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Gerald A. Honigman is a contributing writer for , a monthly publication based in southern Florida.
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By Gerald A. Honigman
October 7, 2003
I read of your most recent criticism of Israel the other day.
You and your State Department (which actively opposed President Truman's recognition of a newly-reborn Israel in the first place ) don't like Israel's security fence, especially its possible route.
You claim that Israel must stick to the "Green Line" of its 9-mile wide, armistice line-existence, imposed by the UN at the close of Israel's War of Independence in 1948. As usual, the UN got involved only after Israel had turned the tide of an Arab assault on its life. The UN then responded to limit the damage to the Arabs, not to protect Israel from their aggression. That's how Israel got to be 9-miles wide. I'll bet you drive further than that just to get to work. And let's not mention the territories our own nation came to possess, control, or manipulate - some thousands of miles away - in the name of our own national security interests.
Yet you can't seem to figure out that Israel's artificially-imposed, microscopic existence was a travesty of justice in desperate need of rectification. The post-'48 armistice lines were never meant to be "final borders."
Mr. Powell, I realize that your State Department doesn't want the second Arab state that is to be created within the original borders of Palestine as Britain received it on April 25, 1920 (Jordan emerging in 1922 on some 80% of the whole) to be a "bantustan," but whatever the size, shape, etc. that proposed 23rd Arab state might eventually be, it must not come at the expense of the security of the sole, resurrected state of the Jews. But, then again, your colleagues opposed that resurrection in the first place. And I don't see them supporting a "roadmap" for some thirty million stateless Kurds either.
It seems that justice for Arabs takes precedence over justice for everyone else with you folks. So understand the concerns that many of us have.
You repeat the Arab call for Israel to return to those pre-Six Day War suicidal lines. Yet you know full well that the very architects of the final version of UN Resolution # 242 - Eugene Rostow, Arthur Goldberg, etc. - had no such plans in mind...despite what Arabs and their supporters claim today. And they've written extensively about this, as have legal experts such as William O'Brien and others on related issues.
While they did not envision Israel holding on to large amounts of territory, they also did not expect a return to the status quo ante bellum given the fact that Israel had just fought a defensive war after being blockaded - a casus belli - at the Straits of Tiran and other hostile acts. And they stressed that any withdrawal must be linked to a total cessation of hostilities (not Arafat's temporary "Peace of the Quraysh" designed, in the Arabs' own words, as a "Trojan Horse") and the creation of secure and recognized borders to replace those fragile lines that your department now insists Israel retreat to.
Please don't suggest that Israel is prejudicing the outcome of negotiations by doing this. It's innocents are being blown apart constantly. What other nation would put up with what you expect Israel to absorb? You know full well that Arabs still want all of Israel proper (look at their websites, the PA's as well as Hamas')...so don't think that we're foolish enough to expect them to agree to a permanent compromise over the disputed territories.
Disputed, Sir...not "Palestinian" Arab lands.
As leading experts have explained, those lands were non-apportioned parts of the Mandate, and all people had the right to settle there. Indeed, scores of thousands of Arabs poured into it and Israel proper from surrounding Arab states because of Jewish capital developing the land. Your friend, Secretary of State Rumsfeld, addressed the issue of the territories nicely himself at a Town Hall meeting a while back. Ask him about it.
Mr. Powell, you're quite aware that most of Israel's population and industry lies in that narrow waist area bordering Judea and Samaria, the "West Bank." Those lands were not called by that latter name until British imperialism entered the scene in the early 20th century and Transjordan later seized the west bank of the Jordan River in 1948. Jews lived and owned land there until they were massacred by Arabs. Arabs would have never even known of Abraham's tomb in Hebron without the scriptures of the Jews they despise. If Judea must become Judenrein, then should Israel become Arabrein? Think about that a bit, Mr. Powell. I can, unfortunately, build a better case for the latter than you can for the former.
Israel has suffered, proportionally, many times over our 9/11. Yet when tragedy hit our own home, you unleashed your famous "Powell Doctrine"...massive retaliation against our enemies. B-52s, B-1s, Stealth bombers, cruise missiles, and such along with daisy cutter and bunker-buster bombs did our negotiating for us. And we insisted in toppling the regimes that were responsible and targeted their leaders. When we thought we knew where Saddam was dining, we leveled the place - innocent civilians and all. In short, despite your claims of differences, the hypocrisy and double standards stink...and many red-blooded Americans are among those who smell the stench.
Asking Israel to return to the Green Line when you know full well that Arabs have continuously responded that even a total Israeli withdrawal would still not make it "acceptable" is sickening. You're fully aware of the Arabs' "destruction in phases" strategy that they've spoken about since post-'67.
Many of us were hoping - despite the continuous influence of Big Oil and other multinational corporations - that the openly anti-Semitic, let alone anti-Zionist, stance of your department could finally be moderated. Your current unfair demands of a beleaguered ally do not bode well for this. I know this will tick you off, but, like it or not, many see an analogy to pre-World War II Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland here. You really don't want to buy "peace for all time " today the way Mr. Chamberlain sacrificed his Czech "friends" to Hitler at Munich, do you?
Demanding Israel to forsake necessary minor adjustments - i.e. extending its width from nine to perhaps fifteen or twenty miles - in light of the nature of the rejectionist enemy it faces is unfair, plain and simple. Other nations, including our own, have changed their borders and acquired territories for far less.
Views expressed by the author do not
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