I don't know. Maybe it was just an exercise in rallying support among millions of key Evangelical Christian voters and winning over some Jews in what promised to be a very close election come November 2004. Dubya, after all, won last time around in a highly controversial election by, literally, just a few handfuls of votes in Florida. But maybe -- just maybe -- while it undoubtedly involved this, perhaps there was something else astir as well.
I've gotten ahead of myself, so let's backtrack a bit.
Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, made a very hard decision last April. After decades of supporting the construction of Israeli settlements in disputed territories Israel wound up with as a result of having to fight a war for its life in June 1967, the Old Warrior decided that the costs outweighed the gains of keeping Jews in Gaza.
While it is true that, while their numbers drastically fluctuated, Jews had lived in Gaza for millennia; that, since the days of the Pharaohs, Gaza had been used as an invasion route into Israel proper by those aiming to destroy or subjugate it; that Gaza had become a hotbed for terrorists aiming to destroy Israel; that Jewish communities set up in Gaza were not on Arab-owned land; etc. and so forth - it is also true that many, if not most, Israelis were looking for a way out of Gaza if the proper conditions presented themselves.
Israel had long been under pressure to take some steps to revive the all-but-dead, so-called Roadmap for Peace with the Palestinian Arabs. While the latter was seen, at least in a few circles, to exist in such a moribund state due to the unwillingness and/or inability of the Arabs to control their own disembowelers of Jews, this key factor did not matter nearly as much as it should have. So the squeeze was put on the Jews. While such hypocrisy was by now expected from Europe and much of the rest of the world, the folks at Foggy Bottom also habitually indulge in this sort of behavior, coming up with absurd, alleged "moral equivalencies" and the like.
Lacking any Anwar Sadat or King Hussein-type to deal with among Palestinian Arabs (i.e., Arab leaders willing to allow for a viable Israel still existing on the morrow after a peace treaty is signed), Arik decided to make a unilateral move to break the stalemate while also supposedly enhancing Israel's overall security position. The latter assertion is hotly debated, given certain facts of life. In April 2004, Sharon thus came up with his highly controversial Gaza withdrawal plan. In addition to the removal of Gaza's 8,000 Jews, some settlements in Samaria, the northern West Bank, were also given an eviction notice. The world had been clamoring for such Israeli moves for decades.
Those who had conquered territories sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles away from home in the name of their own nations' security somehow couldn't figure out the life-threatening problems Israel was constantly faced with due to the armistice lines imposed upon it in 1949 by the United Nations. As is well known by now, those lines made Israel a mere nine miles wide at its strategic waist, where most of the nation's population and industry is located.
One needn't be Napoleon to figure out what this all meant to a nation grossly out-manned and out-gunned, surrounded by enemies sworn to its demise. And, as would become the norm, the United Nations only stepped in after the Jews turned the tide of the Arab invasion in 1948. Israel was never meant to be a nine-mile-wide rump state, but that's how it was left when the lines were drawn in 1949, marking the point where the Jews finally turned back the invasion of a half-dozen Arab armies supplied to the teeth with weaponry left over by the Allies from World War II and led, in Transjordan, by British officers. The UN stepped in to limit Arab losses, not to prevent their blatant aggression. This behavior would be repeated in subsequent decades as well.
Arab settlers from elsewhere then, once again, poured into the disputed territories of Judea, Samaria and Gaza following the 1948 war. As leading international legal scholars like Eugene Rostow have pointed out, the territories in question had largely been unapportioned state lands belonging to the original Mandate, open to settlement by Arabs, Jews, and others as well. After 1949, however, only Arabs were able to move there, after Transjordan's internationally unrecognized land grab.
Purely Arab Transjordan, comprising all the land on the east bank of the Jordan River, had already been created by the British in 1922 from almost 80% of the original 1920 borders of the Mandate of Palestine, and Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria -- the "West Bank" -- had been massacred by the Arabs in the 1920s and '30s. During this same time period, the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission documented massive waves of Arabs (scores of thousands in just a few months) pouring into the Mandate from Syria, Egypt, North Africa and elsewhere. Many more Arabs entered under cover of darkness and were simply never recorded -- more "native Palestinians." Thanks to the Jews, the Mandate was economically booming, drawing Arabs in from the entire region.
While all of this has been repeated ad nauseam, it must be stated yet again. The architects of famed UN Security Council Resolution 242 (Rostow included), carefully worded the final, accepted draft so that Israel would not be expected to have to return to its pre-'67, suicidal armistice lines. Indeed, the resolution called for the creation of "secure and recognized borders" to replace those lines. The bulk of Israel's settlements have been placed with such a strategic territorial compromise in mind. While some will have to go as a trade off for a real peace agreement, others will have to stay.
The area under discussion is tiny to begin with. When Egypt held Gaza and Jordan held the West Bank for almost two decades, no one called for the creation of an additional Arab state - a second such entity in "Palestine." Yet, after 1967, the world demanded this of the Jews, expecting them to bare their necks to bring this about (while ignoring the plight of 30 million stateless Kurds, millions of Black African Sudanese, and others being slaughtered in the name of Arab nationalism). And the American Foggy Folks constantly make the point that the additional Arab state must not be a Bantustan.
Guess what? Justice does not demand that the boundaries and such of any 22nd or 23rd Arab state -- for which there really is no room -- come at the expense of security for the sole state of the Jews.
[Part 1 of 2]
I've gotten ahead of myself, so let's backtrack a bit.
Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, made a very hard decision last April. After decades of supporting the construction of Israeli settlements in disputed territories Israel wound up with as a result of having to fight a war for its life in June 1967, the Old Warrior decided that the costs outweighed the gains of keeping Jews in Gaza.
While it is true that, while their numbers drastically fluctuated, Jews had lived in Gaza for millennia; that, since the days of the Pharaohs, Gaza had been used as an invasion route into Israel proper by those aiming to destroy or subjugate it; that Gaza had become a hotbed for terrorists aiming to destroy Israel; that Jewish communities set up in Gaza were not on Arab-owned land; etc. and so forth - it is also true that many, if not most, Israelis were looking for a way out of Gaza if the proper conditions presented themselves.
Israel had long been under pressure to take some steps to revive the all-but-dead, so-called Roadmap for Peace with the Palestinian Arabs. While the latter was seen, at least in a few circles, to exist in such a moribund state due to the unwillingness and/or inability of the Arabs to control their own disembowelers of Jews, this key factor did not matter nearly as much as it should have. So the squeeze was put on the Jews. While such hypocrisy was by now expected from Europe and much of the rest of the world, the folks at Foggy Bottom also habitually indulge in this sort of behavior, coming up with absurd, alleged "moral equivalencies" and the like.
Lacking any Anwar Sadat or King Hussein-type to deal with among Palestinian Arabs (i.e., Arab leaders willing to allow for a viable Israel still existing on the morrow after a peace treaty is signed), Arik decided to make a unilateral move to break the stalemate while also supposedly enhancing Israel's overall security position. The latter assertion is hotly debated, given certain facts of life. In April 2004, Sharon thus came up with his highly controversial Gaza withdrawal plan. In addition to the removal of Gaza's 8,000 Jews, some settlements in Samaria, the northern West Bank, were also given an eviction notice. The world had been clamoring for such Israeli moves for decades.
Those who had conquered territories sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles away from home in the name of their own nations' security somehow couldn't figure out the life-threatening problems Israel was constantly faced with due to the armistice lines imposed upon it in 1949 by the United Nations. As is well known by now, those lines made Israel a mere nine miles wide at its strategic waist, where most of the nation's population and industry is located.
One needn't be Napoleon to figure out what this all meant to a nation grossly out-manned and out-gunned, surrounded by enemies sworn to its demise. And, as would become the norm, the United Nations only stepped in after the Jews turned the tide of the Arab invasion in 1948. Israel was never meant to be a nine-mile-wide rump state, but that's how it was left when the lines were drawn in 1949, marking the point where the Jews finally turned back the invasion of a half-dozen Arab armies supplied to the teeth with weaponry left over by the Allies from World War II and led, in Transjordan, by British officers. The UN stepped in to limit Arab losses, not to prevent their blatant aggression. This behavior would be repeated in subsequent decades as well.
Arab settlers from elsewhere then, once again, poured into the disputed territories of Judea, Samaria and Gaza following the 1948 war. As leading international legal scholars like Eugene Rostow have pointed out, the territories in question had largely been unapportioned state lands belonging to the original Mandate, open to settlement by Arabs, Jews, and others as well. After 1949, however, only Arabs were able to move there, after Transjordan's internationally unrecognized land grab.
Purely Arab Transjordan, comprising all the land on the east bank of the Jordan River, had already been created by the British in 1922 from almost 80% of the original 1920 borders of the Mandate of Palestine, and Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria -- the "West Bank" -- had been massacred by the Arabs in the 1920s and '30s. During this same time period, the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission documented massive waves of Arabs (scores of thousands in just a few months) pouring into the Mandate from Syria, Egypt, North Africa and elsewhere. Many more Arabs entered under cover of darkness and were simply never recorded -- more "native Palestinians." Thanks to the Jews, the Mandate was economically booming, drawing Arabs in from the entire region.
While all of this has been repeated ad nauseam, it must be stated yet again. The architects of famed UN Security Council Resolution 242 (Rostow included), carefully worded the final, accepted draft so that Israel would not be expected to have to return to its pre-'67, suicidal armistice lines. Indeed, the resolution called for the creation of "secure and recognized borders" to replace those lines. The bulk of Israel's settlements have been placed with such a strategic territorial compromise in mind. While some will have to go as a trade off for a real peace agreement, others will have to stay.
The area under discussion is tiny to begin with. When Egypt held Gaza and Jordan held the West Bank for almost two decades, no one called for the creation of an additional Arab state - a second such entity in "Palestine." Yet, after 1967, the world demanded this of the Jews, expecting them to bare their necks to bring this about (while ignoring the plight of 30 million stateless Kurds, millions of Black African Sudanese, and others being slaughtered in the name of Arab nationalism). And the American Foggy Folks constantly make the point that the additional Arab state must not be a Bantustan.
Guess what? Justice does not demand that the boundaries and such of any 22nd or 23rd Arab state -- for which there really is no room -- come at the expense of security for the sole state of the Jews.
[Part 1 of 2]