Disengage! Today, my inner self is silently screaming this word out to Israel.
Let me explain. I was an American Jewish enthusiast for Middle East peace. Remembering my own Jewish nation’s two-thousand year history as refugees, I felt sympathy for Palestinian refugees. Knowing our own Zionist longings for nationhood, I thought I understood the Palestinian need for nationhood.
Embracing our American democratic tradition of government by the people, for the people, I was convinced the Palestinian desire for self-rule was just. Just last week, as I saw the security wall outside Kalkilyah while driving on road number 6 in Israel, I winced at the ugly reminder of hatred. And every time I read in Israeli papers of the beatings, house demolitions, and assassinations carried out by the IDF, words of Torah rang in my ears: “Do not oppress the
stranger in your land, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” I hoped, and prayed, and donated for coexistence.
The bombings of the past few weeks have given me pause. In the midst of the so-called cease-fire, I’d lost the calluses that built up over the Thousand Days, and the once-familiar gory scene slides through my skin like a sharp rock.
Ariel Sharon, of all people, was going to make the Palestinian state a reality. There was a process in place backed by the international community. Cities were being transferred. Construction of walls deep into the West Bank had been halted. Families rejoiced on seeing their freed sons, husbands, fathers again.
And what has it all led to? A father murdered while buying produce for his children’s’ breakfast, worshipers maimed during vacation, a busload of children streaked with blood and body parts. Shocked, I ask myself, “If this is how the terrorists implement a cease-fire, where would they take coexistence?” Clearly, the pain has intensified, for me if not for many more like me.
Aside from the horrible emotional impact, these bombings send an unmistakable message from Palestinian terrorists. Ordinary Jewish life in Israel is the enemy they have attacked. Otherwise, I cannot understand their selection of non-combatant targets, including haredim who don’t serve in the army. How can a peace process leading to a negotiated settlement ever satisfy these extremists? It will only result in an end to the international support for their cause, without ending ordinary Jewish life in the land. They have thus told the world, “This is unacceptable to us.”
Unfortunately, I begin to fear their terrorism is also sending a clear message to the world. Only a few weeks ago I stumbled across a chat board for the Oromo separatist movement in Ethiopia, arguing for using the”successful Palestinian methods” of terror to gain their own independence.
Do the Chechens not see how PLO and Hamas terror have led to a process for Palestinian independence? Does no other oppressed minority? Can we, as Americans and as Jews, encourage the world to believe that terror is a successful path to freedom?
I am now convinced that Israel needs to send a clear message in return, a message that says, “You will earn a greater reward through peace than through violence.” Go ahead and build that security wall, Mr. Prime Minister, and build it wherever you like. Put a clear, defined barrier between you and the enemy. Does it create facts on the ground? You bet it does. But the Palestinians, extremists and moderates alike, need to see that if they can’t control and stop the terror, Israel has an alternative to negotiations.
It separates nation from nation, enemy from enemy, but also separates land from land. Sharon has already begun to guide his population through this difficult process of separation, and he should not reverse that path – not for peace this time, but for safety’s sake.
Doubtless some Palestinians already understand that violence works against them. I am saddened for the mother who cries out in anger against the terrorist leadership, when her son is sent to carry out a suicide bombing. It may be her family’s farmland caught on the Israeli side of the fence. She and those like her are being betrayed by their fellow Palestinians. But until and unless those like her can rise up and shake off the ones who tyrannize Palestinians and Israelis alike, Israel is forced to act without their help.
And so I say to Prime Minister Sharon, “Disengage!” They want a state? Give them a state, but if the moderates in Palestinian society can’t control their extremists, give them a state on your own terms. Keep building the wall, and declare that in two, five, ten years it will be the border if no negotiation process can be sustained. If they want more land, then show them they can only get it by coming to the table and leaving their weapons at the door.
Put a different kind of pressure on them, political rather than military, so that no Palestinian continues to believe he can get Israel to acquiesce to all his demands, if only the terror is terrible enough. Make them worry that if they don’t stop the violence, they will be left with only a few hills and refugee camps.
Will this tactic lead to a neighboring terror state? Maybe this will force the Palestinians to confront Israel with more conventional methods instead. But if not, with a clear, defined, and secure border protected by the thick security wall and a front of armed forces, Israel can create a clear separation from that terror state. Better the hatred be outside our homeland than within it.
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