By Prof. Paul Eidelberg
The only ones who suffer collective punishment in the Israel-Palestinian conflict are the Jews. I have in mind not only the Jewish women, men, and children that have been murdered and maimed by Arab suicide bombers – though that’s more than enough. Israel as a whole has suffered collective punishment from Arab barbarism.
Jews can’t ride on a bus, shop at a mall, eat in a restaurant, attend a wedding or bar mitzvah, kids can’t go to school, without fear of a terrorist attack. Arab terror destroys one business after another—years of hard work. People lose their jobs. Parents suffer anxiety. Jews can’t stop worrying whether their country has any future. This is the collective punishment which the Arabs have inflicted upon the Jews of Israel.
And for all this we must blame not only the Arabs but Israeli governments from Yitzhak Shamir to Arial Sharon for having failed to pursue a policy of zero-tolerance toward Arab terrorism since December 1987 when the present intifada really started.
Prime Minister Sharon has unwittingly made the collective punishment of Jews his policy! In his Jerusalem Post interview published on September 27, Mr. Sharon tacitly admitted that he deliberately allows Arab terrorism to exist at a “tolerable” level, which can only mean that he tolerates the murder of Jews so long as the number is not “excessive.” For when asked about ending the war completely, he answered: “our policy is to prevent an escalation of terrorism and in fact to reduce it.” “I have always acted to prevent escalation of the situation … our going in and destroying terrorism [as advocated by some Israeli politicians] is a wrong approach.”
Mr. Sharon refrains from ending the war completely not only because he fears Washington or world opinion, but because he sees no alternative to a Palestinian state. True, he wants a democratic Palestinian state. But how many Jews must die before such a state comes into existence? How much collective punishment must Jews in Israel suffer as a consequence of Sharon’s self-confessed tolerance of Arab terrorism, which he wants to reduce but not totally eliminate?
But suppose a democratic Palestinian state does come into existence in the near future. Leaving aside the question of the 220,000 Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, will a Palestinian state be economically viable? How long will it remain democratic? Even without the influx of Arab refugees, in ten years there will be more Arabs than Jews west of the Jordan River. Some ambitious leader in this new democratic state of Palestine will want to expand. He will see in Israel (ten years from now) some two million Arabs who identify themselves as “Palestinians” and who will welcome westward expansion of the “democratic state of Palestine.”
The whole idea of a democratic Palestinian state is irresponsible and murderous nonsense. The persistence of this idea, whether in the mind of Ariel Sharon or in Shimon Peres or in Avigdor Lieberman entails, via Arab terrorism, the collective punishment of the Jewish people.
The Sharon government must be toppled. It must be replaced by a government absolutely committed to zero-tolerance of Arab terrorism. Such a government must not only pursue a war-ending strategy. Ending the war with the Arabs in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, requires their ultimate emigration, along with most of their “Israeli” brethren. Hence a program must be designed to facilitate this objective.
Such a program has been designed by the Yamin Israel Party.