After your ninth visit to the USA to meet President Bush, it is time for you to face reality and reflect on the situation prior to 1967.
It is useless to exchange letters of agreement with the US President, as has been exemplified by your predecessors. When the letters were needed to confirm US assurances, somehow the US State Department failed to find them. To add insult to injury, your letter to the US President was not disclosed even to your closest Cabinet colleagues until after the meeting and was released to the press and public some five days later. This is not democracy, but a copy of the best example of dictatorship exhibited in the Soviet Union.
By consulting with the US President prior to even your own cabinet, and then having to provide documentation about Israel?s intentions to the US Ambassador to Israel, as if he was the governor general-designate, as verified in your letter to President Bush, Israel is now a ?pseudo state? of the United States, for all intents and purposes. It would appear you have far less status and freedom than even a US State Governor.
What is different today than during the period between 1948 and 1967?
The tortuous and elongated armistice border between Israel and its neighbours was annually the scene of hundreds of Arab raids across the Green Line. Israeli men, women and children were killed indiscriminately, villages were attacked, houses blown up and civilians kidnapped in unending Arab guerrilla warfare. It is possible, of course, that those who subscribe to the Chamberlainic appeasement policy of unilateral withdrawal from Gush Katif and locations in Samaria, including your Deputy Minister Ehud Olmert and your advisers, have either forgotten or possibly were not even born when these cold-blooded murders of civilians took place. By unilateral withdrawal, do not think that the situation that obtained in the nineteen-odd years from 1948 will not repeat itself.
Some statistics to remind you of what has been forgotten. Between May 1950 (when the armistice lines were guaranteed by the great powers - now we are currently witnessing an attempt of a repeat performance, including the additional stationing of a possible international force on the withdrawal lines) and October 1953, 421 Israelis were killed or wounded, there were 128 acts of sabotage involving explosives and 866 armed attacks. Or perhaps we should refer to 1955 as a typical year, in which there were 257 Israeli casualties along the so-called ceasefire lines, including 75 dead, 179 wounded and three taken prisoner.
One can ask where these terrorists came from and why were the armistice agreements broken by the Arab countries - just as the PA/PLO are repeating today. Significantly, Egypt and Gaza were the source of 53% of the attacks, Jordan, including the West Bank were the source of 23%, Syria, 22%, and Lebanon, 2%. All of this was before any 'occupation', from places where there was no alien Israeli force imposing its will on the Arab population (unlike that practised by the USA on occupied Germany and Japan after WWII, and currently by the USA and the UK coalition forces in Iraq).
On October 13th, 1953, a mother and her two children were murdered in their sleep in Moshav Yehud, just south of Petah Tikvah. Tracks led across the nearby border to the West Bank village of Rantis. In December of that year, a member of Kibbutz Ein Shemer was shot by infiltrators while walking near Karkur in central Israel. In March, 1954, Arab gunmen ambushed and attacked an Israeli bus at Maalei Akrabim, south of Beersheva, murdering 11, including women and children. If that is not sufficient, consider June 1954: Jerusalem suddenly became a target with Jordanian machine guns, rifles, grenades and two inch mortars, opening fire from the Old City walls. This continued for hours and was repeated several days later. Casualties, four dead, twenty-seven wounded. Of course, events like these don't tell the whole story, for there were hundreds of instances like these when the Israeli Defence Forces succeeded in foiling such attacks. Do these incidents not bear a resemblance to what is currently being experienced?
And so it went on, day by day, for years. On other occasions, the Fedayeen crossed the nearby truce lines from the Gaza Strip - supposedly patrolled by the UN to prevent infiltration and guaranteed by the Great Powers - to carry out their deadly missions. Is not a repeat of the latter now being tabled in your proposed unilateral withdrawal? Do you really expect those who hate the Jews and aim to destroy Israel to suddenly live in peace? Irrespective of when Israel unilaterally withdraws, giving the yishuvim to the ?refugees? rather than destroying them (as you efficiently did in Yamit), will only serve to whet their appetite for more and more.
To abandon some of our heartland in Yehuda and Shomron clearly shows that neither you nor the President, let alone his Jewish Ambassador, understand the significance of our holy soil. When Egypt stood steadfast and refused to cede ?one grain of holy Arab soil?, the world applauded this stand, but it appears that Jewish land can be relinquished with impunity to please the US President.
Remember how freight trains were blown up, farmers murdered in their fields, soldiers ambushed and killed, children attacked by snipers, mines laid as gangs came across to burn, kill, steal and destroy? How easy it was in those days. One has to reflect that the width of Israel was in some places less than 15 miles from the ceasefire line between Israel and the Jordanian illegally occupied West Bank. The whole of the central Shomron Plain was exposed to these people - as it will be again if your appeasement policy continues.
What did the Arabs want in those days? Before the talk of land for peace, they already occupied the West Bank, under Jordanian rule, and Gaza, under Egyptian rule. Those who now subscribe to unilateral withdrawal expecting peace for giving away land, proposed by you as Prime Minister, indicate there should be a return to the good old days of 1967, because there is no choice. Do they recollect that every Israeli was within firing distance of hostile Arabs either in the West Bank or Gaza, never mind the Golan Heights?
It is time to remember that Israel was not then an occupying power. But this did not deter the Arabs. Those who carried out the mass pogroms in Hebron in 1929, who carved out a bloody swath in the 1936-9 period, collaborated with Hitler and tried to destroy the infant state before its birth in 1948 are still active, as the tragedy of the last three-and-a-half years clearly shows.
The Jewish people have been giving land, or giving up land for peace, from the time of the First World War and the Balfour Declaration. The Bush assurances are no Balfour Declaration; they don't define Jewish legitimacy, since they contradict the Tanach. At least in 1917, there were no secret clauses and documents, but now there is talk of behind-doors agreements, to remain hidden until a new presidential team arises and selectively chooses which ones they wish to abandon since they no longer serve US interests and in the process ignore what was agreed. Have you forgotten the Oslo and subsequent agreements, which granted access to Jewish holy sites in Aza, Jericho and Shechem, and the guarantee by the Palestinian Authority to respect and preserve the integrity of these sites ? all of which were guaranteed by the witnessing ?great? powers? Now, these sites are desecrated and access refused. Why didn?t you and the President require these agreements be implemented as part of good faith measures? Instead of that, you are providing aerial details of each yishuv in Yesha, together with the location of every road block, so that Ambassador Kurtzer can decide which are kosher.
In 1920, the original territory assigned by the 52 members of the League of Nations was 43,075 sq. miles, extending to both banks of the Jordan River. The land was subsequently partitioned illegally by the British, granting Arabs the territory of Trans-Jordan (now the Hashemite Kingdom), amounting to 32,460 sq. miles, reducing the size for a Jewish homeland to 10,615 sq. miles, less than 25 percent of the available territory. Was this sufficient for the Arabs? Of course not! The world concurred then, in 1947, as they do today, when they voted on 29 November 1947 in the UN for the establishment of a Jewish State and for further partitioning of the territory, reducing the Jewish area to 5,560 sq. miles, approximately 13 percent of the original land. This was accepted by the Jews, but rejected by the Arabs, who promised to wage "a war of extermination and momentous massacre which would be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." (BBC, May 15 1948)
Not to be forgotten is the twice-over relinquishing of 23,622 sq. miles of Sinai, apart from the additional 618 sq. miles west of the Suez Canal that were conquered in the counter-offensive in 1973, in exchange for a cold peace with Egypt, which is day-by-day switching into open hostility and open siding with PLO/PA. Today, the Egyptian government is still promulgating a level of Anti Semitism not seen since the Nazi era, threatening war with Israel should more land not be ceded and denying the Jewish sanctity of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. A major recipient of USA aid, as well as being armed to the teeth by the USA, Mubarak?s Egypt is no democracy, but President Bush proposes to engage Mubarak as an intermediary in his ?Road Map? dream, as stated at the joint press conference in Texas during the Egyptian ruler?s visit this month.
Making border modifications with Jordan has not brought around any Jordanian concessions. King Abdullah now promulgates the demand of total Israeli withdrawal from land that the Jordanians illegally occupied from 1948 to 1967, even though his father relinquished Jordanian rights to the land. As far as Abdullah is concerned, he demands Israel return to the good old days before 1967, when Jordan failed to allow freedom of access by Jews to our holy sites, just as we now see history repeating itself with the actions of the PA in Shechem, Jericho and Aza. Mr Sharon, you have not been authorized by the Jewish people to assign away Jewish rights to such holy sites.
Somehow, the land that the Arab authorities usurped from the Jews when they were forced to leave "Arab lands" after 1948 is conveniently forgotten. Whilst President Bush acknowledges the ?right of return? only applies to areas under PA/PLO control, the rights of the Jews expelled from Arab countries is totally ignored. This land exceeded 38,625 sq. miles, besides the estimated $100 billion of liquid assets.
In the meantime the Arabs, who control 5,345,000 sq. miles, have yet to relinquish one single grain of Arab soil as a confidence-building measure towards peaceful coexistence with the Jewish State. The world, through the media, have been duped into believing in the rights of the Arabs and fail to acknowledge any Jewish rights.
Today, we are witnessing not only more proposals by you without government authorization, but to our dismay, the failure of these proposals to recognise the holy grains of soil of Eretz Yisrael. Poignantly, the fact that Jerusalem, Hevron and Shechem belong to the Jewish people, who obtained legal title to the land by their purchase, as recorded in the Bible, seems to be ignored as not being relevant, but is in fact the key.
Prime Minister Sharon, your failing government, your world-wide associates and those who subscribe to the notion of giving up land for peace in any form: Reconsider your simplistic solution - withdrawal and giving away the land to the PLO. This is not the last chance for peace, as you would have the world believe. No man is indispensable, no date is sacrosanct and there are certainly alternative choices as to which course of action to follow, as well. Too many times in the past have the Jewish people followed the policy of appeasement, with dire consequences. Even in England, Jews were expelled 1,000 years ago because they appeased the rulers by providing funds that the latter were subsequently unable and unwilling to pay back - followed by massacres and expulsion. Those Jews probably subscribed to the yihiyeh b'seder (it will be OK) policy.
The major group of World Powers (G8) have their own agendas to follow, which certainly do not include the survival of a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael. They have been put to the test too often and have failed each and every time. Withdrawal must not be at the expense of a secure Jewish State firmly established in Eretz Yisrael. We must stand firm, without weak hearts and we must convince the world now. In order to achieve this, we must root out doubts and the spirit of defeatism and appeasement in our own midst. Having just concluded the festival of Pesach, when our thoughts turned to Freedom and Redemption, we do not wish to become enslaved again; this time as a formal or pseudo-state of the USA as a result of weak leadership and appeasement policies.
[This is a modified version of an article first published in 1988, well before Oslo, revised before Camp Davis II as an "Open Message to Prime Minister Barak Before Camp David" and subsequently updated to reflect the current situation on the return of Prime Minister Sharon from his 9th visit to President Bush.]
It is useless to exchange letters of agreement with the US President, as has been exemplified by your predecessors. When the letters were needed to confirm US assurances, somehow the US State Department failed to find them. To add insult to injury, your letter to the US President was not disclosed even to your closest Cabinet colleagues until after the meeting and was released to the press and public some five days later. This is not democracy, but a copy of the best example of dictatorship exhibited in the Soviet Union.
By consulting with the US President prior to even your own cabinet, and then having to provide documentation about Israel?s intentions to the US Ambassador to Israel, as if he was the governor general-designate, as verified in your letter to President Bush, Israel is now a ?pseudo state? of the United States, for all intents and purposes. It would appear you have far less status and freedom than even a US State Governor.
What is different today than during the period between 1948 and 1967?
The tortuous and elongated armistice border between Israel and its neighbours was annually the scene of hundreds of Arab raids across the Green Line. Israeli men, women and children were killed indiscriminately, villages were attacked, houses blown up and civilians kidnapped in unending Arab guerrilla warfare. It is possible, of course, that those who subscribe to the Chamberlainic appeasement policy of unilateral withdrawal from Gush Katif and locations in Samaria, including your Deputy Minister Ehud Olmert and your advisers, have either forgotten or possibly were not even born when these cold-blooded murders of civilians took place. By unilateral withdrawal, do not think that the situation that obtained in the nineteen-odd years from 1948 will not repeat itself.
Some statistics to remind you of what has been forgotten. Between May 1950 (when the armistice lines were guaranteed by the great powers - now we are currently witnessing an attempt of a repeat performance, including the additional stationing of a possible international force on the withdrawal lines) and October 1953, 421 Israelis were killed or wounded, there were 128 acts of sabotage involving explosives and 866 armed attacks. Or perhaps we should refer to 1955 as a typical year, in which there were 257 Israeli casualties along the so-called ceasefire lines, including 75 dead, 179 wounded and three taken prisoner.
One can ask where these terrorists came from and why were the armistice agreements broken by the Arab countries - just as the PA/PLO are repeating today. Significantly, Egypt and Gaza were the source of 53% of the attacks, Jordan, including the West Bank were the source of 23%, Syria, 22%, and Lebanon, 2%. All of this was before any 'occupation', from places where there was no alien Israeli force imposing its will on the Arab population (unlike that practised by the USA on occupied Germany and Japan after WWII, and currently by the USA and the UK coalition forces in Iraq).
On October 13th, 1953, a mother and her two children were murdered in their sleep in Moshav Yehud, just south of Petah Tikvah. Tracks led across the nearby border to the West Bank village of Rantis. In December of that year, a member of Kibbutz Ein Shemer was shot by infiltrators while walking near Karkur in central Israel. In March, 1954, Arab gunmen ambushed and attacked an Israeli bus at Maalei Akrabim, south of Beersheva, murdering 11, including women and children. If that is not sufficient, consider June 1954: Jerusalem suddenly became a target with Jordanian machine guns, rifles, grenades and two inch mortars, opening fire from the Old City walls. This continued for hours and was repeated several days later. Casualties, four dead, twenty-seven wounded. Of course, events like these don't tell the whole story, for there were hundreds of instances like these when the Israeli Defence Forces succeeded in foiling such attacks. Do these incidents not bear a resemblance to what is currently being experienced?
And so it went on, day by day, for years. On other occasions, the Fedayeen crossed the nearby truce lines from the Gaza Strip - supposedly patrolled by the UN to prevent infiltration and guaranteed by the Great Powers - to carry out their deadly missions. Is not a repeat of the latter now being tabled in your proposed unilateral withdrawal? Do you really expect those who hate the Jews and aim to destroy Israel to suddenly live in peace? Irrespective of when Israel unilaterally withdraws, giving the yishuvim to the ?refugees? rather than destroying them (as you efficiently did in Yamit), will only serve to whet their appetite for more and more.
To abandon some of our heartland in Yehuda and Shomron clearly shows that neither you nor the President, let alone his Jewish Ambassador, understand the significance of our holy soil. When Egypt stood steadfast and refused to cede ?one grain of holy Arab soil?, the world applauded this stand, but it appears that Jewish land can be relinquished with impunity to please the US President.
Remember how freight trains were blown up, farmers murdered in their fields, soldiers ambushed and killed, children attacked by snipers, mines laid as gangs came across to burn, kill, steal and destroy? How easy it was in those days. One has to reflect that the width of Israel was in some places less than 15 miles from the ceasefire line between Israel and the Jordanian illegally occupied West Bank. The whole of the central Shomron Plain was exposed to these people - as it will be again if your appeasement policy continues.
What did the Arabs want in those days? Before the talk of land for peace, they already occupied the West Bank, under Jordanian rule, and Gaza, under Egyptian rule. Those who now subscribe to unilateral withdrawal expecting peace for giving away land, proposed by you as Prime Minister, indicate there should be a return to the good old days of 1967, because there is no choice. Do they recollect that every Israeli was within firing distance of hostile Arabs either in the West Bank or Gaza, never mind the Golan Heights?
It is time to remember that Israel was not then an occupying power. But this did not deter the Arabs. Those who carried out the mass pogroms in Hebron in 1929, who carved out a bloody swath in the 1936-9 period, collaborated with Hitler and tried to destroy the infant state before its birth in 1948 are still active, as the tragedy of the last three-and-a-half years clearly shows.
The Jewish people have been giving land, or giving up land for peace, from the time of the First World War and the Balfour Declaration. The Bush assurances are no Balfour Declaration; they don't define Jewish legitimacy, since they contradict the Tanach. At least in 1917, there were no secret clauses and documents, but now there is talk of behind-doors agreements, to remain hidden until a new presidential team arises and selectively chooses which ones they wish to abandon since they no longer serve US interests and in the process ignore what was agreed. Have you forgotten the Oslo and subsequent agreements, which granted access to Jewish holy sites in Aza, Jericho and Shechem, and the guarantee by the Palestinian Authority to respect and preserve the integrity of these sites ? all of which were guaranteed by the witnessing ?great? powers? Now, these sites are desecrated and access refused. Why didn?t you and the President require these agreements be implemented as part of good faith measures? Instead of that, you are providing aerial details of each yishuv in Yesha, together with the location of every road block, so that Ambassador Kurtzer can decide which are kosher.
In 1920, the original territory assigned by the 52 members of the League of Nations was 43,075 sq. miles, extending to both banks of the Jordan River. The land was subsequently partitioned illegally by the British, granting Arabs the territory of Trans-Jordan (now the Hashemite Kingdom), amounting to 32,460 sq. miles, reducing the size for a Jewish homeland to 10,615 sq. miles, less than 25 percent of the available territory. Was this sufficient for the Arabs? Of course not! The world concurred then, in 1947, as they do today, when they voted on 29 November 1947 in the UN for the establishment of a Jewish State and for further partitioning of the territory, reducing the Jewish area to 5,560 sq. miles, approximately 13 percent of the original land. This was accepted by the Jews, but rejected by the Arabs, who promised to wage "a war of extermination and momentous massacre which would be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." (BBC, May 15 1948)
Not to be forgotten is the twice-over relinquishing of 23,622 sq. miles of Sinai, apart from the additional 618 sq. miles west of the Suez Canal that were conquered in the counter-offensive in 1973, in exchange for a cold peace with Egypt, which is day-by-day switching into open hostility and open siding with PLO/PA. Today, the Egyptian government is still promulgating a level of Anti Semitism not seen since the Nazi era, threatening war with Israel should more land not be ceded and denying the Jewish sanctity of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. A major recipient of USA aid, as well as being armed to the teeth by the USA, Mubarak?s Egypt is no democracy, but President Bush proposes to engage Mubarak as an intermediary in his ?Road Map? dream, as stated at the joint press conference in Texas during the Egyptian ruler?s visit this month.
Making border modifications with Jordan has not brought around any Jordanian concessions. King Abdullah now promulgates the demand of total Israeli withdrawal from land that the Jordanians illegally occupied from 1948 to 1967, even though his father relinquished Jordanian rights to the land. As far as Abdullah is concerned, he demands Israel return to the good old days before 1967, when Jordan failed to allow freedom of access by Jews to our holy sites, just as we now see history repeating itself with the actions of the PA in Shechem, Jericho and Aza. Mr Sharon, you have not been authorized by the Jewish people to assign away Jewish rights to such holy sites.
Somehow, the land that the Arab authorities usurped from the Jews when they were forced to leave "Arab lands" after 1948 is conveniently forgotten. Whilst President Bush acknowledges the ?right of return? only applies to areas under PA/PLO control, the rights of the Jews expelled from Arab countries is totally ignored. This land exceeded 38,625 sq. miles, besides the estimated $100 billion of liquid assets.
In the meantime the Arabs, who control 5,345,000 sq. miles, have yet to relinquish one single grain of Arab soil as a confidence-building measure towards peaceful coexistence with the Jewish State. The world, through the media, have been duped into believing in the rights of the Arabs and fail to acknowledge any Jewish rights.
Today, we are witnessing not only more proposals by you without government authorization, but to our dismay, the failure of these proposals to recognise the holy grains of soil of Eretz Yisrael. Poignantly, the fact that Jerusalem, Hevron and Shechem belong to the Jewish people, who obtained legal title to the land by their purchase, as recorded in the Bible, seems to be ignored as not being relevant, but is in fact the key.
Prime Minister Sharon, your failing government, your world-wide associates and those who subscribe to the notion of giving up land for peace in any form: Reconsider your simplistic solution - withdrawal and giving away the land to the PLO. This is not the last chance for peace, as you would have the world believe. No man is indispensable, no date is sacrosanct and there are certainly alternative choices as to which course of action to follow, as well. Too many times in the past have the Jewish people followed the policy of appeasement, with dire consequences. Even in England, Jews were expelled 1,000 years ago because they appeased the rulers by providing funds that the latter were subsequently unable and unwilling to pay back - followed by massacres and expulsion. Those Jews probably subscribed to the yihiyeh b'seder (it will be OK) policy.
The major group of World Powers (G8) have their own agendas to follow, which certainly do not include the survival of a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael. They have been put to the test too often and have failed each and every time. Withdrawal must not be at the expense of a secure Jewish State firmly established in Eretz Yisrael. We must stand firm, without weak hearts and we must convince the world now. In order to achieve this, we must root out doubts and the spirit of defeatism and appeasement in our own midst. Having just concluded the festival of Pesach, when our thoughts turned to Freedom and Redemption, we do not wish to become enslaved again; this time as a formal or pseudo-state of the USA as a result of weak leadership and appeasement policies.
[This is a modified version of an article first published in 1988, well before Oslo, revised before Camp Davis II as an "Open Message to Prime Minister Barak Before Camp David" and subsequently updated to reflect the current situation on the return of Prime Minister Sharon from his 9th visit to President Bush.]