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With her usual insightfulness, Caroline Glick deflates the myth about need
for a Palestinian State, and tells us honestly about the state of Palestine.
It is important to recall, as we are besieged daily with the clamour to "end
the occupation" and the calumny about "Israel's illegal occupation", that:
a.) the so-called "occupation" started ONLY because Israel had the audacity
to defend itself effectively against a war of annihilation begun against it
by Egypt and Syria on May 15, 1967 (when Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran,
the first of five casus belli per international law, perpetrated by Egypt
and Syria against Israel,which preceded the Israeli pre-emptive defensive
strike of June 5, 1967).
b.) the so-called "occupation" continued ONLY because those same Arab
countries plus Jordan (a late entry in to the war) refused to accept
Israel's offers of peace and mutually beneficial co-existence and return of
conquered territories and repatriation of refugees: offers which Israel made
almost immediately following the war (that refusal articulated most clearly
at the Arab League's Khartoum Conference of August, 1967, which produced the
infamous 3 Khartoum "NOs": no recognition, no negotiations, no peace).
c.) the so-called "occupation" lasted ONLY from June 11, 1967 to January 4,
1994; and during that time the economy of the West Bank and Gaza Strip
thrived more than any time in known previous history, the Arab population
more than tripled, and tourism skyrocketted -- as Israel poured hundreds
of millions of dollars into developoment of Arab infrastruture in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, building homes for Arab refugees still living in
quanset huts, supporting the development of seven universities where none
had existed before, and bringing modern medicine and sewerage and water
purificaition and economic stimuli and nearly full employment to those
territories. And, all during this period, there was almost no terrorism
against Israel, and hence none of the anti-terror tactics that Israel was
forced to employ once Arafat began his terror war.
d.) the so-called "occupation" ENDED in January of 1994 when Yassir Arafat
took over the reins of government in most of the Gaza Strip and West Bank,
pursuant to the Oslo Accords which transmogrified the PLO in to the PA
(Palestinian Authority) and transformed Arafat from the world's leading
terrorist in to a statesman. The last Israeli tank left Ramallah on
9/28/1995, by which time 96% of all Palestinians were under PA sovereignty.
e.) that end of the so-called "occupation" inaugurated the worst terror war
against Israel in its entire history. There were more terror attacks
against Israel in the first four years after the Oslo accords than there
were in the previous 20 years. Arafat, instead of using the Oslo Accords as
the opportunity to build his state, used his new autonomy to launch his
terror war against Israel.
f.) that end of the so-called "occupation" and beginning of Arafat's rule
(which he cheerfully referred to as "the democracy of the gun") also brought
to an end the 27-year era of prosperity for the Arabs of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, as Arafat skimmed 20% off of the five $$ billion that poured in
to his coffers from Arab states and the EU and the UN and the UK and the
USA; and then poured almost all of the rest in to arming and training his
terror forces and deploying them in his terror war against Israel.
g.) Israel's initial responses to Arafat's terror war were restrained,
minimal, and purely defensive; while Arafat dissembled and lied and
pretended that he was trying to quell the terrorism even as later
irrefutable evidence proved that he was orchestrating it.
h.) Even during the first 6 months of the 2nd Intifada, when Israel faced
c. 24 terror attacks per day, on average, and dozens of suicide bombings, as
hundreds of civilians were being butchered on their buses and cafes and cars
and restaurants and homes and weddings and schools and on the streets and in
their beds, Israel refrained from an anti-terror offensive, choosing instead
use restrained and limited defensive measures and to lodge complaints with
the UN, the USA, and the Palestinian authority.
i.) ONLY after the horrifying massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya, during
a Passover Seder (3/27/02), did Israel RE-occupy the West Bank during
operation Defensive Shield (begun 3.29.02). Prior to that, there had not
been an Israeli soldier in Ramallah or Nablus or Jenin for 8 years.
j.) ONLY after the West Bank was RE-occupied, and Israeli troops were able
to guard roads and crossing points and entries to villages where terrorists
hid ...... ONLY then was the terrorism curtailed. And when, at the urging
of the USA or UN or UK or EU, the Israeli forces were withdrawn from a
specific area, terrorism spiked within 48 hours of the withdrawal. And that
terrorism was stopped only after the RE-entry of the Israeli forces.
k.) ALL of the suffering and inconvenience and humiliation and poverty and
unemployment imposed upon the Palestinians by the Israeli RE-occupation of
the West Bank was a consequence ONLY of Israel's defensive tactics against
Arafat's barbaric, brutal, relentless terror war. Prior to that war
(1967-1994) none of those tactics were in place, and the territories throve
under Israeli sovereignty.
l.) the Palestinian Authority rejected ALL of Israel's offers for peaceful
resolution to Palestinian grievances either via verbal rejection or via
continued or enhanced terrorism or both, and both accompanied by the endless
relentless rhetoric of annihilation and diatribe of genocide in the
hate-speech and hate-teach and hate-preach that has to this day been the
elevator music of Palestinian society.
m.) despite the above, PM Sharon declared (4/14/04) that he would create
the state that the Palestinian leadership said they wanted. He would do it
bi-laterally with Palestinian peace partners, or he would do it
uni-laterally if no partners were forthcoming. After waiting more than one
year, and then in the absence of such partners, he fulfilled part of his
promise in August of 2005 with the unilateral and unconditional withdrawal
of all Jews from Gaza (which involved the forced re-location of 9000
Israelis and the destruction of 22 Israeli communities) and from parts of
the West Bank. Israeli homes were leveled at the request of the Palestinian
Authority, but industrial installations and hi-tech hot-houses were left
intact so that the Palestinian people could use them in order to jump-start
their economy in their newly "Judenrein" Gaza Strip.
n.) the world watched with breathless anticipation to see what the
Palestinian people and their democratically elected leaders would do with
their first-ever experience of complete autonomy in an area where Jews had
created some of the most productive and profitable agrarian technology in
the world. Two world-class philanthropists (Bill Gates, not Jewish, and
Mortimer Zuckerman, Jewish) contributed $14,000,000 for the Palestinian
Authority to be used to assist the Palestinians to jump-start their economy
in their newly "Judenrein" Gaza Strip.
o.) and then the world watched in horror as the rank-and-file
man-in-the-street Palestinians, in hordes, swarmed over the hot-houses and
utterly destroyed them, leveled them, stripped them bare; and then went on
to an orgy of hate-filled vandalism against any and every sign of anything
Jewish in the entire Strip.
p.) and then the world turned a blind eye, and began to spout excuses, and
blame Israel, as the PA, with its newly elected Hamas terrorist government,
turned the Gaza Strip in to the nightmare described in Ms. Glick's article
below.
From June 1967 to January 1994, the residents of the Gaza Strip lived in
relative peace and prosperity, under Israeli sovereignty.
From 1994 till today, the Gaza Strip has become the world's pre-emminent
terrorist state, and its residents live in grinding poverty and daily
terror, thanks to the rival terrorist totalitarian Islamofascist Jihadist
triumphalist tyrannical tribal war-lords, dedicated to the destruction of
Israel and the genocide of its Jews. And these war lords, whom those same
residents democratically elected to power, deploy their forces to kill each
other; kill each other's civilians, women, children, elderly, babies,
disabled, and infirm; and still find time, while killing each other, to
launch terror attacks at Israel on a daily basis.
Glick is right. They have their state. The State of Palestine does indeed
exist, in elementary form in the Gaza Strip. It is a very sorry, failed,
terrorist state which threatens to destroy itself even as it is committed
ideologically to the destruction of its neighbor state. In fact, this state
looks a lot like Somalia.
But rather than deal honestly with that tragic and threatening reality,
world leaders, including those in the USA and Israel, pretend that if only
Israel would make more concessions, these rival terrorist Islamo fascist
totalitarian tyrannical triumphal tribal war lords and their followers
would somehow, suddenly, turn in to nice guys .
Just shows you what the Big Oil lobbies can do.
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