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P. David Hornik P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Jerusalem whose work has appeared in many Israeli, Jewish, and political publications. Reach him at:
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By P. David Hornik
March 10, 2004
Since the Six Day War of 1967, and especially since Israel gave up the Sinai in the Camp David accords of 1978, it's been a Sinaitic axiom of those claiming the mantle of rationality - as opposed to those blinded by retrograde Israeli historical attachments and security concerns - that the cause of peace and stability is best advanced by transferring land from the control of Israel, a pro-Western democracy, to the control of Arab dictatorships and terrorist organizations.
Cut to 2004. The Sinai, no longer in Israel's hands, is now crisscrossed by underground tunnels that keep the Islamists of Gaza well stocked with Kalashnikovs and explosives, all under the winking eye of the Mubarak regime. Southern Lebanon, once patrolled by Israeli troops until Ehud Barak yanked them out as part of his "peace" juggernaut, is now Hizbullahland, the border lined with twelve thousand Iranian-supplied missiles that hold northern and central Israel in a blackmail of terror.
As for the West Bank and Gaza, once an "ugly duckling" of "Israeli occupation," it's now a fair creature combining the worst traits of North Korea and Haiti, regimented hatred and fanaticism coexisting with corruption and anarchy.
Last week, for instance, Khalil Zaban, editor of a weekly specializing in human rights and media affairs that had waged a campaign against the corruption, was killed by masked gunmen as he was leaving his office in Gaza City. The mayor of Nablus on the West Bank, Gassan Shakah, resigned to protest the Palestinian Authority's failure to rein in armed gangs that have been terrorizing the town.
To cap off the week, on Friday in Gaza City a mob of thousands attacked the central prison in an attempt to lynch four taxi drivers suspected of raping and murdering a fifteen-year-old girl whose strangled body was found in a garbage bin. In reaction to the turmoil, the PA announced it was reinstating the death penalty for convicted murderers and "collaborators" - a broad category that supposedly refers to those who cooperate with Israel but in practice includes just about anyone the regime has a grudge against.
That's the latest from the Palestinian Authority, brainchild of Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin, embraced and encouraged by U.S. administrations in the name of peace for Israel and justice and "hope" for the Palestinians.
But it gets even worse. Opponents of a Palestinian state used to warn that it would be free to form alliances with other Arab countries and bring enemy forces to Israel's doorstep. Well, the PA is not yet a state, but it's already happening. In an expose in last weekend's Maariv, Amit Cohen describes how Hizbullah - essentially an arm of Iran with an assist from Syria - now spreads it tentacles all over the West Bank and is building a presence in Gaza, too, not to mention recruiting Arabs for terror acts within Israel proper.
The principle seems to be that where there was relative order - Israeli control, costly and difficult but enabling a semblance of normal life - chaos shall reign, the void filled by the worst forces you could think of.
And now they're cooking up another treat for us.
Ariel Sharon has announced his unilateral withdrawal plan from Gaza and unspecified parts of the West Bank, and though some reports claimed the U.S. was dubious and reluctant, now Condoleezza Rice has hailed this "historic chance" and the U.S. is stepping up its involvement. In an event more than tinged with the surreal, Shimon Peres was already dispatched to Egypt to discuss its possibly taking over the Gaza-Sinai border after Israel leaves.
Peres, after all, is now an opposition MK whose party was trounced - seemingly - into irrelevancy in the 2003 elections. Glassy-eyed visionary of the New Middle East, he's also the person most responsible for the Oslo debacle, convincing or pressuring Yitzhak Rabin to import Yasser Arafat's PLO to our backyard and plunge both Israel and Palestine into death and misery.
And Egypt? That's the country that signed a peace treaty with Israel twenty-five years ago and is now among the world's worst purveyors of anti-Semitism. It's also the very country that's been fueling the Oslo terror war since 1993 with steady infusions of deadly materiel through the Sinai tunnels - grossly illegal under the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, which states that "each party undertakes to ensure that acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, or violence do not originate from... its territory..."
In other words, it's like sending the village lunatic to propose guarding the hens to the fox.
Do the authorities know something we don't? It would be nice to think so. Just as, in 1993, they explained that the PLO would look out for our security and crush Hamas with its unfettered power. Just as Barak assured us that once Israel had left every inch of Lebanese soil, the Arab side would have no further claims and Hizbullah would fold up and go home - or be pressured to by an indignant international community. Just as the right-winger Menachem Begin proclaimed "No more war!" and explained that the entire Sinai was a necessary "price" for lasting amity with Egypt.
Israel's top security officials have offered some opinions on a Gaza withdrawal.
Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon: "Evacuating the settlements will give a tailwind to terrorism... Everything that the Palestinians see as a crack in our ability to stand strong, distances the end of terrorism."
Head of the General Security Service, Avi Dichter: "The evacuation is dangerous, and the retreat will give the Palestinians a sense of victory and encouragement for terrorism."
Commander of the Gaza Division, Gadi Shamni: "Talk in Israel of the possibility of a unilateral retreat encourages the terrorist organizations to commit more attacks."
Head of the IDF Intelligence Branch, Aharon Ze'evi Farkash: "The Sharon plan is understood by the Palestinians as a victory for terrorism... It will [prove] the effectiveness of terrorism in the view of Islamist elements."
They made similar warnings about Oslo and similar warnings about the Lebanon withdrawal. Israeli and American policymakers seem to regard such admonitions from the Israeli military as a pleasant counterpoint, a whimsical diversion from the serious business of statecraft - and from the iron postulate that Israeli land giveaways are always for the good. (How did Don McLean put it? "They would not listen, they're not listening still/ Perhaps they never will...")
So they're all converging on the latest plan, the professionals, the experts - Sharon, Peres, Rice, with the team of William Burns, Stephen Hadley, and Elliot Abrams returning here soon to hash out more of the details. It would be nice to think that this time they know what they're doing, that the Arab-Islamic world will somehow conform to their calculations and calibrations. Instead it feels more like a noose tightening.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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