by Rabbi Dov Fischer in The American Spectator
Most Israelis are not expert on matters pertaining to New Hampshire, Iowa, or Delaware. In similar vein, residents of New Hampshire, Iowa, and Delaware are not expert on matters regarding Israel. As a result, we get people like Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Queen Nancy Pelosi, King Obama, and Kamala Harris foolishly and ignorantly pronouncing their support for a “Two-State Solution” that would divide Israel by allotting the Jews the western portion of the land and crafting a pseudo-nation for Arabs on the eastern portion of the land. Actually, “Israel” and “Palestine” are the same thing, just like “Siam” and “Thailand.” Until May 1948, the Jewish country under British colonial rule was called “Palestine.” After the Jews decolonized and liberated the land, it was named “Israel.”
There already are 22 Arab Muslim countries. There is only one Jewish polity. The proponents of this “Two-State Solution” would call the Jewish half “Israel” and the Arab Muslim half “Palestine.” It would matter no differently if they would call the Jewish half “Palestine” and the Arab Muslim half “Israel.” It is one and the same land, even less divisible than the United States was when several southern states declared that they would create their own country from the whole. They called it the “Confederate States of America.” They could just as well have called it “Palestine.” It was not going to happen.
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Those who live in a world of reality know that the “Two-State Solution” is now the “Too Late Delusion.” That train has left that station just as Pete Buttigieg perhaps finally can confirm that the train has left East Palestine, Ohio.
“Back in the day,” there was an illusion and delusion that the Arab Muslims of Judea and Samaria wanted to “make peace” with Israel. There was the “Rogers Plan” proposed by President Nixon’s Secretary of State, William Rogers. Then Gerald Ford sent Henry Kissinger to shuttle and create such a deal. Jimmy Carter sent Cyrus Vance. George H.W. Bush had James Baker. Bill Clinton sent Madeleine Albright. George W. Bush sent Condoleezza Rice. Obama had Hillary. A “Two-State Solution” never happened. It was and always will be a delusion. President Trump and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, were the first and only who figured out it will never happen.
The Arabs of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza have shown even Israel’s “peace camp” that they never will recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish country in the Middle East. They deny there was a Jewish Holy Temple, which thereby denies all of Christianity, too. Indeed, they have driven great Christian communities out of the region. Jewish “peace camp” types did not fully grasp Arab Muslim designs until Yasser Arafat was offered 97 percent of Judea and Samaria plus control over East Jerusalem plus extra land from northern Israel, where the population is majority Arab. That is, he was offered everything by Israel’s weakest and most hated Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, who was ousted after his first term. Only then did we and even Bill Clinton, who brokered that disastrous Oslo deal, come to realize that, sonovogun, the guy does not want peace but, rather, Israel utterly eradicated. Ever since then, the Israeli majority understands that the Arab Muslims on their east will not recognize Jews’ right to any country.
Obama spent eight years pressuring Israel to give those Arab Muslims anything they asked for. They never had so pliable a White House. But they opted instead to keep going to war. They elected a lifelong Arab terrorist, Abu Mazen (also goes by Mahmoud Abbas), as head of a “Palestine Authority.” He is in the 19th year of his four-year term. Got that? Nineteen years ago, he was elected to a four-year term by the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, and he never allowed another election. Democrats have no qualms about deeming Abu Mazen/Mahmoud Abbas as the rightful leader of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria.
Jews in Israel tried to see whether they could get anywhere with Arafat or this successor, and they even entered into the Oslo Accords of 1993. A material term of that deal required Arafat and Abbas to stop inculcating their schoolchildren to murder Jews. They breached the contract and instead intensified such training, even setting up summer camps for kids to learn to be terrorists. In American schools, kids have to learn Longfellow’s description of Paul Revere’s midnight ride or Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. By contrast, in the section of Judea and Samaria presently run by Muslim Arabs like Abbas, the children spend summer learning to recite songs and poems about slaughtering Jews. This has continued 30 years unabated since the Oslo “peace deal” was signed. Israelis have learned the hard way: Arab Muslims do not honor sworn peace deals they sign with Israel. They simply want Israel dead. “Peace negotiations” merely are a tactic to break Israeli morale and induce Western governments to pressure Israel.
In the Oslo Accords, the Arabs promised — as a material element of the contract — that they no longer would agitate against Israel in international forums. That means all the recent activity in the “International Court of [In]justice” and “International Criminal Court” aimed against Israel violates the 1993 Oslo Accords. The treaty has been breached over and over, and it is null and void.
The Israeli political center and moderate left were told they would have peace with Gaza if they handed it over to the Muslim Arabs, so they did in 2005. Israel got Hamas in Gaza. They were told they would have peace with Lebanon if they handed over a swath of neutral demilitarized territory to the Muslim Arabs. So they did. Israel got Hezbollah. Over time, Hamas developed and received from Iran rockets and missiles that almost can reach central Israel from the south, and Hezbollah has developed and received from Iran rockets and missiles that almost can reach central Israel from the north. Accordingly, times have changed forever.
The Knesset of Israel firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel would pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region.…
As of last December 31, there are some 340,000 Jews living in eastern parts of Jerusalem and its surrounding neighborhoods and 517,407 more throughout the rest of Judea and Samaria. Thus, there are now 860,000 Jews there, comprising approximately one-tenth of the entire Israeli population — and they would have to be uprooted from their homes to meet the demands of a “Two-State Solution.” The very notion is preposterous. It is not going to happen.
Here is why this discussion is important to all Americans in the Kamala Harris context: As so many have written, Kamala Harris is not a thinker. She will start off well by holding big rallies and delivering to each assemblage a speech written by someone else who can think. She can read fine, and she will read and cackle. Her cackling and personal character stains will not derail her. Rather, she will run into trouble over the next three months when she has to talk off-script: maybe in TV and radio interviews, maybe in debates, but it will come up. That is when she becomes a deer in headlights because (i) she will stumble into territory she does not know, and (ii) does not know how to know. So she will spout plans and programs and parrot others’ ideas, presenting them as her own. Her abysmal ignorance will emerge when she is forced by circumstances to go off script.
When she lectured Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that she expects Israel to pursue a “Two-State Solution,” she simply muttered an old and tired proposal from the 1970s and 1980s that is as obsolete, out of touch with the times, as are most cars from those years. Half a century has passed. Circumstances have changed. Even Israel’s moderate left has learned the lesson taught by Hamas on the ceded south and Hezbollah on the ceded north. Israelis have watched the advancement of missiles and rockets these past 50 years. Moreover, one million Jews, a tenth of the population, now live in Judea and Samaria. The Knesset now is on record at 8-1 that there will never be an Arab sovereignty west of the Jordan. Israel’s haters on American campuses can thank themselves, in part, for chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.” They reopened the question whether the area is suitable to accommodate two countries. They make an excellent point; Israel’s Knesset now agrees. The point and message have been heard all over Israel: only one country, not two, can exist between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Kamala Harris, reading from someone else’s script advocating a “Two-State Solution,” does not grasp that such a proposal instead is a Too Late Delusion. Judea and Samaria will remain under Jewish sovereignty. Watch closely as Harris, despite all the early media hype, starts stumbling over facts, proposals, and ideas she does not understand. The Harris excitement will abate, and her unsuitability will become palpable with the passage of time as we unburden what has been.
Or, for those who love a Venn diagram:
Originally published in The American Spectator</em
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore on Flickr