Plaut: Spector is living in a Peres-like fantasy world, where people just have to get together and male-bond and share a beer or two and then there is peace. Ten years of Oslo atrocities have not enlightened him about such nonsense and about the delusion called the ‘two-state solution.’ He is still trying to solve the conflict with wishful thinking and the Jiminy Cricket method — just wish harder on your wishing star and you will have peace….The solution to the Mideast conflict is not in any two state solution but in a 23-state solution — the 22 existing Arab states and one Jewish state.
To put it another way, the road map will fail because the Arab fascists and Islamist terrorists will reject any solution that does not involve the annihilation of Israel. That being the case, there is only one solution to the conflict, the only one that has not been attempted yet. That is the Victory Solution, a complete and unambiguous military victory by Israel over its tormentors, followed by a decades-long program of de-Nazification.
Spector: The record will show that I’ve been very critical of Peres in my recent book, Chronicle of a War Foretold: How Mideast Peace Became America’s Fight. Rabin and Barak, on the other hand — now joined by Sharon — argued that a Palestinian state west of the Jordan river would be in Israel’s national interest and enhance its security. Elon and Plaut do not share that view; as Israelis, they have a say at the ballot box and can try to persuade a majority of their countrymen. But the Bush train has left the station on the way to a two state solution, with the support of the elected government of Israel.
Those interested in a true peace should be making every effort to avoid the mistakes of the past. This means ending incitement and ensuring full recognition by the Arabs of the legitimacy of a Jewish state in the Mideast; nullification of the demand that Palestinian refugees and millions of their descendants have the right to live in Israel; and dismantling of the terrorist infrastructure, including disarmament and arrest of terrorists. And it means not leaving the most difficult issues to the end, but demanding reciprocal concessions along the way as Israel is asked to make tangible concessions of land.
So, gentlemen, tomorrow Bush and Sharon phone you on a conference call and ask you for your advice on what to do next. They want to know what you think their short-term and long-term objectives should be in terms of the road map. What advice do you give?
Spector: Gaza, where the Palestinian security apparatus is essentially intact, should be a test-bed of Prime Minister Abbas’s intentions. Now that Israel has withdrawn, the U.S. should pour in massive aid to supplant Hamas’s social service network. Pressure should be increased on Saudi Arabia and the EU — particularly on France–to dry up its funding as a terrorist group. Within weeks, the Palestinian Authority should be required to proceed with arrests, the decommissioning of weapons, and the ending of incitement in the mosques. While all this is going on, the U.S. should back the decision of Israeli police to permit Jews to visit the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. Illegal outposts should continue to be dismantled and a settlement freeze instituted in the West Bank.
Plaut: Abu Mazen has already flunked! The solution is now to adopt at long last true reciprocity, mutuality and equality. This means that for every incident in which the Palestinians fire a rocket or missile at Jews, set off a bomb, snipe at Israeli soldiers, or otherwise attack Israelis, Israel should build a new Jewish settlement some place in the Land of Israel in the so-called West Bank or Gaza Strip and implement Israeli martial law over the rest of the ‘Palestinian’ territories.
