Sometimes the truth is difficult. Sometimes you shrink from drawing the conclusions that fact and logic demand. I too have been guilty of this. It’s time to apply logic to the facts and draw the appropriate conclusion.
I’ve written a lot about the Oslo delusion — that territorial concessions to the Arabs will bring peace. Most Israelis understand that it is a delusion (unfortunately, many pro-Israel Americans still believe in it). Nevertheless, territorial compromise — the creation of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria — is now the official position of the ‘right-wing’ government of Israel.
There is no doubt that the strategic and social repercussions of ceding most (or even much) of Judea, Samaria and Eastern Jerusalem would destroy the Jewish state. I’m not going to go into detail about why this is so, because I’ve done it countless times before in these pages.
Thanks to American pressure, this could come about in the near future. So what’s the matter with Israel’s leadership? Why is it seemingly going along — or at most, temporizing? Why isn’t Israel firmly rejecting the idea of a hostile Arab state gnawing at its belly? Martin Sherman thinks, and I agree, that it is because those opposed to the destructive non-solution proposed by the Left and the US have offered no reasonable alternative.
Some have suggested annexing part of the territories (Area C). While this would avoid removing more than 100,000 Jews from their homes, it would not solve the security problems inherent in having hostile Arabs close to Israel’s population centers, and would necessitate impossibly complicated borders.
Others have argued that the demographic impact of annexing all of Judea and Samaria would not be as great as the Left suggests, and that a Jewish majority could be maintained (Arab population estimates are wildly exaggerated, the Jewish birthrate is high, etc.).
Unfortunately, even if the Arab population of Israel were increased only from 20% to 30%, it would be massively destabilizing. This is a very hostile population, including a large number of members of terror organizations. Israel would either need to become a police state to protect itself, or be torn apart by an unprecedented amount of terrorism.
The survival of the state requires at least two things: control of the strategic areas of Judea/Samaria (pretty much all the area), and a population that is primarily Jewish and does not contain hostile elements.
In other words, a reasonable alternative will have to involve Arabs moving, not Jews.
It doesn’t have to be all the Arabs. Unlike them, we don’t require an ethnically pure state to live in. But we also don’t have to live alongside creatures committed to violence, as the members of the PLO and Hamas are.
We can hear the screaming of the Left, the Europeans, the academic community and of course the Muslim world all the way over here. How dare we suggest that Arabs might be displaced (of course, the idea that a ‘solution’ involves expelling every last Jew so ‘Palestine’ can be free of contamination is perfectly reasonable to them)!
This is the essence of what is needed for peace and the continued existence of the Jewish state: possession of Judea and Samaria and expulsion of Arabs who are not prepared to live peacefully alongside Jews in their state. Yes, this solution is harder than signing an instrument of surrender. It will certainly bring down boycotts and sanctions on Israel.