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Almighty God! Let the Ashes
of the Children incinerated in Auschwitz, rivers of blood spilled in Babbi
Yar or Majdanek, be a warning to mankind that violence is destructive,
hatred is contagious, while man has an unlimited capacity for cruelty.
INTERIM SOLUTION TO THE MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT.
The Palestinian - Israeli conflict is perceived as local conflict between two peoples fighting for the land. The truth is that the Palestinian - Israeli conflict is a regional conflict, created by the Arab states that could not accept the existence of a Jewish state. In 1948, after the creation of Israel a coalition of Arab forces from Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria attacked Israel. They created the Palestinian refugee problem by urging the Palestinians to temporary flee the country.
For fifty years, many wars were fought in the name of the Palestinian people while they were kept in "temporary" refugee camps, not allowed to integrate into the Arab societies. The Palestinian people became pawns in the hand of Arab dictators and autocrats that used the conflict to further their political or territorial ambitions.
As a matter of fact the failures of the Camp David and Taba were due to the fact that Yassir Arafat could not make a decision about Jerusalem or the return of the refugees without the consent of his sponsors. A regional conflict could not be settled by the local chief. Rejecting the Camp David offer Arafat made a comment to the effect that acceptance of the offer would mean a death sentence for him. Nobody took this statement at face value and saw the futility of negotiating with Arafat who was authorized only to take the land but not to settle the conflict. Looking back we can see that the misconceptions about the conflict lead to the faulty Oslo agreement, and to the present dangerous situation. We now can understand better the erratic behavior of Arafat during the negotiations.
TWO-STATE SOLUTION
The prevailing notion, especially in Europe, is that the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state would solve the Middle East conflict. As a matter of fact a group of American Jews published an open letter "Peace in the Middle East" NYTimes July 17, 2002). They claim that due to the failure of the incremental approach in the Middle East, to break the impasse a two-state solution has to be imposed on the Israelis and on the Palestinians. The US economic aid to Israel should be used as leverage on Israel to accept the solution and foreign troops should be used to enforce the settlement.
The creation of a Palestinian state will not solve the conflict and bring peace to the region, because the terrorist organizations like Hamas in the South, the Hezbollah in the North, the Al Aksa Brigade in the West, are not ready to convert their belt bombs into pruning hooks, live in peace with Israel and learn war no more. As long as terror sponsoring states like Iran, Syria and Iraq are meddling into the Palestinian affair there cannot be peace in the Holy Land.
The creation of a Palestinian state presently is wrought with danger. The new state will become a beachhead for further terror and aggression against Israel. A two- state solution can not be enforced with foreign troops. Their exposure to suicide bombers would make the Vietnam War look like a picnic.
GLOBALIZATTION OF THE PALESTINIAN CONFLICT
The events of the 9/11 tragedy exposed a tremendous fault line between the Western and Muslim cultures. During the last 25 years the Muslim population doubled while the technological development stagnated, creating lot of hopelessness and helplessness. The Khomeini revolution in Iran raised the specter of the America the Great Satan, while the Saudi Neo-Wahhabi doctrine of supremacy of the Muslim religion and hatred of the nonbelievers created Islamofascism. For the last twenty years the mosque , the press and the schools teach intolerance and hatred toward the West and especially toward the US, and the fruits of those ideas culminated in the 9/11 tragedy.
Recently the Arab rejectionist got new allies, the anti-globalization movement.
According to Dr. Esther Webman:' Globalization is viewed in the Arab as an economic threat, and as the continuation of the Western colonialist enterprise of exploiting the Arab world. But more than anything else it viewed as a social-cultural threat of imposing Western culture on the Muslin world, and undermining of the family values in the Muslin society."
Globalization is identified with the United States and Israel poses for the radical Muslim a danger of regional domination. The Hezbollah's spiritual leader. Sheikh Fadlallah stated: "Jews want to control the Muslim's world economic potential and resources, and they want to weaken it spiritually with respect to the Jerusalem question…..the cultural battle is not limited to the political or military contest for a pieces of land in Palestine."
ISRAEL AND THE GLOBAL CONFLICT.
The people of Israel have to recognize the global nature of the conflict and accept the fact that this conflict cannot be solved by military means. Israel is fighting an enemy with inexhaustible manpower and unlimited resources. The conflict has to be localized, and it will be localized when the Palestinian people take responsibility for their own destiny and decide that living in peace with Israel is their best and only alternative for a better future.
To achieve the localization of the conflict, Israel has to withdraw to defensible borders, protected with "high fences" and leave the Palestinians to their own devices. The terror sponsors are eager to supply explosives but it is doubtful if they will provide the economic aid necessary to sustain the Palestinian people.
In the Israel News of July 19 2002 a noted Israeli journalist A.B Yehoshuah wrote:
"We must therefore mobilize not only all our military forces, but our moral energy as well, and try to grasp what has been happening with the Palestinians who are dragging us into a new comprehensive confrontation with the Arab world, and indeed the entire Muslim world, and what we must do to unilaterally alleviate the situation."
"Since neither they nor we are at present capable of reaching the agreement we strove for at Camp David regarding the permanent borders, it is imperative that we set this border ourselves, temporarily, and withdraw from parts of the territories, including the many remote settlements that preclude nay possibility of drawing this border.'
"The border will protect us better against destructive suicide bombers, and will assist the saner elements in the Palestinian camp to stop them before they reach us, thus restricting the vicious cycle of their terror and our counter-attack. Unilateral withdrawal will make curfews, closures and roadblocks unnecessary; along with the daily sufferings they cause to the Palestinian population, and will prevent loss of life among the settlers and soldiers charged with protecting them."
CONLUSIONS
The withdrawal from the "territories" is not an easy solution. It is wrought with danger, but maintaining the status quo is more dangerous. Due to the unique position of the Jews in the world, a world saturated with latent anti-Semitism, we have an upside down perception of the conflict. It is a conflict in which the failing aggressors play the role of victims and people of good will believe them. Global conflicts are fought not only on the battlefields but also in the court of public opinion. I believe that a withdrawal will change the perception, expose the real aggressor, localize the conflict and bring a solution. There is no other choice (Ein Breira).
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