Professor Paul Eidelberg
The Middle East may well be on the verge of a major regional war. Numerous sources
in the region report that the supreme rulers--both civilian and military--in
most Arab states, as well as in Iran and Pakistan, are convinced that the present
vulnerability of Israel [resulting from the Oslo Accords] is so great that there
is a unique opportunity to ... begin the process leading to the destruction
of Israel....Toward this end, several Arab states [including Egypt], as well
as Iran and Pakistan, have been engaged in a frantic military build-up and active
preparation in the last few months....
The PLO’s preparations for an imminent war are evident. In Gaza, Arafat ordered the marked acceleration of the building of a personal bunker, four stories deep. Moreover, the PLO is rapidly building all over Gaza a chain of command centers, ammunition and weapons-storage areas -- all of them underground and well-fortified to even withstand Israeli bombing and shelling. The PA’s [Palestinian Authority’s] security forces are also accumulating large stockpiles of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, including missiles, even though they are forbidden by the Oslo Accords.
Congressman Jim Saxton, House of Representatives
Task Force Report International Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare December
12, 1996
Oh Allah, destroy America, her agents and allies! Allah, raise the flag of Islam over the Al-Aksa mosque, Jerusalem and Palestine...
Ikrama Sabri, Mufti of Jerusalem
Palestinian Authority Senior Cleric
September 12, 1997
IDF [Israel Defense Forces] units will soon begin drilling for combat to foil military operations by Palestinian Authority forces.... This confrontation might lead to an all-out conflagration in the Middle East.
Nahum Barne’a
“The Wind of War” Yediot Aharanot (in Hebrew)
September 12, 1997
Because of Israel’s own internal weaknesses and America’s “even-handed” diplomacy, Israel may soon disappear in an Arab-Islamic sea. Israel’s demise would be the greatest loss not only to the United States but to mankind. A new goal is needed: the promotion of Constitional Democracy in the Middle East, beginning in Israel.
The Author
The Policy of “Territory for Peace”
Ever since the Six-Day War of June 1967, it has been assumed by every American Administration that peace between Israel and her Arab-Islamic neighbors depends on Israel’s withdrawal from the territories she conquered in that war, specifically, the Sinai, Judea-Samaria (the so-called West Bank), Gaza, and the Golan Heights. American policy-makers still believe, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that desire for lost territory, not implacable ideological hostility, animates Israel’s Arab-Islamic adversaries. Israel’s Labor Party has encouraged this perception of the Arab-Israel conflict; so too, with less fervor, has the Likud.
Accordingly, the Carter Administration mediated the March 1979 Israel-Egyptian Peace Treaty by which Israel withdrew from the Sinai. More recently, the Clinton Administration mediated partial implementation of the August 1993 Oslo or Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles, in consequence of which the Israel Defense Forces withdrew from Gaza, Jericho, Ramallah, Hebron, etc., and await orders to withdraw from most, if not the remainder, of Judea-Samaria. Some 150,000 Jews in Judea-Samaria will then be dependent for their security on the PLO-Palestinian Authority whose 40,000-member Arab police-force -- twice that of Israel’s -- is led by former terrorists. This is the bizarre consequence of the policy of “territory for peace” pursued intermittently by Israel with the prompting of the United States.
To anyone who has not sacrificed his intellect to the now deified “Peace Process,” the policy of “territory for peace” and the agreements issuing therefrom have not brought peace to Israel and offer no promise of doing so. Since Oslo, Arab terrorists -- PLO as well as Hamas -- have slaughtered close to 300 Jewish men, women, and children; 1500 more Jews have been wounded, many maimed for life. Several of these Jews were/are American citizens.
While pundits in Israel and the United States intone the mantra of peace, weapons of war are being smuggled into Gaza from Egypt, the creator and patron of the PLO. It matters not that Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel. Arms are also being smuggled into Judea-Samaria from Jordan. It matters not that Jordan, too, has a peace treaty with Israel. Nor does it matter that Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists have headquarters in Amman, Jordan’s capital. Welcome to the Middle East.
The truth, obscured by every American President and Israeli Prime Minister, is that the “Peace Process” is a charade, a tactic employed by Arab leaders to truncate Israel and thereby facilitate its ultimate demise. Evidence for this conclusion will be found in a detailed report issued by Congressman Jim Saxton (Rep-NJ), brief passages of which are cited above. Notice that the report was published before the Arab suicide bombings which occurred in Jerusalem in July and September 1997. Those bombings compelled Israel to deploy additional police and military forces in Jerusalem to protect not only its own citizens, but tourists, Americans included. This counterterrorism activity diminishes Israel’s ability to defend itself from abroad. Strategic analyst Professor Louis Rene Beres of Purdue University warns that Israel’s (entirely understandable) preoccupation with counterterrorism has now effectively compromised the country's capacity to prepare for or prevent the war described in Congressman Saxton’s report. Beres writes:
Arafat and his collaborators are operating according to a very precise strategy of attrition and annihilation. By practicing terror against Israelis on a regular but intermittent basis -- one that allows the charade of a "Peace Process" to enchant the Americans and others who always hope too much -- a policy of attrition is successfully weakening Israel's capacity to ward off the coming war of annihilation. At the same time, the attritional benefits of such terrorism are augmented by a less tangible but still significant corrosion of Israel's will to survive. Military analysts customarily distinguish between wars of attrition and wars of annihilation. Yet, such wars need not be mutually exclusive; they can be complementary parts of a single belligerent strategy. So it is today with respect to present and future aggression against the Jewish State by Israel's multiple Islamic enemies.[1]
What Motivates Israel’s Government?
The question arises: Why have Israel’s political leaders pursued a policy with such deadly and I dare say predictable consequences? Why have they been willing to yield tangible land, which is irreversible, for a nebulous and revocable peace? Do they really believe that their Arab-Islamic neighbors have abandoned their once proclaimed ambition to destroy the Jewish State? Aware of the 15-year civil war in Lebanon, the 8-year war between Iraq and Iran, the military collaboration between Iran, Syria, and Iraq, the vilification of Jews and Israel in Egypt’s state-controlled media -- in short, the details of the Saxton report -- why is it that Israel’s political leaders are willing to take risks for peace that no other government would dare ask of its people?
This is not an academic issue. This issue concerns not only Israel but the United States. Quite apart from our historic friendship with Israel, its security and ability to defend itself are connected with America’s strategic interests in the Middle East. Another war in this region will probably involve weapons of mass destruction and an Arab oil embargo that could cripple the economies of the democratic world. Hence it is of vital importance that we examine, candidly, whether the desire for peace is the only motive that prompts Israel’s political leaders to surrender strategic territory to its Arab adversaries? Let us begin by asking: What do Israel’s political leaders really think of Israel’s adversaries?
It was only after she left office in 1974, and then only in her memoirs, that Golda Meir publicly admitted: “I have never doubted for an instant that the true aim of the Arab states has always been, and still is, the total destruction of the State of Israel, or that even if we had gone back far beyond the 1967 lines to some miniature enclave, they would not still have tried to eradicate it and us.[2]
At this point, recall the Madrid Peace Conference of October 31, 1991 co-sponsored by the United States and the former Soviet Union. Attending were delegates from Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon as well as proxies of the PLO. While the delegates from Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria were preparing for that conference, delegates from these same countries, as well as from 57 other Arab-Islamic regimes (400 in all, including high-ranking PLO representatives) were attending the “International Conference to Support the Islamic Revolution of Palestine” held in Teheran ten days earlier. All the delegates, without exception or qualification, signed 28 resolutions issued by this conference, resolutions hostile not only to Israel, but to the United States. For example, Resolution 3 calls for the “elimination of the Zionist existence.” Resolution 11 “condemns the efforts of the United States to hold the so-called Middle East peace conference.” Resolution 15 “strongly condemns the extensive presence of the U.S. in the sensitive region of the Persian Gulf.” Resolution 22 emphasizes “the need for an all-out jihad against the Zionist regime.”
Among the countries that signed these resolutions was Egypt, a supposed ally of the United States which had erased $7 billion of Egyptian debt in exchange for Egypt’s nominal participation in the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War. Moreover, Egypt’s “semi-official” newspaper Al-Ahram saw fit to publish the conference resolutions in full and without a word of government condemnation—this, despite Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. Yet no Israeli spokesman dared proclaim that the Teheran Conference made nonsense of the projected Madrid Peace Conference. In any event, the Teheran Conference confirmed Golda Meir’s judgment regarding Islam’s inherent hostility toward Israel (to say nothing of America). [3]
The same judgment will be found in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s book A Place Among the Nations. In the introduction of the Hebrew edition, written in 1995, Netanyahu refers to the Oslo peace process and warns in unambiguous terms:
After the far-reaching concessions, in land and power, that Israel will be effecting in its withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries, after the “solemn” propaganda ceremonies that will accompany these withdrawal agreements ... we will find ourselves dwarfed and weakened, facing a bitter and miserable reality: then we will hear around us demands that are hard even today, only with renewed vigor, that we must continue to give up territory “that was captured illegally,” and “in contravention of the original [UN] partition plan”; even among us there will be those who support the claim that we do not have a right even to the tiny area of land that remains ours. This process will lead either to another terrible war or to the destruction of the State of Israel.
Once he became Israel’s Prime Minister, however, Mr. Netanyahu adhered to this deadly process. He rationalized his behavior by saying he was obliged to honor the agreements of his predecessors, the late Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, even though he had written that those agreements would emasculate Israel and endanger its existence.
But what of Rabin and Peres? When they shook hands with Yasser Arafat in those “solemn propaganda ceremonies” to which Netanyahu alludes, did they really believe that the leader of the PLO had ceased to be a terrorist, that he had become a convert to peace? Or did they believe that he could be compelled, perhaps by American pressure, to overcome his past and not only renounce terrorism, but suppress terrorist activities in the territories that would eventually come under his control? Which ever the case, surely Mr. Rabin and Mr. Peres must have been profoundly concerned about Israel’s strategic vulnerability once the country was reduced to a 10-15 mile strip on which dwell 80 percent of its population. Besides, might not Israel’s truncation erode their people’s morale or confidence in the future, especially when surrounded by an ideologically and culturally hostile Arab-Islamic world?
Let us consider only Mr. Peres. On June 27, 1975, at which time Peres was Israel’s Defense Minister, he told an interviewer from Davar, a Labor Party newspaper, that “the lack of minimal territorial space would put us [Israel] in a position of having absolutely no early warning ... and would engender among the Arabs an irresistible urge to attack the Jewish state from all sides and destroy it.” This remark anticipates the conclusion of the Saxton report. Yet Mr. Peres obviously changed his mind since he gave that 1975 interview. No doubt the leading architect of the Israel-PLO Agreements would say that circumstances in the region have changed since 1975. He could point to the Israel-Egyptian Peace Treaty of 1979 as indicative of the emergence of a “New Middle East,” one committed to peace.[4]
(He maintains this position despite the Saxton report.) On the other hand, Mr. Peres contends that the advent of missile warfare has made territory and national borders irrelevant. There are American and Israeli generals as well as civilian strategic experts who would dispute this position. They might point to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, as well as America’s military build-up in Saudi Arabia, in the Persian Gulf War as a refutation that missile warfare renders territorial depth irrelevant.[5]
Can it be that Mr. Peres’s change of attitude regarding Israel’s borders was also influenced by partisan political considerations? I am treading on delicate grounds, but Israel’s future is at stake, and so are the best interests of the United States.
When Mr. Peres stated in 1975 that the lack of minimal territorial space would put Israel in a position of having absolutely no early warning and would engender among the Arabs an irresistible urge to attack the Jewish state from all sides and destroy it, his Labor Party had been in uninterrupted control of the government for 27 years, that is, from its inception in 1948. What made that monopoly of power possible was the alliance of Israel’s religious parties, for Labor never received more that 51 of the Knesset’s 120 seats (despite the party’s domination of the media and the economy as well as the country’s educational and cultural institutions).
In June 1977, however, a minor revolution took place: the Likud Party came to power joined by the religious parties. Labor’s political future looked bleak indeed, for the Jewish population of the country was becoming increasingly religious, largely because of the high birthrate of religious families, but also because tens of thousands of secularists were leaving the country. To compensate for its diminishing electoral base among Jews, Labor would have to attract more Arab voters to its banner if was to regain power. But this means Labor would for the first time become dependent on Israel’s Arab parties to form a government and to exercise its prerogatives.
There is now an abundance of evidence that, prior to Israel’s 1992 Knesset elections -- the elections that brought Labor back to power -- some of its spokesmen met secretly with high-ranking PLO officials in Cairo and London. The quid pro quo emerging from those clandestine meetings was this: PLO chief Yasser Arafat would induce Israel’s Arab citizens and parties to support Labor, in return for which, a new Labor Government would legalize such meetings, engage in serious “land-for-peace” negotiations with the PLO, with the object of creating, step-by-step, a Palestinian state with Arafat as its President.[6]
Labor, together with its Left-wing ally Meretz, won 56 Knesset seats, five short of a majority. The majority was made possible by the five seats of Israel’s two Arab parties. This is not to say that the Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement of August 1993 was merely a Machiavellian drama.[7] Let us probe a little deeper.
As a socialist party, Labor has an internationalist orientation that contradicts the nationalist dimension of Zionism. Indeed, when Shimon Peres was Foreign Minister under the premiership of Yitzhak Rabin, he applied for Israel’s membership in the Arab League! Israel, he declared, has entered a “Post-Zionist” era -- he might well have said a “Post-Jewish” era. Consistent therewith, and under Rabin’s authority as Defense Minister, the words “Zionism” and “Judaism” were erased from Israel’s Soldiers Code of Ethics.[8]
Here we touch on a fundamental dilemma: How can Israel remain a Jewish State when almost 20 percent of its citizens are Arabs, most of whom not only identify themselves as “Palestinians” or as part of the “Arab Nation,” but supported Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf War despite his threat to incinerate Israel, including themselves?
Arab Attitudes Toward Israel
One can hardly blame these proud Arabs for not wishing to live under a Jewish majority -- which is why they are exempt from military service (i.e., for security reasons). Mr. Peres is obviously aware of this demographic and ideological dilemma, which, given the prolific Arab birthrate, has explosive ramifications. Perhaps he believed that these Arabs could be assimilated, could become “Israelis,” if only Israel ceased to be a Jewish State and were transformed into a state of its citizens? But consider a 1994 symposium held by the Dayan Institute of Tel Aviv University.
Participating in that conference were prominent Arab citizens who spanned the entire spectrum of political opinion, from those who were members of the Labor Party to those who were undisguised supporters of the PLO.
Professor Howard Adelson comments: “Without an exception, those Arabs pointed out that even if a new Arab state were to be created between Jordan and Israel, that would be insufficient because almost a million so-called Israeli Arabs would still be living under ‘foreign’ domination. The claim of the Arabs was that, if the Jews truly wanted peace, they would have to change the name of the state so as to reflect the entire population rather than merely the Jewish majority. The state, in effect, would have to become a bi-national one with a new flag and a new national anthem."[9]
Adelson concludes that inasmuch as the Arab participants in this conference also insisted on the enactment of an Arab law of return to admit all Arabs who supposedly fled from the land as well as their descendants, the success of the Oslo process (or the American-Israel policy of “territory for peace”) entails the disappearance of the Jewish State.
It required Arab suicide-bombers to awaken pundits from their Oslovian slumbers. Not all. But leaving the benighted as well as entrapped or timid politicians aside, it is now obvious that the Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement was based on sand, to say nothing of deception. It should also be obvious that Arafat, who sanctifies suicide bombers as “holy martyrs” and embraces Hamas murderers as “brothers in blood,” remains what he has never ceased to be, a terrorist chief dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Hence it is inane or willful ignorance to demand that Arafat suppress terrorists in areas under the control of his Palestinian Authority, so many of whose officials are themselves unrepentant terrorists.
Mr. Netanyahu knows this. Like his predecessors, however, Netanyahu is trapped in the “politics of peace,” the politics that even well-meaning men use to gain or retain power. But let us examine such behavior from another perspective.
Israel’s Political Institutions
As previously indicated, ever since the Six-Day War, every Israeli government, regardless of its political complexion, has been under pressure from the United States, more precisely, the State Department, to withdraw to the pre-1967 borders. Nevertheless, how Israeli politicians react to American pressure depends not only on their own moral and intellectual character but also on the character of Israel’s political institutions, a factor ignored by virtually all commentators. Let me explain.
Israel’s Government, i.e., the Cabinet, is composed of a multiplicity of parties. Mr. Netanyahu’s Cabinet consists of no less than seven parties, each with its own agenda! This makes it virtually impossible for Israel’s Prime Minister to pursue a firm and coherent foreign policy or national strategy conducive to his country’s long-term interests. Meanwhile, the lack of Cabinet solidarity renders the Government more subject to international pressure.
As is well-known, the multiplicity of parties in Israel is the result of proportional representation based on a threshold of only 1.5 percent. This is by far the lowest electoral threshold among some fifty countries using proportional representation. What is more, Israel is the only reputed democracy that employs proportional representation with fixed party lists and without constituency elections. The entire country constitutes a single district, and voters cast their ballots in parliamentary elections for political parties, not for individual representatives. This has grave consequences.
Assume that the leader of party A is Israel’s Prime Minister, and that the leaders of parties, B, C, D and E are his Cabinet Ministers -- a typical Israeli concoction. Now, because a majority of the Knesset’s members (MKs) owe their position and perquisites to these parties and not to the votes of constituents, they cannot function as judges of their Government’s policies as do legislators in all democratic countries. If an MK were to vote against his Government he would be committing political suicide. This will inhibit him from resisting policies he deems unwise or self-destructive.[10] He will then be less able to resist the same foreign pressure prompting his Government to pursue that questionable policy. Meanwhile, because the voters have no individual Knesset Member accountable to them, whom they could then expect to uphold their basic interests -- which may well be opposed to the Government’s foreign policy -- they themselves, the voters, will become unduly sensitive and more subservient to “world opinion.”
Therein is a hitherto unnoticed reason why Israeli governments -- no longer in the youth of Zionism -- have yielded to the American State Department’s post-Six Day War policy of “territory for peace,” contrary to the deepest convictions of a large majority of Israel’s Jewish population. If this majority’s convictions on the territorial issue have since been eroded, a basic cause is this: they lack Knesset representatives of their own choosing.[11]
Although Israel may be a unique case, nothing so weakens this country as the absence of a Legislature separate from the Executive, one whose members are directly accountable to the voters (and not simply to their party).
Clearly, Israel’s political leaders are handicapped by Israel’s political institutions, above all by its electoral laws. Fundamental change is needed, which can best be accomplished -- I do not say now -- by the adoption of a written Constitution. To facilitate discussion and a deeper understanding of Israel’s institutional flaws, the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy in the Middle East, an American-Israel research organization, has designed a Constitution involving, inter alia, a presidential-parliamentary system with institutional checks and balances, constituency elections (with a threshold that would eliminate small parties), and a comprehensive Bill of Rights. In contrast to current practice in Israel, agreements with foreign states or entities would require public hearings and serious parliamentary debate. Treaties would require the ratification of extraordinary parliamentary majorities; they would not be ratified by “solemn propaganda ceremonies” on the White House lawn. By elevating its dignity and power, the parliament could rally to the support of the Government should the latter be subject to perverse international pressure.
Why America’s “Even-Handed” Diplomacy is Destructive
Apropos of such pressure, let us now examine the significance of the American State Department’s “even-handed” diplomacy vis-à-vis Israel and her Arab neighbors -- the diplomacy guided by the dogma of “land for peace.”
The formula “land for peace,” at least in the present context, is fundamentally irrational. First of all, unlike “peace,” not only is land tangible and its surrender irreversible, but the land Israel is expected to surrender is precisely the land which various Arab states used as launching pads to attack Israel before the Six-Day War.
Second, if A is willing to surrender land for peace, while B is willing to go to war to obtain that land, it follows that whereas A prefers peace to land, B prefers land to peace. The asymmetry does not bode well for peace. Knowing that A prefers peace to land, B need only threaten war to obtain more land from A. This is precisely the conclusion drawn by Mr. Netanyahu in the above cited passage from A Place Among the Nations.
Third, substitute Israel for A and Israel’s neighbors for B and it will be seen that the asymmetry between them is rooted in the conflicting character of their respective regimes. Insofar as Israel is a democracy, a regime based on the primacy of consent, it cannot, in principle, pursue a foreign policy of conquest. In contrast, because Israel’s neighbors are autocracies, regimes based on the primacy of coercion, their policy toward Israel will be modulated by intimidation or the threat of war.
To be “even-handed” in a conflict between a democracy and a dictatorship is to succumb to moral equivalence. Moral equivalence roughly describes U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. I say “roughly” because it should be obvious that Washington exerts more diplomatic pressure on Israel than on Israel’s autocratic adversaries. Again and again American administrations importune democratically minded Israel to make good will or gratuitous concessions to the “other side” regardless of the “other side’s” undemocratic character. But even if Washington were in truth “even-handed,” such a policy, in the long run, favors Israel’s adversaries and thereby conduces to war.
By placing Israel and Arab-Islamic dictatorships on the same moral level, the American government dignifies and strengthens the rulers of these dictatorships, and renders them more arrogant and ambitious. That Egypt’s tourist maps refers to all of Israel as “Palestine” is a reflection of the nature of that regime, even if the slight is intended for domestic purposes!
* * *
Conclusion
Granted that the American-Israel policy of “territory for peace” has increased the likelihood of a catastrophic war (recall Czechoslovakia and World War II); granted that Israel’s burgeoning Arab population represents a demographic time-bomb that threatens to transform Israel into another Lebanon; and granted further that Israel’s existing political institutions hinder firm and forthright political leadership, what can be done to prevent Israel’s sudden or eventual demise?
First, both the U.S. and Israel must renounce the policy of “territory for peace” and adopt a new form of diplomacy.[12]
Second, and bearing in mind the ominous Saxton report, the United States should announce that any attack on Israel will be deemed an attack on the United States and dealt with accordingly. The U.S. should therefore move its embassy to Jerusalem and thereby affirm Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital.
Third, the U.S. should call for an international moratorium on the shipment of arms to the Middle East.
Fourth, Israel must reform its political institutions. All citizens, on pain of losing their citizenship, should be required to perform national service (individual exemptions aside) and acknowledge, by an oath of loyalty, Israel’s sovereignty as a Jewish State.
Fifth, Arafat’s Palestinian Authority should be denounced for what it is, a terrorist hotbed. It should be quarantined and disbanded and its criminals should be brought to justice.[13]
Sixth, Israel and the United States should formulate a functional (as opposed to a territorial) autonomy plan for Arabs in Judea-Samaria and Gaza based on the idea of a canton under Israel’s sovereignty.
Seventh, consistent with the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United States should promote gradual implementation of constitutional democracy in Arab-Islamic world. For this purpose it should call for an International Conference on Constitutional Democracy.
Epilogue
President John Adams, a Harvard graduate, said that the Jews, the first teachers of ethical monotheism, have been the greatest benefactors of mankind. The Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality have long been part of American and international law. The “Higher Law” doctrine of the American Declaration of Independence is rooted in the Bible of Israel. On the eve of the American Revolution, Harvard president Samuel Langdon referred to the “civil polity” contained in the Torah (the world’s first Written Constitution) as an “excellent general model” for American government.[14]
The bond between America and Israel is profound, and our own self-respect as a nation under God requires that we be faithful to the nation that gave mankind the Book of Books, hence that we do nothing to impair Israel’s strength and dignity as a Jewish State. Together, Israel and America are the best hope of humanity and for peace in the Middle East.
[1] From Internet
[2] Golda Meir, My Life (London: Futura Publications, 1975), p. 364. The sequel reads: “The Arab rulers pretend that their objective is limited to reaching the lines of 4 June 1967, but we know their true objective: the total subjugation of the State of Israel” (p. 365). To this day Egypt’s tourist maps depict Israel as “Palestine,” as does the logo on PLO stationery.
[3] On September 12, 1997, immediately following the 10-minute address by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Arab Palestinians on the Voice of Palestine, the PA's official radio station, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrama Sabri, whom Arafat appointed as the PA’s senior and official Muslim cleric, intoned on the same station:
Oh Allah, destroy America, her agents and allies! Cast them into their own traps, and cover the White House with black! Oh Muslims, our brothers in faith everywhere, the purpose of the American Secretary of State's visit to Palestine is to support the Israeli position regarding deceitful security and fanatical settlements....
Oh Allah, destroy America, her agents and allies! Allah, raise the flag of Islam over the Al-Aksa mosque, Jerusalem and Palestine... Allah shall take revenge on behalf of his prophet against the colonialist settlers who are sons of monkeys and pigs....
The Voice of Palestine is under the auspices of the PA's Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PBC). According to the Philadelphia Inquirer (September 7, 1997), the PBC has been funded by the United States government.
Lest the above venom appear exceptional, see Y. Harkabi, Arab Attitudes to Israel (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972), for more than 400 pages of vilification of Jews and Israel by Arab and Islamic leaders, academics, and theologians throughout the Middle East.
[4] See Shimon Peres (with Arye Naor), The New Middle East (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), pp. 95, 99.
For a critique, see my “The Primacy of Politics and Religion Versus the Primacy of Economics in the Arab-Jewish Conflict,” Jerusalem Foundation Paper (New York: Foundation for Constitutional Democracy in the Middle East), No. 11, March 1997. But see note 7 below.
[5] Peres’s confidant, Hebrew University Professor Shlomo Aronson, stated at a June 1985 international conference in Jerusalem that retention of Judea-Samaria was not necessary for security because of Israel’s nuclear deterrent. This statement was a response to a paper which the present author presented at that conference.
[6] See Paul Eidelberg, Demophrenia: Israel and the Malaise of Democracy (Lafayette, LA: Prescott Press, 1994), pp. 122-124.
[7] The late Prof. Y. Harkabi, a Peres confidant and one-time head of Israeli military intelligence, described himself as a “Machiavellian dove.”
[8] Israel was to be transformed into the state of its citizens, as opposed to the state of the Jews. This is why the present author regarded Labor’s victory in the 1992 Knesset elections as an electoral coup d’etat.
[9] The Jewish Press, September 5, 1997, p. 10.
[10] Israel’s Knesset is a little more than rubber stamp for the Cabinet. During modern Israel’s 49-year history, no Labor- or Likud-led Government has ever been toppled by a Knesset vote of no-confidence. It was only in 1990, under a Government of National Unity, that the Government fell on a vote of no-confidence.
[11] See Shlomit Levy et al., Beliefs, Observations and Social Interaction Among Israeli Jews (Jerusalem: Louis Guttman Israel Institute of Applied Social Research), ch. 14, p. 101, Table 38, Appendix A.
A survey of 800 sixteen-eighteen year-old Israeli, i.e. Jewish, youth confirmed previous studies of basic religious and political attitudes held in society at large (Yediot Ahronot, July 23, 1997). The respondents were asked if they agree with a of number ideas. Examples:
(1) It is impossible to put full confidence in any Israeli Arab. 67.6% agree
(2) Arab representation in the Knesset endangers Israeli security. 73.5% agree. (Note: The percentage would have been higher had the survey been made after Arab Knesset Members, in violation of Israel’s criminal law, went to Syria, an enemy state, and there met with President Hafez Assad and various terrorist organizations.)
(3) Israeli Arabs desire the destruction of Israel. 70.8% agree. (Recall that these Arabs openly supported Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf War despite his threat to incinerate Israel, including themselves.)
Given their distrust of Israeli Arabs (who enjoy all the rights of Jews), it may be assumed that a greater percentage of these Jewish youth distrust Arafat and the Palestinian Arabs. This being granted, one may reasonably conclude that these youth are at least logically and psychologically opposed to the policy of “land for peace.”
[12] For the outlines of a new diplomacy, see my “Democratic Versus Martial Diplomacy: A Jewish Alternative,” Jerusalem Foundation Papers (New York: Foundation for Constitutional Democracy in the Middle East), No 8, Sept. 1996, published in Hebrew in Nativ: A Journal of Politics and the Arts, Vol. 10, Nos. 1-2, Jan.-April 1997.
[13] Ponder the following article by Nahum Barne’a, “Wind of War,” which appeared in Yediot Aharanot (in Hebrew), Sept. 12, 1997:
Some IDF [Israel Defense Forces] units will soon begin drilling for combat to foil military operations by Palestinian Authority forces. This will happen for the first time since the signing of the Oslo agreement; as a matter of fact, for the first time ever. In icy military lingo, the situation the IDF will be training for is called "low intensity conflict," or in simpler language, guerrilla warfare.
The pessimistic scenario outlined by security sources foresees an undeclared war. Accordingly, the number of shooting incidents in the field will increase, and instead of gunfire from an ineffective distance, as witnessed this week at an IDF checkpoint near Hebron, they will shoot to kill with assault rifles from close range. Palestinian policemen in and out of uniform, with Fatah members fighting alongside them, will take part in operations against the Israelis....
The IDF will impose an external closure on the territories as well as internal closures to keep the cities apart. Its mission will be to besiege and isolate the areas controlled by the PA. The IDF is also preparing for the possibility that it may be ordered to enter Gaza and the West Bank cities, perhaps even reoccupy them. The assessment is that such an order will not be issued, both because of international pressure and because of the heavy casualty toll it would entail, but preparations need to be made for an eventuality....
Of course, this confrontation might lead to an all-out conflagration in the Middle East. The IDF is preparing for the possibility of three different wars which would require different military responses: with the Palestinians, with the Shiites in Lebanon, and in the longer run, with Syria. There is no certainty that Egypt will not be dragged into the circle of fighting, and the same applies to Iran and Iraq ....
[14] See Abraham I. Katsh, The Biblical Heritage of American Democracy (KTAV, 1977), p. 137.