We hear endless calls demanding Israel reach an agreement no matter what sacrifices and hardships it may require of the Israeli Jews. They are called upon by the European Union as well as each of its individual states to pull all the “settlers” off of their lands and return all of the areas beyond the Green Line, including the entirety of the Old city and East Jerusalem, to facilitate a viable Palestinian State. The most strident, which includes some from the Obama Administration as well as the State Department of the United States, among others, demand that Israel surrender a goodly portion of the Negev Desert in order to allow for Palestine to be fully contiguous and relieve the Palestinian of the necessity to cross Israeli controlled land when going from the West Bank to Gaza and back again. So, let us assume that Israel build a tunnel at Israeli expense to hold a five lane in each direction highway as well as train tracks for each direction in order to not have to surrender the Negev and granted the Palestinians complete autonomy and allowed the combined area of the West Bank and Gaza to become Palestine and see what would be the likely outcome. There are those who would like you to believe that such actions would bring all the violence and terrorism to an end and the two countries would live side by side in peace and prosperity.
The first problem which would need to be addressed by the new state of Palestine would be how to forge one governing body out of the two current and separate leaderships. Hamas is ruling in Gaza while Fatah as the Palestinian Authority rules in the West Bank, and they have yet to learn to play well together. If the past is any indicator, our best bet would be that Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood would win this argument and thus be the eventual governing force. Then comes the second problem and boy is it a problem. Lebanon, Syria and Jordan would take the formation of the Palestinian state as the starting bell in a race to see who could ship their Palestinian refugees out of the camps and into the West Bank or Gaza. Using population numbers provided by UNRWA from various sources, we can approximate the statistics for the state of Palestine. We would start with the core populations of the Gaza Strip which has approximately 1,110,000 Palestinians and the West Bank which has approximately 779,000 and add to these the approximate number the refugees from Lebanon, 425,000; Syria, 472,000; and Jordan 1,984,000 bringing the total population from a starting point of 1.9 Million and add an inflow of 2.9 Million giving the new country of Palestine a population approaching 5 Million where close to 3 Million would be new refugees who had no place to live and little if any resources. This alone would be sufficient to make the idea of a Palestinian state no longer viable without unimaginably massive infusions of cash from the outside. So, the first problem is how does the world force the countries currently holding Palestinian refugees prisoners in squalid refugee camps to continue providing services to these camps and to slowly incorporate them in numbers which could prove manageable? Should all of the refugees be dumped immediately into the newly formed Palestine, the country would collapse before it took its first step. For those who disbelieve this would be the most likely scenario, please look back at what Kuwait did immediately after the first Gulf War when the allied powers pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1991 and the Kuwaitis reacted to the fact that Yasser Arafat had backed Saddam Hussein. The Kuwaitis evicted close to half a Million Palestinian workers sending them to refugee camps or wherever, just as long as it was away from Kuwait.
The next item which would need to be addressed would be whether the terror and violence against Israel and the Jews could be expected or would the Palestinian state decry that it was failing due to the Israelis still restricting their freedom of action and stifling their economy and still enforcing a form of continued occupation. Insane, you say. This is exactly the claim made by Hamas, UNRWA, the United Nations, The UNHRC, the EU, numerous individual European governments, and is the primary dialogue espoused by many NGO’s which claim to be for fair treatment of the Palestinians with some even demand that Israel be deconstructed and made into a single state called Palestine with the Jews living under Arab Muslim rule. Almost every expose written about the starving refugees in Gaza reports that Israel is still placing Gaza under a virtual state of occupation. They report on the dire condition in the refugee camps that ring Gaza City. Truth be told, these refugee camps are in a dire state as they are denied basic necessities, the refugees are prevented from leaving, they are denied permission to work except at the most menial of jobs for substandard wages, they are denied the receipt of aid packages and funding which are diverted by Hamas to their own leaders and favored elites. Meanwhile, the Palestinians who are in favor with the ruling Hamas order live well, have a water park and a luxury mall and have a higher standard of living than the Palestinians living anywhere else including in the West Bank. There are an elite portion of the Palestinians living within Gaza who truly are living the good life at the expense of the rest, especially the refugees who are kept in the worst of conditions simply for political use and to give the NGO’s the videos and pictures with which to decry the Israeli continued occupation. What they are trying to cover up is that Israel removed every Jew and every IDF soldier and completely evacuated all of Gaza and did not impose the much criticized blockade until months later after Hamas had forced the Palestinian authority from power in a coup and it became apparent that Hamas was using the ports to import additional weapons, explosives, heavy weapons, fighters, rockets, mortars and everything they would need for a full scale war on Israel.
And last but not least, how long would it be after the granting of a Palestinian state would it be before terror attacks, rockets, mortars, sniper fire, and other general attacks would be raining down on the plains of Israel sitting beneath the Judean Hills which were awarded to the Palestinians for their state? How long before snipers would be shooting from the Temple mount into Western Jerusalem just as they had when Jordan held that high ground? How long before flights out of Ben Gurion International airport became targets for anti-aircraft shoulder launched missiles? Unlike Gaza, once the Palestinians have their own state with borders with friendly Arab and Muslim countries and fully functioning airports, then they will be able to import every sort of weapon their hearts desire. They would very likely make treaties with other Muslim nations and allow them to send troops into the Palestinian state to train and to use Israel as their live-fire range. If the Palestinians were to be given their state on their terms it would end in tragedy. They would use the vantage points overlooking the most densely populated areas of Israel which also contain the vast majority of their industry and infrastructure to disrupt and destroy everything they could manage to strike. Israel would come under twenty-four hour a day-seven days a week-fifty-two weeks a year barrages until they would have no choice but to declare they were under a state of war and respond in kind. The world would come unglued and respond with a fury so far unseen against Israel when Israelis finally demanded their government defend them and end the insanity which the world seems bent on imposing upon Israel. The world needs to clean or remove the glasses they currently use when taking stock of the situations in the Middle East. The miscalculations and misconception which are taking hold are beyond belief and the repercussions which will be produced in time will be nothing short of horrific. Mistakes in judgment have been made before and have always led to calamities which could have been avoided if avoidance had not been the fashion of the day. Every time in all of history there have been those who called the situations for what they were. Churchill predicted the wall built by the Soviet Union between East and West Europe, especially in Germany and Berlin in particular. Ze’ev Jabotinsky forewarned the Polish Jews that annihilation was soon coming to their communities. King Leonidas warned the Greek City States before he and his three hundred Spartans marched to Thermopylae to face the Persian hordes. And true to form, this time has had those who have sounded the clarion call for thoughtful and necessary response to the coming challenges which promise to be catastrophic if these warnings are not heeded. Yet, the loudest voices are calling out claiming all will be well if we simply take the easiest and most expedient of actions. No need for critical analyses as the correct path is obvious, give those who make the most noise that which they clamor for and they will be quieted and never demand another thing. After all, it works for their children; does it not work with yours too?
Beyond the Cusp
