242 therefore.

The EU has maintained its Venice Declaration stand, as my friend Yohanan Ramati of the JIWD has put it, trying to be more pro Arab than the Americans. The Quartet wants to undo the effects of 1967 and 1973 just as Kissinger also wanted so rewarding the aggressor and flouting Nuremberg and international law principle nullum crimen sine poena – no crime without punishment. A negotiated settlement under the banner of ‘every inch of Arab land’ and with guns on and under the table as well as at Arafat’s hip in the halls of the UN, this would be unthinkable for any country except Israel. I ask – Disengagement for what purpose therefore? To satisfy whom? The answer always lies in the oil, arms, Eurabia realm.

Is not Judenrein racism? How are states getting away with it and the western democracies supporting it? Whatever the answers to these questions, how does the Plan help Israel to deal with these fundamental issues?

 

8. International Law

UNSCR 242 has had its real meaning often forgotten.

 

 The Authors of Resolution 242:

The former British Ambassador to the UN, Lord Caradon [the chief-author of 242], tabled a polished draft resolution in the Security Council and steadfastly resisted all suggestions for change... Kuznetsov of the USSR asked Caradon to specify “all” before the word “territories” and to drop the word “recognized”. When Caradon refused, the USSR tabled its own draft resolution [calling for a withdrawal to the 1967 Lines] but it was not a viable alternative to the UK text... Members [of the UN Security Council] voted and adopted the [UK drafted] resolution unanimously... (UN Security Council Resolution 242, The Washington Institute For Near East Policy, 1993, pp. 27-28).

Arthur Goldberg, Former US Ambassador to the UN, a Key Author of 242:

...The notable omissions in regard to withdrawal...are the words “all”, “the” and “the June 5, 1967 lines...” There is lacking a declaration requiring Israel to withdraw from all of the territories occupied by it on, and after, June 5, 1967... On certain aspects, the Resolution is less ambiguous than its withdrawal language. Resolution 242 specifically calls for termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty of every State in the area. The Resolution also specifically endorses free passage through international waterways...The efforts of the Arab States, strongly supported by the USSR, for a condemnation of Israel as the aggressor and for its withdrawal to the June 5, 1967 lines, failed to command the requisite support... (Columbia Journal of International Law, Vol. 12, no. 2, 1973)

 Prof. Eugene Rostow, Former Undersecretary of State, a Key Author of 242, International Law Authority:

UN SC 242 calls on Israel to withdraw only from territories occupied in the course of the Six Day War – that is, not from “all” the territories or even from “the” territories...Ingeniously drafted resolutions calling for withdrawal from “all” the territory were defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly one after another. Speaker after speaker made it explicit that Israel was not to be forced back to the “fragile and vulnerable” [1949/1967] Armistice Demarcation Lines... (UNSC Resolution 242, 1993, p. 17).

The USSR and the Arabs supported a draft demanding a withdrawal to the 1967 Lines. The US, Canada and most of West Europe and Latin America supported the draft, which was eventually approved by the UN Security Council. (Yale University, American Society of International Law, 1970)

Law Professor Eliav Shochetman of the Hebrew University told an audience at the Israel Resource News Agency, Beit Agron International Press Center, Jerusalem, under the title “The Implications of Forcible Expulsion in the Light of Israeli Civil Rights Law and in Light of International Law” that the State of Israel preserves its democratic system under the constraints of The Israel Basic Human Dignity Law which oversees Israeli democratic institutions in matters of human rights and civil liberties, much as the US Bill of Rights ensures that the US government can never trample on the human rights and civil liberties of American citizens.13

The Israeli law is also based on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which all democratic governments are adherents.

Prof. Shochetman quoted numerous court cases in which Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak invoked the Israel Basic Human Dignity Law to intervene on behalf of Israeli citizens whose civil liberties and human rights had been abused.

He asserted that in the current situation, given the legal precedents from Israeli court cases and from court cases around the world, any Israeli government decision to expel people from their homes, even in the context of a diplomatic move, would represent a wanton violation of basic human rights and civil liberties that are protected under Israeli and international human rights law.

Prof. Shochetman cited clause 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,which states that it is illegal for sovereign governments to expel their own citizens from their homes, their private properties or from their farms.

Prof. Shochetman applied Universal Declaration of Human Rights constraint to the proposed policy of the Prime Minister of Israel, whose April 18th plan, would mandate that Israeli citizens would be expelled from 21 communities in Katif and from four communities in the Northern Samaria region.14

Since the only group slated for expulsion would be Jews, it may be recalled that the government of Serbia was recently held liable for international prosecution at the International High Court of Justice in the Hague, under the charge of “ethnic cleansing”, after leaders of Serbia expelled an ethnic minority, solely because of their religion.

Prof. Shochetman invoked another aspect of international law, the 1921 San Remo legislation of the League of Nations, reaffirmed by the United Nations in 1945, which serves to protect and defend the right of Jews to purchase land anywhere west of the Jordan River, along with the legal briefs of Dr. Eugene Rostow, the author of UN Resolution 242, in which Rostow wrote that no peace arrangement should preclude the eminent right of Jews to settle anywhere in the State of Israel.

Prof. Shochetman noted that no expulsion of landowners in Katif or Samaria could take place without a decision of Israel’s Knesset parliament that would hold up under international human rights law and Israel civil liberties statutes.

 

In Conclusion, Summary

Israel remains vulnerable and small in size and relative military capacity. It is not a superpower in the region as the BBC for example has labeled it and an analysis of the military balance figures will amply demonstrate this. It is especially the case since I and others have worked on true military expenditure figures for Arab states, most glaringly those of Egypt and Syria, who spend vastly more than their declared amounts and allow massive poverty among huge proportions of their populations. Israel’s relative strategic position is deteriorating, a picture reflected by the relevant numerical statistics; and the gap between its own and its Arab neighbors’ resources is forever widening. Currently its military R&D has been put on hold and its Merkava tank is threatened, despite it being the cleverest MBT in the world.

The Bush administration speaks with a dangerously forked tongue; whereas Congress may draw a realistic picture of the Arab world at times, and of the Palestinians in particular, nonetheless, a Palestinian state is still now a basic element in US foreign policy whereas it was not so only a short time span before now. Colin Powell is no friend and ally to Israel. The Likud has been brought by Ariel Sharon into a position whereby it too may speak freely of further partitions of the remaining Jewish homeland and this remains the context for discussion of the Disengagement Plan.

 “Old Europe”, as the Americans have called it, has determined to oppose British and American interpretations of Iraq’s best interests. Yasser Arafat has been caught out by some MEPs insofar as the kleptocratic corruption of his regime has been exposed as sponsoring terror with European Union money. Commissioner for External Affairs Chris Patten has said that the Commission needs an enquiry into PA use of European funds for terrorist purposes “like a hole in the head”. Meanwhile, large-scale outbreaks of anti-Semitism have led many Jewish people to a fresh awareness of its inherent threat potential in many countries in Europe.

While the Arab states, in many cases, pursue their arsenal-building agendas and Islamism gains adherents including in Europe and the USA, September 11, as it has become known, has shown that all the talk that expert analysts uttered in their warnings to the West has been vindicated. Israel’s position on fighting terror might now, at least potentially, have borne a slightly less unfavourable interpretation – but not so. The link between what Israel faces daily and what America received on that dreadful day has, however, not been one which has been emphasized enough either by Israeli analysts or those outside Israel. There is still a profoundly double standard when it comes to “permission” (!) from international diplomats for Israel to wage an effective and deterrent assault on terrorist bases and infrastructure. Indeed, Israel’s deterrent capability has been further eroded, as a number of scholars have pointed out. This again is hardly the time and place to be discussing uprooting Jews, making places Judenrein and advertising willingness to cut and run as from South Lebanon – as I have demonstrated the Palestinians see it as nothing other than this and further vindication of Hisbollah’s tactics and the triumph of a triumphalist Islamist doctrine.

I concluded the book on the statistics of the Oslo process with these words:

The years 1951-1955 saw 922 Israelis killed by Arab terrorists infiltrating from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.15 (In 1955 alone, a particularly bad year, 278 were killed by raids from Jordan and Egypt.) What is alarming is not just the wars’ statistics themselves but that the time when Israel’s neighbors were openly and officially at war produced murder figures comparable to a period when there was supposedly a peace process at work, with matters of dispute between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs meant to be worked out in peaceful dialogue! That is, there have been 831 fatalities between September 1993, the start of the Oslo process and April 5, 2002, a figure that far exceeds the number of Israelis killed during the Six Day War and represents something like a third of those killed in the Yom Kippur War. For perspective, the US has a population of 280 million people. Israel has 4.5 million Jews. Based upon this 62:1 population ratio, Israel has lost the equivalent of 45,000 Jewish lives.16 Some 134 Israelis, soldiers and civiliams were killed in the period of March-April 6, 2002 alone.

In perspective then, this period of “peace process” is one of the bloodiest and most violent in the history of the modern State of Israel. It represents nothing but a stark rebuttal of the design of the Oslo process and an exposure of the false premises on which it has, for too long, been allowed to continue influential on Israeli policy. It is time to stop presenting darkness as light and light as darkness.17

What the schoolbooks, summer camps and media of the Palestinian Authority have made clear time and again is their support for violence and their willingness to inculcate an ethos in Palestinian society favorable to homicide bombing. No amount of interaction between Arabs and Jews has made any difference at all. This is not only borne out by a series of opinion polls among the Palestinian Arabs but also by other sources as well, such as speeches and television transmissions, which serve to reinforce the tenor of violence among especially the youth. This is a cultural issue reminiscent of Professor Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis and evidenced by Palestinian widespread support for Saddam Hussein. Nothing much has changed since the days of Fatahland in Lebanon and the atrocities committed against the Lebanese. Nothing much has altered since the Palestinian gun culture caused bullets to come down and kill Palestinians following exuberant firing in the air – a normal accompaniment to weddings and other occasions.

Among the most brutal, lawless and terror-inculcating societies in the world, the Palestinian entity spawned by the Oslo process has nothing by way of track record to prove its acceptability to any straight thinkers in a Western liberal democracy who have reflected on state building. It has broken every agreement it has made with Israel, which I and others have documented in considerable detail.18 It has maintained a regime of murder, both of its own citizens indiscriminately and without trial but also, of course, those of its nearest neighbor. That the USA and EU want, apparently, to create a state out of this monstrous and ugly charade of a polity is deeply concerning to any who care about the ethical tenor of Western political culture. The creation of so hideous a neighbor for the region’s one true democracy and only non-Islamic state is a serious crime. For Israel and moral Jews and Christians, it represents a cruelty which rationally is somewhat hard to understand and totally impossible to justify.

As my late father used to say, if after putting your arm in the lion’s cage and having it bitten off, you then put your leg in too, that is asking for trouble. The Oslo process causes a progressive dismemberment of Israel. That is the aim of the Palestinian Arabs and of the surrounding Arab states. No peace treaties or agreements have altered that. We are, very sadly, it appears, almost literally, back to the need for Jabotinsky’s wall. All the concepts which framed the thinking behind the Oslo process have progressively been proven bankrupt. The lesson has yet, alas, properly to be learnt, apparently, when a further withdrawal is advocated and as a prelude to removal of more communities, so rewarding Palestinian lack of reciprocity and further terror. That is not a message that anyone, surely, wants to send the world. It is indeed an ill wind that blows nobody any good and that is Sharon’s Disengagement Plan.

 

Endnotes

1

This paper originated in preparation for a talk under this title given at Hertford College, Oxford in May 2004.

2

Mordechai Nisan, “Religious, Cultural and Rhetorical Aspects in Palestinians Strategy”, <www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/03-ISSUE/nisan-3.htm>.

3

Moshe Sharon, “Palestinian Ideology And Practice Ten Years After Oslo”,  <www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/02-ISSUE/sharon-2.htm>

4.

Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between March 14 and 17, 2004.

5

BBC News (UK edition), <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3627817.stm>.

6

Muslim countries were to have discussed the Israeli plan at a special meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Malaysia on May 4, 2004.

7

 Middle East Political Forum email, <STREELSH@aol.com>, February 5, 2003.

8

International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism website, Statistical Report Summary, An Engineered Tragedy: Statistical Analysis of Fatalities, Search Database of Incidents and Casualties, <http://www.ict.org.il/casualties_project/stats_page.cfm>

9

Yuval Brandstetter, “The Truth – Always in Reverse”, <www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/03-ISSUE/yuval-3.htm>.

10

Paul Eidelberg, “Behind Sharon’s Folly”, Email to <list@foundation1.org> distribution list, May 3, 2004. Other articles by Professor Eidelberg can be found at the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy website, <http://foundation1.org>.

11

Gerald Steinberg, “There is No Better Solution”, Jerusalem Post, May 4, 2004.

12

Yoram Ettinger, Hatikvah Educational Foundation advertisement in Ma’ariv, April 23, 2004. The series of ads is also being featured online at <www.acpr.org.il/hatikvah>.

13

Eliav Shochetman, “The Implications of Forcible Expulsion in the Light of Israeli Civil Rights Law and in Light of International Law”, Press Conference, April 30, 2004.

14

Featured at the Prime Minister's website,  www.pmo.gov.il,.

15

For these, the next figure and other figures, see Herb Keinon, “Foreign Ministry Arms Israelis Traveling Abroad with Terror Statistics”, The Jerusalem Post, March 27, 2002. I am grateful to Dr. Colin Leci for sending me this article.

16

Masada 2000.org website, <www.masada2000.org>.

17

Isaiah, 5:20.

18

See Enough of Blood and Tears...” (Yitzhak Rabin). A Chronology of the Oslo Process, Its Agreements and Results, Ariel Center for Policy Research, June 2002..