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Jerry Rapp , Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at SUNY College of Optometry in New York.
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By Jerry Rapp
May 9, 2003
The contention that Israeli settlements built on land occupied by Israel after the war of June, 1967, are the major obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is a red herring. That war, the third in just 19 years that Israel was forced to wage in self-defense, was virtually universally recognized at the time as being necessary for Israel's survival because of provocative and belligerent threats from its Arab neighbors.
In those first 19 years of modern Israel's existence as a democratic country, before the existence of a single Israeli settlement, she was under constant attack from Arabs who were intent on driving the Jews out of the Middle East. During that same time period, Israel absorbed Jewish survivors of mankind's most despicable act of inhumanity, the Holocaust, as well as countless Jewish refugees who were being persecuted in a variety of Arab countries where they had been living for centuries. These people and the Jews who were already in Israel, many of whose families had been there for generations, fulfilled a biblical dream by converting a land of swamps into "a land flowing with milk and honey." In addition to setting up and maintaining a vibrant, responsible and responsive governmental structure, they founded and augmented various institutions that flourished in the arts and humanities, sciences and a host of technological fields, despite being in a constant state of war.
During that same time period, the West Bank and Gaza were occupied by Jordan and Egypt, respectively. Never once did either of these countries offer the Palestinians, their downtrodden Arab brothers and sisters, even an acre of this land for a state. Rather, they and other Arab countries were content to allow the Palestinians to live in misery and nurture their hatred of Israel. In the early 1970s, King Hussein of Jordan even went to war against the Palestine Liberation Organization, forerunner of the Palestinian Authority, trying to destroy it.
Before June, 1967, the distance across Israel at its narrowest point was less than the distance from the northern to the southern tip of Manhattan. From a military perspective alone, there was very good reason to hold on to the occupied land as a buffer against yet another attack.
The real reason peace has not been achieved between Israel and the Palestinians is because many Palestinians and other Arabs as well, still, at this point in time, prefer that Israel not exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East. Since 1948, for the entire 54 plus years since Israel joined the family of nations, textbooks and other educational materials in Palestinian schools and in schools throughout the Arab world have been filled with anti-Semitic distortions and propaganda, essentially ensuring that several generations of Arab youth would grow up hating Israel and Jews. The weekly Friday sermonizers at Arab mosques spewed forth venomous anti-Israel and anti-Semitic diatribes, reinforcing a maniacal hatred of Jews.
A poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media & Communication Centre, a respected Palestinian polling group (Public Opinion Poll No. 45; May 29-31, June 1-2, 2002), which used a random sample of 1179 Palestinians over the age of 18 living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, produced the following results: 65.3% either oppose or strongly oppose the Oslo agreement, 52.3% either somewhat oppose or strongly oppose peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israel and 51.1% want the end result of the current Intifada to be the liberation of all of historic Palestine.
Just this past year, in 2002 (the 21st century), a professor at a university in Saudi Arabia published an article in which he claimed that Jews use the blood of Muslim and Christian children to bake hamentaschen (a traditional delicacy) for the Jewish holiday of Purim. How insane and/or immersed in hatred does one have to be to believe such outrageous propaganda?
After the Six Day War in 1967, there were some prominent Israelis who urged the government not to settle the land occupied during the war, foreseeing a potential nightmare (even though the Arab countries involved refused to take back the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights in exchange for a peace treaty). We will never know what might have occurred had their advice been heeded. To suggest, however, in view of the historical record, that all would have been peace and harmony without the existence of the settlements, is a pipe dream.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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