The date is May 25, 2020. Along the Israel/Palestine border, established by the Crawford Treaty of September 2001, Israeli intelligence reports alarming developments. Border incursions by terrorists in Israeli urban areas have increased - almost three a day for several weeks. Simultaneously, Jordanian and Egyptian troops, who had been conducting training exercises with Palestinian border police, have taken up positions facing IDF positions in Kalkilya and Tulkaram, geographical points at which Israel is, at places, only thirteen miles wide. The Mossad reports that Russian made Samet satellite-guided missiles, known to have been smuggled into Palestine in small sections over many years and secretly assembled underground, have been placed on some of the Samarian mountaintops east of Tel Aviv and Netanya. These are positions where the Israeli townships of Kedumim and Alfei Menashe once stood.
Israeli prime minister, 72- year- old Yossi Beilin, lodges a formal protest with the United Nations Secretary-General, Terje Larsen. He demands that the multi-national peace-keeping force, who maintain a buffer zone between the two states, move immediately to confront the belligerence on Israel's border. The Secretary-General posts a weak reprimand to the Government of Palestine, but otherwise does nothing. Palestinian president Marwan Barghouti claims that the continued Israeli refusal to repatriate millions of descendants of refugees from the 1948 war has led to a disquiet that he can no longer contain.
Before the United Nations Security Council has a chance to convene, deadly suicide attacks at several Israeli air-force bases and many early warning stations on the Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley succeed in temporarily disabling effective air surveillance. Attacks on eight secret Israeli anti-ballistic missile sites follow. Within hours of these attacks, a massive missile barrage descends on Israel's coastal towns. Hundreds of Israelis die and thousands are injured. Syrian and Iraqi jets, taking advantage of the temporary impotence of the Israeli air force, cross into Israeli airspace and pound IDF tank battalions stationed at the Kalkilya salient. Beilin, claiming Israel's right of self-defense, gives the go-ahead for the IDF to advance into sovereign Palestinian territory, striking at the missile launching pads.
However, as word of the invasion rockets around the world, the European Union, who in 2015 had guaranteed Palestinian territorial integrity, moves its 9th Fleet, the world's largest, ten miles off Israeli shores. A warning is issued to Beilin that unless Israel withdraws its troops within 24 hours, and agrees to mediation, the European fleet will begin its own barrage of Israeli coastal targets.
Yes, it is a nightmare and it was spun to life by some fascinating reading. Having recently completed both volumes I and II of What If?, the two works of counterfactual history edited by historian Roger Cowley, I thought it just as interesting to pose a question that has already stirred some historical interest: What if Yasser Arafat had accepted Ehud Barak's offer of peace and sovereignty at Camp David in the summer of 2000? What if, at a ceremony conducted at George Bush's Crawford Ranch, in September of 2001, Israel had agreed to evacuate dozens of Israeli settlements, given Arafat the right to establish East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestine, surrendered the Jordan Valley
and agreed to the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state?
That Arafat flubbed one of the greatest opportunities the Palestinians will ever have of establishing a state of their own will be unquestioned by future historians. But what the revanchist elements among the Palestinians will also certainly come to recognize, even more painfully, is that their last great opportunity to eliminate Israel altogether is gone forever. Had Arafat agreed to the Camp David proposals, it is conceivable that with the protection offered by the vital Samarian mountaintops, a State of Palestine, biding its time and marshaling both intelligence and armaments (while building a military alliance with an increasingly anti-Semitic Europe), could have delivered a devastating blow to Israel in the coming decades.
Conjecture perhaps, but not so fantastical. There is some reason to believe that Ehud Barak, though he had lost his parliamentary majority even before he went to Camp David, could have dragged the country behind him into an affirmative referendum on a final peace treaty in September 2000. The European element can also not be understated. Over the next twenty years, Israel could well become the battleground - ideological and otherwise - of a new struggle between a leftist, authoritarian Europe and the more liberal, enlightened democracies.
In the summer of 2000, the Israelis were ready for peace. But after the Palestinians resorted to violence - sacking ancient Jewish shrines, lynching soldiers and letting loose suicide bombers - all bets were
off. Thereafter, Israelis were highly unlikely to entrust their safety and security to a handful of promises from Palestinian thugs, who demonstrate as much interest in a permanent peaceful accommodation as Adolf Hitler did following Munich. Even Time magazine now reports that what used to be a minority view - the conviction that Israel is surrounded by enemies vowed to cause its extinction - is now mainstream thinking.
So the window was opened and then jammed shut in a very short space of time. Never again are the Palestinians likely to find Israelis in such a compromising mood. For the next ten years, now fully cognizant of the perils of Palestinian rejectionism, the Israeli people are likely to choose conservative governments to lead them. And with every year, the idea of a State of Palestine will shrink. Settlements will grow, the United States and the West will become less beholden to Arab oil wealth and the hardliners among the Palestinians, increasingly unable to grasp reality, will come to dominate Palestinian interests.
For a few days in July 2000, then, Yasser Arafat rolled dice with history and lost. His and Palestinian prospects now belong to the netherworld of the counter-factual. There, he will one day brood with the other also-rans of history, spending the rest of eternity pondering and regretting what could have been.
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Avi Davis is the senior fellow of the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies and the senior editorial columnist for the on-line magazine Jewsweek.com.
Israeli prime minister, 72- year- old Yossi Beilin, lodges a formal protest with the United Nations Secretary-General, Terje Larsen. He demands that the multi-national peace-keeping force, who maintain a buffer zone between the two states, move immediately to confront the belligerence on Israel's border. The Secretary-General posts a weak reprimand to the Government of Palestine, but otherwise does nothing. Palestinian president Marwan Barghouti claims that the continued Israeli refusal to repatriate millions of descendants of refugees from the 1948 war has led to a disquiet that he can no longer contain.
Before the United Nations Security Council has a chance to convene, deadly suicide attacks at several Israeli air-force bases and many early warning stations on the Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley succeed in temporarily disabling effective air surveillance. Attacks on eight secret Israeli anti-ballistic missile sites follow. Within hours of these attacks, a massive missile barrage descends on Israel's coastal towns. Hundreds of Israelis die and thousands are injured. Syrian and Iraqi jets, taking advantage of the temporary impotence of the Israeli air force, cross into Israeli airspace and pound IDF tank battalions stationed at the Kalkilya salient. Beilin, claiming Israel's right of self-defense, gives the go-ahead for the IDF to advance into sovereign Palestinian territory, striking at the missile launching pads.
However, as word of the invasion rockets around the world, the European Union, who in 2015 had guaranteed Palestinian territorial integrity, moves its 9th Fleet, the world's largest, ten miles off Israeli shores. A warning is issued to Beilin that unless Israel withdraws its troops within 24 hours, and agrees to mediation, the European fleet will begin its own barrage of Israeli coastal targets.
Yes, it is a nightmare and it was spun to life by some fascinating reading. Having recently completed both volumes I and II of What If?, the two works of counterfactual history edited by historian Roger Cowley, I thought it just as interesting to pose a question that has already stirred some historical interest: What if Yasser Arafat had accepted Ehud Barak's offer of peace and sovereignty at Camp David in the summer of 2000? What if, at a ceremony conducted at George Bush's Crawford Ranch, in September of 2001, Israel had agreed to evacuate dozens of Israeli settlements, given Arafat the right to establish East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestine, surrendered the Jordan Valley
and agreed to the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state?
That Arafat flubbed one of the greatest opportunities the Palestinians will ever have of establishing a state of their own will be unquestioned by future historians. But what the revanchist elements among the Palestinians will also certainly come to recognize, even more painfully, is that their last great opportunity to eliminate Israel altogether is gone forever. Had Arafat agreed to the Camp David proposals, it is conceivable that with the protection offered by the vital Samarian mountaintops, a State of Palestine, biding its time and marshaling both intelligence and armaments (while building a military alliance with an increasingly anti-Semitic Europe), could have delivered a devastating blow to Israel in the coming decades.
Conjecture perhaps, but not so fantastical. There is some reason to believe that Ehud Barak, though he had lost his parliamentary majority even before he went to Camp David, could have dragged the country behind him into an affirmative referendum on a final peace treaty in September 2000. The European element can also not be understated. Over the next twenty years, Israel could well become the battleground - ideological and otherwise - of a new struggle between a leftist, authoritarian Europe and the more liberal, enlightened democracies.
In the summer of 2000, the Israelis were ready for peace. But after the Palestinians resorted to violence - sacking ancient Jewish shrines, lynching soldiers and letting loose suicide bombers - all bets were
off. Thereafter, Israelis were highly unlikely to entrust their safety and security to a handful of promises from Palestinian thugs, who demonstrate as much interest in a permanent peaceful accommodation as Adolf Hitler did following Munich. Even Time magazine now reports that what used to be a minority view - the conviction that Israel is surrounded by enemies vowed to cause its extinction - is now mainstream thinking.
So the window was opened and then jammed shut in a very short space of time. Never again are the Palestinians likely to find Israelis in such a compromising mood. For the next ten years, now fully cognizant of the perils of Palestinian rejectionism, the Israeli people are likely to choose conservative governments to lead them. And with every year, the idea of a State of Palestine will shrink. Settlements will grow, the United States and the West will become less beholden to Arab oil wealth and the hardliners among the Palestinians, increasingly unable to grasp reality, will come to dominate Palestinian interests.
For a few days in July 2000, then, Yasser Arafat rolled dice with history and lost. His and Palestinian prospects now belong to the netherworld of the counter-factual. There, he will one day brood with the other also-rans of history, spending the rest of eternity pondering and regretting what could have been.
--------------------------------------------------------
Avi Davis is the senior fellow of the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies and the senior editorial columnist for the on-line magazine Jewsweek.com.