What Israel faces at The Hague is not a narrow legal question over a fence, but a new chapter in a sustained assault against the Jewish State's legitimacy, which Israeli statesmanship has tragically abetted over the last decade.
As Israel attempted to give the 1967 lands to Yasser Arafat, it stopped advocating its own underlying historical claims to the area and downplayed the Palestinian Authority's involvement in terrorism. Israeli diplomats have also defended the most vile, manipulative and destructive actions of Kofi Annan and his lieutenants against Israel. Thus, with U.N. help and Israeli acquiescence, the Palestinians are succeeding in defining the conflict and casting aspersion upon Israel's right to exist.
Israel must embark on a public diplomacy offensive making out the case for Israel and Zionism, unabashedly and unequivocally.
First, Israel should question the objectivity of the judges at The Hague, appointed by a UN whose most honored members regularly use terrorism as statecraft and deny their citizens the most basic human rights. The UN persistently perverts international law by condemning Israel for defending itself according to that law ? Kofi Annan has been particularly quick to credit the wildest blood libels against Israel ? while ignoring and even condoning the Palestinian war crimes that have forced Israel to build its security fence.
Second, Israel must focus the debate on those war crimes and their perpetrator, the Palestinian Authority. Israel has essentially continued to maintain that with only a few cosmetic changes to the PA leadership structure, it would be a responsible peace partner. How could anyone believe that this peace partner is guilty of anything more than occasionally cracking down insufficiently on the rogue terrorists? It has been easy for the PA to blame Israeli security measures, such as the fence, for the deterioration of the Palestinian economy, while maintaining that it is innocent of the terrorism necessitating those measures.
Israel should point out that the PA is more like a terror-mafia conglomerate than a government. The PA's central purpose is to commit atrocities against the Jewish People, while its official corruption, extortion and monopolies are the true cause of Palestinian poverty.
Finally, Israel should explain that the fence is built on land to which it maintains superior historical and legal claims. It must stop acceding to the Palestinian position that Israel has no genuine attachment to the 1967 areas.
Instead, Edna Arbel and the bureaucrats in Israel's Justice Ministry, supported by Minister Tommy Lapid, have demanded that Israel renounce any territorial claims, relocate the fence and stress its necessity for security reasons. This approach would concede that Israel has no legitimate territorial claims to any of the land over the Green Line, including eastern Jerusalem, even for short-term security purposes. Israel would have to move the fence entirely within the Green Line, which would limit its effectiveness. Such caving in to international pressure would only invite further demands for an immediate Israeli withdrawal to the Green Line.
These Israeli officials are abandoning the country's most fundamental positions, at the core of its existence, and in so doing, throwing doubt upon the very legitimacy of the entire Zionist enterprise. If Israel essentially cedes any fundamental underlying claim to Judea and Samaria, the birthplace of the Jewish People, and to the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, the heart of the Jewish People, how does it expect support for its claim to any other part of Israel?
The Palestinians could then successfully portray Israel as a colonial occupier, which came to power in 1948 by stealing Palestine from the Palestinians, living there for millennia, and expelling them from their land. Even within the Green Line, prosperous Israel would contain 78% of Palestine, while leaving the comparatively destitute Palestinians the remainder, divided into two ungovernable and economically unviable cantons. After legitimizing the Palestinian narrative of the Arab-Israeli conflict, by which the creation of Israel was a grave injustice against the Palestinians, how exactly will Israel explain its refusal to rectify the injustice by accepting the one-state solution, i.e., destroying itself?
Maintaining that the Jewish People have a legitimate claim to the Land of Israel and that Israel will, and rightfully should, continue to exercise control over portions of the 1967 areas will not be universally accepted. The International Court of Justice ? whose opinions are not binding ? may very well ignore its own precedent mandating that it decline to exercise jurisdiction, and rule against Israel. But at least Israel would show that its cause is just, not the moral equivalent of apartheid-era South Africa, as Lapid, Arbel and their bureaucrats apparently believe. The General Assembly may again pass a resolution equating Zionism with racism. But, as in the 1970's, it would only undermine its own legitimacy, not Israel's.
As Israel attempted to give the 1967 lands to Yasser Arafat, it stopped advocating its own underlying historical claims to the area and downplayed the Palestinian Authority's involvement in terrorism. Israeli diplomats have also defended the most vile, manipulative and destructive actions of Kofi Annan and his lieutenants against Israel. Thus, with U.N. help and Israeli acquiescence, the Palestinians are succeeding in defining the conflict and casting aspersion upon Israel's right to exist.
Israel must embark on a public diplomacy offensive making out the case for Israel and Zionism, unabashedly and unequivocally.
First, Israel should question the objectivity of the judges at The Hague, appointed by a UN whose most honored members regularly use terrorism as statecraft and deny their citizens the most basic human rights. The UN persistently perverts international law by condemning Israel for defending itself according to that law ? Kofi Annan has been particularly quick to credit the wildest blood libels against Israel ? while ignoring and even condoning the Palestinian war crimes that have forced Israel to build its security fence.
Second, Israel must focus the debate on those war crimes and their perpetrator, the Palestinian Authority. Israel has essentially continued to maintain that with only a few cosmetic changes to the PA leadership structure, it would be a responsible peace partner. How could anyone believe that this peace partner is guilty of anything more than occasionally cracking down insufficiently on the rogue terrorists? It has been easy for the PA to blame Israeli security measures, such as the fence, for the deterioration of the Palestinian economy, while maintaining that it is innocent of the terrorism necessitating those measures.
Israel should point out that the PA is more like a terror-mafia conglomerate than a government. The PA's central purpose is to commit atrocities against the Jewish People, while its official corruption, extortion and monopolies are the true cause of Palestinian poverty.
Finally, Israel should explain that the fence is built on land to which it maintains superior historical and legal claims. It must stop acceding to the Palestinian position that Israel has no genuine attachment to the 1967 areas.
Instead, Edna Arbel and the bureaucrats in Israel's Justice Ministry, supported by Minister Tommy Lapid, have demanded that Israel renounce any territorial claims, relocate the fence and stress its necessity for security reasons. This approach would concede that Israel has no legitimate territorial claims to any of the land over the Green Line, including eastern Jerusalem, even for short-term security purposes. Israel would have to move the fence entirely within the Green Line, which would limit its effectiveness. Such caving in to international pressure would only invite further demands for an immediate Israeli withdrawal to the Green Line.
These Israeli officials are abandoning the country's most fundamental positions, at the core of its existence, and in so doing, throwing doubt upon the very legitimacy of the entire Zionist enterprise. If Israel essentially cedes any fundamental underlying claim to Judea and Samaria, the birthplace of the Jewish People, and to the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, the heart of the Jewish People, how does it expect support for its claim to any other part of Israel?
The Palestinians could then successfully portray Israel as a colonial occupier, which came to power in 1948 by stealing Palestine from the Palestinians, living there for millennia, and expelling them from their land. Even within the Green Line, prosperous Israel would contain 78% of Palestine, while leaving the comparatively destitute Palestinians the remainder, divided into two ungovernable and economically unviable cantons. After legitimizing the Palestinian narrative of the Arab-Israeli conflict, by which the creation of Israel was a grave injustice against the Palestinians, how exactly will Israel explain its refusal to rectify the injustice by accepting the one-state solution, i.e., destroying itself?
Maintaining that the Jewish People have a legitimate claim to the Land of Israel and that Israel will, and rightfully should, continue to exercise control over portions of the 1967 areas will not be universally accepted. The International Court of Justice ? whose opinions are not binding ? may very well ignore its own precedent mandating that it decline to exercise jurisdiction, and rule against Israel. But at least Israel would show that its cause is just, not the moral equivalent of apartheid-era South Africa, as Lapid, Arbel and their bureaucrats apparently believe. The General Assembly may again pass a resolution equating Zionism with racism. But, as in the 1970's, it would only undermine its own legitimacy, not Israel's.