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Israel is Palestine

By Charles A. Morse
web posted April 8, 2002

I spent time working in a factory in Israel near Gaza in 1988. During that time, I became friendly with several Palestinian Arabs who would come in from Gaza to work. My impression, based on discussions with them, was that while they insisted on a Palestinian state, they also liked and respected Israel and hoped that their state would co-exist peacefully alongside Israel. I doubt if they feel that way today and I no longer believe that their dream, one that I shared at the time, is now possible or probably ever was.

This is because the Palestinian elite, along with their Arab and Islamic allies, will never give up their dream of annihilating Israel. As Muslims, the Arabs view Israel as a non-Islamic state in the very heart of the "Ummah" or the Islamic motherland. The true believing Muslim believes that all of the Ummah must be under the rule of Islam, which, in Arabic, means submission. In this context, Arab rulers view any "peace" treaty with Israel as simply a temporary way station on the road to eventual conquest. Palestinian statehood and identity is nothing more than a ruse to incite jihad. The Arabs are willing to wait hundreds of years to achieve this end and they will never give up.

The Arab rulers have won the propaganda war against Israel by shrewdly forming an alliance with the international left and their media mouthpieces. The left has transformed the Arab struggle to destroy Israel into one in which the Arabs are cast as the victims of a big and cruel Israeli "occupation." Leftist intellectuals and savants, either wittingly or otherwise, have sold the world on the idea that Israel is "occupying" the West Bank and Gaza while the Arabs consider any part of Palestine that has not "submitted" to Islam to be "occupied." The left media provides an echo chamber for Arab atrocity propaganda while providing a "scientific" justification for Arab atrocities.

How should the State of Israel deal with this ongoing threat? First of all, Israel is Palestine for the same reason that British Honduras is Belize or Rhodesia is Zimbabwe. Upon independence in 1948, the Palestinian Jews adopted the name of Israel because this was the ancient and indigenous name of the land of the Torah. Israelis are as Palestinian as Arabs as both populations immigrated en masse to the area around the same time. For reasons that are interesting and worth studying, Israel failed to achieve sovereignty in all of Palestine west of the Jordan in 1948. This failure is the cause of today's conflict and confusion regarding who is a Palestinian. In addition, Jordan is also actually Palestine east of the Jordan.

If Israel had achieved sovereignty in Palestine west of the Jordan in 1948, the Palestinian Arabs would be Israeli Arabs today. Israel is now backed into a corner and is probably going to be pressured into recognizing yet another Palestinian state west of the Jordan. If this state comes into being, it will probably continue to agitate for conquest regardless of who is in charge and, therefore, Israel will have to go to war periodically, at great sacrifice to all parties, in order to maintain the peace. This may be a moot point, however, as the Palestinians will, no doubt, not budge from the same positions they've maintained all along which is that Jewish cities and towns will have to be evacuated, Jerusalem will have to be surrendered, and millions of Palestinian Arabs will have their right granted to return to Haifa and Tel Aviv.

While I don't think this will happen in the near future, I do believe that Israel will eventually have no choice but to annex the West Bank and Gaza. If and when this happens, it would be appropriate for the Palestinian Arab residents to be given the option of becoming Israeli, Jordanian, or Palestinian citizens. The Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza should, at that time, be granted as much autonomy as possible with Israel maintaining overall control.

Palestinian Arabs should be allowed to return to live behind the pre-1967 Armistice lines as long as they agree to swear a loyalty oath to the State of Israel. A violation of this oath, such as engaging in subversive activity, should be cause, if a conviction occurs after a civil proceeding, for expulsion.

Chuck Morse is a talk show host on WROL 950 AM in Boston.

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