Whatever our blood-soaked misgivings over Oslo, the 1995 accords clearly reserved the right of Jewish access to – and the obligation for Arab respect and protection of – the holy sites, and specifically Joseph’s Tomb. That we could not take the Arabs at their word was no surprise. That our own leaders shrank from their responsibilities to enforce and defend that position is unforgivable. This was not merely a travesty of Oslo, but a blatant breach of a 3,000-year-old covenant.
If we have learned anything it is that the Torah does not waste words; every letter serves a purpose. The question is often asked: Why did the Torah need to record how much Jacob paid for the land and to whom? Perhaps it was because Shechem would one day become Nablus and a new entity calling themselves Palestinians would claim it as their own. And because its leaders would seek to deny the very existence of Jewish life in Israel with the same callous conviction as their denial of our millions of dead in the Holocaust.
Strikingly, there is another place where the Torah goes out of its way to record the precise terms of a similar contract. That is Abraham’s purchase of the Cave of Machpela as a burial place for Sarah. It is clearly written that the Hebron field and the cave within it were bought from Ephron the Hittite for 400 silver shekels. Interesting that Hebron is another place claimed by those same Palestinians, denying any Jewish rights in the area.
The Torah’s message is particularly appropriate to our generation of Jews in this epoch of disengagement. It is that, whatever others may say, our claims are legitimate, written and recorded. It gives us the means to discredit those who seek to deny our rights to Eretz Yisrael – those who seek to rewrite history by saying that the favored son of theakeda was not Isaac but Ishmael; those who hack away daily in the vaults of the Temple Mount seeking to erase any remnant of Jewish presence; those who refuse to acknowledge our existence other than to rejoice over our dead and injured or to libel and demonize us for all the world’s problems.
The lesson of Rachel’s Tomb is clear to see. The happenstance meeting of a rabbi and a prime minister transformed a speck on a map into something worth saving, something of tremendous significance to our people. Clearly Rabin did not appreciate its importance, any more than Barak appreciated the importance of Joseph’s Tomb when he withdrew his troops under cover of darkness. Ironically, this was to be the first of many retreats under fire that have so weakened us and emboldened our enemies in recent years.
But whatever our complaints about Rabin and Barak, no Jewish leader has emboldened our enemies more than Ariel Sharon. He has given freely of our land, for nothing in return. He has cheapened the blood of our citizens by freeing hundreds of terrorists from our jails and shelling empty buildings in retaliation for suicide bombings. He has cheapened the blood of our soldiers by freeing terrorists they risked their lives to apprehend and abandoning vital defense lines like Philadelphi for which so many of Israeli tank crews paid the ultimate price.
Then he gave Egypt the keys to Sinai after 30 years of demilitarization. And for what purpose? To control arms smugging through the Rafah tunnels? Hardly. These tunnels are no longer needed. Thanks to Sharon’s feeble capitulation to the Quartet on so many security issues, the guns and missiles are now being transported on the open road with little right of challenge by the IDF.
