“The effacement of the Jewishness of Palestine has characterized the Palestinian Arab national movement since it began. They want complete deletion of the Jewish presence in and history of the country…” From One State, Two States by historian Benny Morris.
Jews in the state of Israel and before that, Jews in Palestine, have experienced the scourge of Islamic terrorism persistently for decades, and this tragically continues to be part of Israel’s national experience. But the US experience of Islamic terrorism was limited until the ghastly attacks of Al Qaeda on 9/11.
Israeli security forces have always retaliated against the perpetrators of Islamic terrorism with great severity. And to the credit of President George Bush, he, too, did not let the grass grow under his feet following 9/11.
He sent US troops almost immediately to Afghanistan to defeat the Islamic fanatic rulers, the Taliban, on the grounds that the Taliban had sheltered Al Qaeda and gave the barbaric Muslim Al Qaeda refuge for many years. The 2001 War in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom, began at the beginning of October 2001, and within a few weeks, US and British troops accompanied by massive US air power routed the Taliban, whose leaders fled to Pakistan.
Unfortunately, the Taliban regrouped and returned to fight a difficult insurgency against the present democratic regime in Afghanistan. An international military coalition is conducting the war against the Taliban terrorists to this day, and the outcome is still far from clear.
What exactly motivated US president George Bush to launch Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan? The immediate conceptual trigger was obviously the deadly and extremely destructive Al Qaeda terrorism in the US on 9/11. The US sought retribution for this Islamic crime.
Al Qaeda were based in Afghanistan. So it made sense for the US to attack Al Qaeda there. Exacting retribution against the Taliban for giving Al Qaeda refuge in Afghanistan was also surely a factor.
But beyond the conceptual trigger and beyond the desire for retribution, there was also surely a desire for justice. Al Qaeda committed a crime of indescribable dimensions in the US on 9/11. Billions of dollars in property were demolished. 3000 innocent US citizens were barbarically murdered. Social and economic repercussions from the Al Qaeda attacks left long term scars on the US.
The plain need to obtain justice for these crimes is what ultimately motivated the US to go after Al Qaeda as it did in Afghanistan in October 2001. And in order to obtain justice, there was no option but to employ military force.
In the case of Al Qaeda, 9/11, Afghanistan and Operation Enduring Freedom there is a clear line of causality and logic governing the chain of events, a clear group to target. One thing led to the next and there is a strong connecting pattern between everything that happened. Including the employment of military force to obtain justice.
The situation Israel faces vis a vis the Palestinians however is more complex. For one thing, and perhaps principally, the Palestinian populace is no longer united under the Palestinian Authority umbrella as it was between 1993 and 2007 following the Oslo Accords.
In 2007 Hamas overthrew Palestinian Authority rule in the Gaza Strip and took power there, tyrannically. On account of Hamas’s rabid Islamic terrorist and anti-Jewish foundations, southern Israel is periodically deluged with lethal Islamic rockets.
For its part, Israel’s Air Force responds massively to these rocket attacks. But the Hamas terrorists and their sister Islamic fanatic groups in Gaza are not deterred. This super motivation is surely the product of rabid Jew hatred derived from the Koran. The terrorists simply cannot restrain themselves from wanting to kill Jewish people.
But while Israel is forced to contend with physical violence from Hamas & Co. in Gaza, the country is constantly stabbed in the back and humiliated through verbal violence from the ranks of the Palestinian Authority. The lies and the calumny to which the Palestinian Authority subjects Israel, which it will not recognize as a Jewish state, are endless.
See for example how PA official Saeb Erekat brazenly condemned Prime Minister Netanyahu’s groundbreaking Bar Ilan speech in June 2009:
"Netanyahu's speech closed the door to permanent status negotiations, We ask the world not to be fooled by his use of the term Palestinian state because he qualified it. He declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, said refugees would not be negotiated and that settlements would remain.”
The Palestinians then went the extra mile and terminated negotiations altogether.
Erekat’s assessment of Netanyahu’s speech is not reasoned diplomatic diction, but ranting hyperbole without any basis in truth or reality. Typically, Erekat pours gasoline on the fire instead of saying anything that might conceivably lead to a reasonable discussion. Or reasonable and logical conclusions.
This demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Palestinian side does not have one drop of good will for Israel, and without that living in peace and coexistence is just a bad joke. No one should take it seriously.
In a more recent interview, Erekat venomously threatens to employ Palestinian statehood recognition as a legal hatchet they intend to hold to Israel’s head:
“There is no Israeli negotiating partner” – this is how Saeb Erekat the head of the Palestinian negotiating team lashed out recently. According to Erekat, Israel is guilty of halting peace efforts and therefore the Palestinians must turn to the UN in September and seek recognition for a state of their own. “After the vote passes, Palestine can sue Israel and Lieberman for crimes committed under occupation,” Erekat stated.
There is a long list of things the Palestinian Authority and its officials do to antagonize and humiliate Israel. One egregious example is their naming of streets in the West Bank in honor of terrorists who committed attacks and murdered Jews.
The future Palestinian Authority presidential compound will be built along a street named for an infamous Hamas arch-terrorist.
“The Ramallah street was named for notorious Hamas suicide bomb mastermind Yihyeh Ayyash, also known as the "engineer," who was the architect of multiple attacks, including a 1994 bombing of a Tel Aviv bus, which killed 20 people, and injured dozens.”
Of course the most hostile thing the Palestinian Authority has ever done to Israel is its unilateral UN statehood recognition initiative. This statehood declaration is nothing but a declaration of war. It completely abrogates and undermines the 20 year tradition of bilateral negotiations between the sides. It is also devoid of practical or legal significance and only represents the Palestinians’ continued objective to knife Israel in the back.
The PA is guilty of these and other gross transgressions, and it is also impossible to permeate the hermetic seal around their brains with the light of reason and mutual justice, or any light at all.
In the interest of lasting peace and coexistence between Jews and Arabs in the area circumscribed by the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, how is it possible to break the ice with the Palestinians psychologically? Achieve some form of mental reconciliation whereby they accept Israel as the Jewish state, for example.
With Hamas and the other Islamic terror gangs in Gaza the justified reaction is painfully clear. “When someone comes to kill you, kill him first…” sayd the Talmud Babli. In response to the Islamic terrorist crimes Hamas commits against Jews in Israel, retribution and justice can only be purchased through employing military force.
In the final analysis Israel will also be compelled to employ military force against the Palestinian Authority’s crimes too. The violent confrontation may start as early as September following the fateful UN statehood vote. The PA is actively organizing massive demonstrations in the territories following the statehood vote. They insist these boisterous demonstrations will remain non-violent, but Israel’s security forces and the IDF are preparing for the worst case scenario.
If as feared the PA demonstrations turn violent, Israel must fight fire with fire, as in the past. And in the final analysis the hostile Jew-hating Palestinian community will only burn itself.
But regardless of whether or not the September demonstrations turn into a violent conflagration, the question remains whether force is indeed the magic formula for teaching the PA Arabs to stop hating Jews and longing for the destruction of Israel through the Palestinian right of return, for ending their demonstrations of hostility and malice in a thousand other ways that will only prevent peace and co-existence far into the future.
Is violent force against PA Arabs, on the lines of the US in Afghanistan, the missing link in achieving a permanent settlement with them?