FULL UNILATERAL WITHDRAWAL, FULL RE-OCCUPATION OR FULL DEPORTATION

FULL WITHDRAWAL, FULL REOCCUPATION OR FULL DEPORTATION

Why We Need To Withdraw Unilaterally

Uri Dromi. The Jerusalem Report. May 6, 2002. pg. 54

WHENEVER I WRITE ABOUT ISRAEL'S VITAL need to pull out of the territories unilaterally and establish a defensible border between this country and the Palestinians, I get angry mail. People load my e-mail box with long, fuming messages. They say that Oslo was a mistake, reminding me that I was one of its supporters (I admit to that, but hey, today I'm one of the penitents). They say that all the Arabs understand is force, and that you can't trust Arafat (I agree: He's such a liar that you can't even be sure that the lie he's telling you is really a lie). And they tell me that withdrawing from Judea, Samaria and Gaza would only boost the Arabs' resolution to destroy Israel.

Yet on the fundamental reasons I give for pulling out of the territories, people are curiously mute. No one tells me I'm wrong.

Why do I believe that Israel, in spite of the risks involved and prices to be paid, should nevertheless evacuate settlements and withdraw? Because of sheer numbers. We simply don't have enough Jews in the Land of Israel to keep all of it to ourselves.

In 1937, before Britain's Peel Commission of Inquiry came to Palestine to solve the conflict over the land between Arabs and Jews, Revisionist Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky addressed the numbers issue and attacked the proffered solution of partition. We are not going to oust the Arabs, he said, but we will bring "millions and millions of Jews" to the land. Jabotinsky died in 1940, and so was spared witnessing the Holocaust, in which those millions were massacred. Those who cite his solution today are lost in the distant past. The reservoir of immigrants in the former Soviet Union is declining, and frankly, I don't see millions of American Jews packing their bags and making aliyah.

That leaves us with the problem: too few Jews here. Furthermore, demographers consistently predict that in the foreseeable future there will be more Arabs than Jews between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Keeping the territories will therefore soon force us to choose between becoming an apartheid state or giving up on Israel's Jewish character.

The standard argument for keeping the territories is that they provide security, but that's also an illusion. A personal story: When Thomas Friedman was The New York Times correspondent in Israel back in the 1980s, he came to my house one night. My wife Dalia told him that Netanyah, where she grew up, once was in Israel's narrowest area. Yet as a teenager, she'd always felt safe going by herself to the beach. There was a border -- close, indeed, only 16 kilometers away -- but still a border, where the Israel Defense Forces were deployed, and the enemy was beyond that border. Come the Six-Day War, the border moved far away from Netanyah. But alas, she suddenly felt unsafe: The enemy could be anywhere. Friedman immortalized her story in print.

She had it right then, and all the more so today. We can have our tanks roam the alleys of Nablus, and our soldiers spread over the hills around Hebron -- it will not bring back our lost sense of security. Unless, of course, we resort to unthinkable measures like those suggested by Alan Dershowitz -- razing entire villages in retaliation for terror. I'm afraid, however, that instead of being Dershowitzes, we would end up as Milosevices.

So if we keep the territories, we either get apartheid or an Israel that has ceased being Jewish; and in both cases, we don't get security. What kind of deal is this?

Faced with this dilemma, it's no wonder that more and more Israelis and Jews abroad entertain the idea of "transferring" the Arabs out of the territories and perhaps even Israel. I'd prefer not even to elaborate on this monstrous idea. All I can say is that there aren't enough railroad cars in Israel to accommodate Israeli commuters, let alone to ship Arab families from their homes.

Which leaves us where we started: In order to remain both Jewish and democratic, and to regain its security, Israel must withdraw from the territories. I wish we could have done it through a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians. But if Arafat couldn't take yes for an answer even when Clinton and Barak offered him almost everything, we shouldn't let him hold us hostage to his meshugas. We should act ourselves in Israel's best interests.

And to our brothers and sisters in the settlements, we should say that we have to evacuate them -- not because we don't care about them, but on the contrary: because we want to be able truly to defend them, in the borders of a smaller, safer Israel, both Jewish and democratic.

Uri Dromi (dromi@idi.org.il) is director of publications at the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem.

FULL WITHDRAWAL, FULL REOCCUPATION OR FULL DEPORTATION

Date: Sun, 12 May 2002

From: mark rosenblit <markrosenblit@attbi.com>

To: dromi@idi.org.il (Uri Dromi, Director of Publications, Israel Democracy Institute, Jerusalem, Israel)

Re: Your essay in the Viewpoint section of the May 6, 2002 issue of The Jerusalem Report, entitled "Why We Need To Withdraw Unilaterally" (all italicized quotations are from the essay)

"Yet on the fundamental reasons I give for pulling out of the territories, people are curiously mute. No one tells me that I'm wrong."

You opine that, due to those areas' high Arab birthrate, Israel will not be able to continue being both a Jewish and a democratic state, because its retention of Judea, Samaria and Gaza (Yehuda, Shomron and Aza -- YESHA) will lead either to an undemocratic Jewish state ruling a hostile disenfranchised Arab population ("... apartheid ...") or to a binational democratic state in which Jews will soon be the minority ("... an Israel that has ceased being Jewish ..."). Accordingly, you tout a full unilateral Israeli withdrawal from YESHA and the complete removal of all its Jewish residents as the only humane solution in order to "... be able truly to defend them, in the borders of a smaller, safer Israel, both Jewish and democratic."

Firstly, it is a fact that substantially more Israelis have been murdered and maimed by Arab terrorists in the 8 years following the 1993 Oslo Accords than in the four decades prior thereto. It is, accordingly, also a fact that Israelis were actually safer when they were fully occupying YESHA. By withdrawing itself from 42% of Judea and Samaria and 80% of Gaza -- with the result that, by the end of 1995, 98% of the Arab population of the former and virtually 100% of the Arab population of the latter were then being governed, not by Israel, but rather by the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority headed by Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat -- Israel merely gave the Arab residents of YESHA the autonomous means to build mortar, rocket and suicide-belt factories -- facilities denied to them when they were under full Israeli occupation -- and the autonomous means to train a terror army dedicated to killing Jews. Full reoccupation will save more Jewish lives than full withdrawal.

Secondly, no one claims that the United States is no longer a democracy because the residents of the District of Columbia (the U.S. capital city which is not part of any U.S. state) and Puerto Rico (an island nation which is associated with, but is not a state of, the United States) are subject to the U.S. military draft and U.S. law, but are denied the right to vote in U.S. legislative elections. However, if this makes the U.S. an apartheid nation, then perhaps Israel is in good company.

Thirdly, although you summarily dismiss the solution of deporting the Arabs of YESHA to live with their brethren in the eastern portion of Mandatory Palestine which is now known as Jordan ("I'd prefer not to even elaborate on this monstrous idea."), you fail to explain why this solution will not save more Jewish lives than will full withdrawal from YESHA. After all, the governments of Greece and Turkey (in the aftermath of World War I and the ensuing Greco-Turkish war of 1922), and the governments of India and Pakistan (in the aftermath of World War II), prevented their respective nations from imploding by implementing mutual forced transfers of their respective hostile minority to the latter’s kindred nation. Doctor Fridtjof Nansen of Norway, as the architect of the Greece/Turkey population exchange (in which some 1,300,000 Greeks departed Turkey for Greece and some 400,000 Turks departed Greece for Turkey), even won the Noble Peace Prize for his efforts. Without a serious discussion of this solution in your essay, you thereby promote intellectual dishonesty. As for the supposed immorality of this solution, why is it morally acceptable to uproot more than 200,000 peaceful Jews from their homes in YESHA (and perhaps an additional 200,000 peaceful Jews from their homes in the eastern portion of Jerusalem) but not 3,500,000 hostile Arabs therefrom? Surely, the numeric disparity alone cannot make the former the only humane solution and the latter a crime against humanity.

Fourthly, since adverse demographics drives your solution of full unilateral withdrawal, how do you propose that a post-withdrawal Israel deal with its "Israeli" Arab minority -- over 1,200,000 strong and constituting 20% of Israel's citizenry -- which, due its higher birthrate, will also one day cause a shrunken, but more democratic, Israel to be transformed into an Arab state with a large Jewish minority? If full flight from YESHA is, in fact, necessitated by the demographic challenge posed by YESHA's Arabs, then to which further line should Israel withdraw in order to flee from the demographic challenge posed by its own Arabs? And how will the World view a "democratic" Israel which jettisons portions of its “undisputed” territory situated within its 1949 armistice demarcation lines (e.g., portions of the Galilee and the Negev) simply because it contains too many voting Arabs? Full withdrawal from YESHA merely postpones -- but does not solve -- the looming demographic threat posed to the Jewish State by the growing Arab population both without and within its pre-1967 cease-fire lines. Like it or not, deportation of the Arabs constitutes a comprehensive solution to both facets of this demographic threat. Again, unless you propose -- upon the altar of democracy -- that Israel cease being a Jewish state even within its 1949 armistice demarcation lines, why would the solution of deporting "Israeli" Arabs not save more Jewish lives than permitting Israel to devolve into just another corrupt Arab police state (which, in addition to being armed with nuclear weapons, will surely deal cruelly with its former Jewish majority, especially if the hostile public declarations of "Israeli" Arab Knesset members truly reflect the views of their voting constituencies)?

"But if Arafat couldn't take yes for an answer even when Clinton and Barak offered him almost everything, we shouldn't let him hold us hostage to his meshugas [craziness]. We should act ourselves in Israel's best interests."

Even if Israel loudly proclaims that a unilateral -- or even a negotiated -- withdrawal from YESHA is being implemented exclusively for the sake of retaining a Jewish and democratic Israel rather than as an abject capitulation to the Arab suicide "martyrs" of YESHA and pre-1967 Israel, what makes you think that "Palestinian" or "Israeli" Arabs will accept this self-serving explanation? Yasser Arafat, with a substantial portion of Israel's water sources and the high mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria then under his control, would have absolutely no reason to doubt that his adroit combination of the 2000 Hizbullah model and the 1974 Palestine Liberation Organization "plan of stages" is succeeding apace. Having the sea to the West and a revanchist armed-to-the-teeth enemy to the East will neither bring peace nor even a short respite to an insecure Israel within the narrow armistice demarcation lines of 1949. In fact, without the luxury of time now provided to Israel in the East by the small 30 mile wide buffer zone that is Judea and Samaria (not to mention that provided to Israel in the North by the Golan Heights), Israel might very well be forced to quickly resort to a defensive nuclear strike in the likely event that the Arabs once again try to complete the campaign of annihilation that they began in 1948 against the Jewish State within the 1947 United Nations partition plan lines. Is setting the stage for a nuclear war in Israel's (or even the Arabs') best interests?

If the goal is really saving Jewish lives -- and minimizing the risk of nuclear war -- rather than receiving ephemeral plaudits from the World and its media, then either full reoccupation or full deportation is more suited to its achievement. However, full reoccupation does not remove a growing hostile population from, and within, Israel's doorstep -- only full deportation accomplishes that goal.

In other words, you are wrong!

Note: The below article discuss the available empirical evidence that reoccupation of YESHA would actually de-radicalize “Palestinian” Arabs, thereby saving Jewish lives. Read on! -- Mark Rosenblit

Civil Fights: Back to 'let's help Abu Mazen' dead-end

Evelyn Gordon, THE JERUSALEM POST

Jun. 20, 2007

Last week's Hamas takeover in Gaza was the logical culmination of Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Strip. To understand why, it is worth studying a Palestinian opinion poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center 10 months after the pullout.

The June 2006 poll found that 34 percent of Gaza residents thought the new Hamas government was better than its Fatah predecessor, compared to 22 percent of West Bank residents; that 56 percent of Gazans opposed the Oslo Accords, compared to 45 percent of West Bankers; and that 58.2 percent of Gazans supported suicide bombings against Israel, compared to 37.1 percent of West Bankers.

These results had two noteworthy elements. First, as JMCC director Ghassan al-Khatib told Haaretz, "this was the first time we found a significant disparity in positions between the West Bank and Gaza. Until now, the differences were two or three percent on questions such as support for Hamas and attacks."

Second, this disparity defied the accepted dogma that "the occupation" radicalizes the Palestinians. In every category -- support for Hamas, support for Oslo and support for suicide bombings -- residents of the "occupied" West Bank proved significantly more moderate than residents of unoccupied Gaza, whence Israel had evacuated every last settler and soldier only a year before.

Yet for anyone not blinded by dogma, this result was predictable, for two reasons.

THE FIRST is that while Israel controlled Gaza, it waged war on radical organizations: arresting or killing terrorists, raiding weapon caches and combating arms smuggling. This made it difficult for radical groups to operate openly and amass strength. And in the West Bank, Israel's counterterrorism activities still prevent radical groups from acquiring too much power.

Following Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, however, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas made virtually no effort to combat terrorism and arms smuggling (whether due to unwillingness or inability is irrelevant). Egypt did equally little to stop the smuggling from its side of the border, while the international community declined to press either Abbas or Cairo on these issues. Radical groups could thus operate freely, including recruiting and training new troops and accumulating arms at a ferocious rate. These processes merely accelerated after Hamas won the January 2006 parliamentary elections.

The result is that radical groups acquired far more power in Gaza than they could in the Israeli-controlled West Bank, turning them into Gaza's "strong horse" - the one worth backing. In the West Bank, in contrast, they remained the weak horse.

THE SECOND reason is the pullout itself, which Palestinians overwhelmingly interpreted as an Israeli flight from Palestinian terror. That is an oversimplification, but hardly a baseless one: The plan's public support stemmed largely from Israelis' desire to "stop having their sons killed in Gaza." Gaza residents thus had concrete proof that violence worked: It expelled the hated Israeli occupier. The logical conclusion was increased support for Hamas and suicide bombings and decreased support for negotiated deals such as Oslo.

West Bankers, in contrast, had a very different experience of violence: Years of suicide bombings inside Israel brought only a far more devastating occupation.

Before the intifada started in 2000, Palestinians enjoyed self-rule in large parts of the West Bank; tens of thousands of them worked in Israel; and there was substantial freedom of movement both within the West Bank and between the West Bank and Gaza. But Israel's efforts to protect its citizens from suicide bombers erased these gains: The army reoccupied all the areas it had vacated under Oslo; Palestinians were largely barred from working in Israel; and freedom of movement, both within the West Bank and between the West Bank and Gaza, was sharply curtailed as Israel erected checkpoints and, later, the fence in an effort to catch terrorists before they reached Israel.

Thus by June 2006, West Bankers had seen six years of violence make their lives steadily worse. And here, too, the conclusion was logical: decreased support for Hamas and suicide bombings and increased support for negotiated deals such as Oslo.

THUS THE disengagement's effect was twofold. First, though Hamas technically won the 2006 elections in both territories, in Gaza, it had the power to openly recruit, arm and train the troops that carried out last week's takeover, whereas in the West Bank, due to Israel's military presence, it did not. And second, it could reasonably conclude that it had public support for a takeover in Gaza; in the West Bank, it does not, and knows it.

Given that the world's goal now is to keep Hamas from seizing the West Bank as well, this analysis has obvious policy implications - and they are the opposite of the current diplomatic consensus.

That consensus, just as after every eruption of Palestinian violence for the past 14 years, is that Israel must "strengthen" the PA (now confined to the West Bank) through more concessions -- even though its leader has just proven himself unwilling (or unable) to fight Hamas in Gaza despite his forces' substantial numerical advantage. The proposed concessions range from releasing convicted terrorists through removing West Bank checkpoints to negotiating on final-status issues.

Yet aside from undermining Israel's ability to fight Hamas in the West Bank, such measures would once again prove, just as they have for the past 14 years, that the "good cop, bad cop" routine -- in which "bad" Palestinians commit violence that the "good" ones denounce, but make no move to prevent - pays: It creates international pressure for more Israeli concessions. And that is the opposite of the message the world should be sending, which is that failure to halt violence is counterproductive.

Reversing 14 years of failed policy is hard. But if the world ever wants to see a Palestinian state, it must make the effort. And that means making it clear to Abbas, and to all Palestinians, that there will be no "diplomatic horizon," and also no Israeli security concessions, unless and until a government willing and able to fight terror emerges. Only if such a message is consistently enforced are Palestinians ever likely to conclude that refusing to fight their extremists does not pay.

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