Caroline Glick discusses dumping the Oslo paradigm:
The vast majority [of Israelis] love the country, want to defend it, don’t want to surrender, don’t want to establish a Palestinian state that’s going to be the death of the country, and don’t want to be beholden to foreign powers, but this view is never expressed.
One of the reasons we have a situation where we are going back time and time again, beating our heads against the wall with this false paradigm of peace on the basis of the establishment of a Palestinian state, is because the left has discounted any alternative policy. Every time we say it doesn’t work, the left always comes back and says, “What’s your alternative?”
Well, the alternative of course is to annex Judea and Samaria, but we haven’t had any discussion of that possible alternative for the past thirty years. It’s been discredited by the left because they don’t want to discuss it. So most Israelis, because we never talk about it, just assume it’s not a possibility.
The paradigm is even stronger in the US. The recent ‘unity pledge’ for American Jews promoted by the ADL explicitly calls for a “two-state solution.” Similarly, some time ago a synagogue that I belong to appointed a committee to vet suggested speakers. Some of the members were afraid of pro-Palestinian activists, and others of ‘right-wing extremists’. The compromise that they reached was that an acceptable speaker on Israel had to support the “two-state solution!”
Since Oslo, the ‘centrist’ position has been that the only way to end the conflict is to establish a Palestinian state in essentially all of the territories and re-divide Jerusalem. But this was not always the case. During the 1970’s and 80’s, the moderate point of view was that Israel could trade some — but definitely not all — of the territories for a peace agreement. It was generally thought that Jordan would receive the parts of Judea and Samaria that Israel did not retain, or perhaps some kind of Palestinian autonomous entity would be created. But after the desecrations of the Jordanian occupation, almost nobody imagined splitting Jerusalem again. Few conceived of a sovereign Palestinian state, ruled by the murderous PLO.
Now we’ve had the Second Intifada (some call it ‘the Oslo War’). We’ve had a war with Hamas in Gaza and the Shalit affair. We’ve had some remarkably vicious terrorism like the Fogel murders. Rockets still fall on southern Israel and they are moving north.
Today the PLO demands all of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, and unashamedly admits that its goal is not to end the conflict, but to continue it until all of Israel has been replaced by an Arab state. Hamas, which didn’t exist until the late 1980’s, controls 40% of the Palestinian Arab population and is newly flush with weapons from the disintegrated Gadhafi regime.
Meanwhile, our ‘moderates’, following the Obama Administration’s lead along with the cowed Netanyahu government, keep calling for Israel to work together with the PLO in dismantling the Jewish state. But there are other options.
Lots of energy, thought, blood and astronomical amounts of money (mostly from the US) have gone into the futile effort to give life to a fantasy, a two-state solution with the PLO. What if it had gone into a plan that did not include the participation of terrorists? What if the idea that all states in the region, including Israel, need “secure and recognized boundaries” had not somehow fallen by the wayside?
What if the focus of the ‘peace process’ had really been peace and security rather than creating a Palestinian state at any cost?
Technorati Tags: Israel, Oslo process, Palestinians
I agree that we have retreated from basic positions which were better for us. I never thought that Prime Minister Netanyahu would agree to a Palestinian state much less speak about enthusiastically about it. But the alternative presented here , of annexing Judea and Samaria is in my mind a phony option. Why? Because no one, especially the United States, will support us if we make this move. This move will just mean we have thrown ourselves into global isolation. The Arabs greatest dream will come true and Israel will be totally alone , having lost all support from the U.S. government.
Now one could argue that we will get by without them all. They we will dwell alone as we are meant to do. But this seems to me a truly dangerous view. Imagine those U.N. sanctions resolutions coming one after the other. Imagine what will happen to our economy in time. Imagine how we would meet the jihad of jihads, in which all Islamic states make war against us with U.N. backing.
The truth is we have no good alternative. Prime Minister Netanyahu has chosen that alternative which seems to him most conducive to our survival. I am sure it is not because he trusts the Palestinians or really wants a Palestinian state. It is because he recognizes the reality of Israel’s situation and has to responsibly contend with the forces that would destroy us.
Dismantling the Oslo paradigm won’t be easy.
It continues like a leaden ship heading toward the sandbar.
Oslo has failed. The only solution to replace it is to demand full Israeli sovereignty over Yesha and a united Jerusalem.
This is the only real way to ensure lasting peace and Israel’s survival.
There is a lot of work ahead. The discredited Oslo paradigm is no longer viable, defensible or sustainable. It must and can be replaced with a solution that recognizes the justice of Israel’s claims to the entire Land Of Israel.
Starting today, this is what must be done.