Having lived in Israel for years, learned the national language – Hebrew – and spent the better part of my life “supporting” the Jewish state, I can’t imagine I’m about to say that when it comes to the country’s current beleaguered situation, Israel has, quite arguably, done this to itself! “Back in the day,” I remember when a young aspiring Israeli leader named Benjamin Netanyahu declared that an independent Palestinian state is out of the question. There just isn’t room in this tiny region, a scant 50 miles across, for two independent nations. Nor is this Switzerland, where folks of French and German stock have learned to just “get along.” Mr. Netanyahu – Bibi – used to say, “This isn’t a peace process; it’s a war process.” To that he added, “The Palestinians don’t want a peace with Israel; they want a piece of Israel.” Moreover, Israel needs the territories it conquered in the 1967 Six Day War in order to protect itself from existential threats. It needs the strategic Jordan Valley as a buffer zone against attack from the east. And it can by no means allow a hostile Palestinian state to exist just a few miles from its largest city, Tel-Aviv, and occupying the eastern half of its capital, Jerusalem.
The idea of Bibi’s party, the Likkud, was to offer the Palestinians “regional autonomy” within the larger state of Israel. They could have their own municipal councils, elect their own representatives to their own self-governing authority, while remaining inside the borders of Israel. They could continue to enjoy a standard of living higher than any of their Arab neighbors, including Israel’s system of national health care. But the responsibility for creating a “security blanket” in these territories, making sure that groups like Hamas don’t rise to power, would be Israel’s alone.
My, how time changes things! Back then, the only Israelis in favor of a true Palestinian state were the far-left, “Shalom Achchav” (“Peace Now”) party. But over the decades, by degrees, the position of the Israeli left “became” the position of Bibi’s Likkud party. As growing numbers of Israelis grew tired of the constant tension and terrorism, they increasingly started contemplating the “extreme” position of cutting the country in two, and giving the heartland of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinian Arabs. Now an elder statesman of the Jewish state, Bibi has “moderated,” and tried to show his openness to compromise. Yesterday at the U.N., he declared that when the Palestinians will step forward and recognize the Jewish state, Israel will in fact be the first country to recognize the new state of Palestine.
Of course Bibi knows that this will never happen, since the desire of the Palestinians is and has always been the complete destruction of Israel. But the fact that he said it anyway reveals how much Israel’s position has changed over the past few decades. Now, virtually everybody – including Israel’s many supporters in America – say with unanimity that “we all believe in a Palestinian state, as long as they recognize Israel.” What? Are we out of our collective minds? Even if a majority of Israelis now take this ridiculous position, does our desire to “support Israel” make them right? On the contrary, in their deep desire for peace, at virtually any price, Israel has blundered, perhaps suicidally.
Israel could have formally annexed the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, declared that it will NEVER allow a foreign, hostile government – that is, a Palestinian state – to rise on land that it won, fair and square, in a defensive war. End of story! But instead, it tried to show itself “moderate,” humanitarian, and open to negotiation. In the end, there will be a Palestinian state. The U.N. will vote to create it, on the basis of the June 4, 1967 borders, which by the way, give the whole of East Jerusalem, including Judaism’s holiest site, the Western Wall, to Palestinian Arabs. The U.S. will veto the resolution in the Security Council – for now – but the resolution will be introduced again and again and again, until someday, sooner rather than later, the state of Palestine will become a reality. Hooray… :( Bibi was right “back in the day.” This is a war process. It will not bring peace, but a sword!
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