HOWARD EPSTEIN: THE STATE OF ISRAEL – SOME BASIC TRUTHS
This week, I provide some explanation of the terms bandied about by those who have insufficient, if any, understanding of them.
Two State Solution (aka Partition) – Origin: This is a favourite of those comfortably ensconced in their Parker Knoll recliners, in their wall-to-wall carpeted lounges, in the safety of their homes in the West. They urge it upon Israel with no appreciation of its birth or its death. Perhaps I can assist.
In 1937, the British Peel Commission to Palestine, seeking to resolve the enmity between the two competing sides in the land, recommended its partition between the Arabs and the Yishuv. The Jews grabbed at the opportunity; the Arabs rejected it outright.
Ten years later, at the United Nations in New York, a vote was to be held on Partition. The respective parties took up the same positions. The Jews were granted the right to form a state. The Arabs sought to snuff it out – and failed. They call it The Nakba – the Catastrophe.
On both occasions, the Jews were happy to take a part of the land; the Arabs wanted all of it. Make no mistake about it: that is the position today. Hamas or the Palestinian Authority (“PA”), it makes no difference. They want a One State Solution, with us all gone. We thought they would be happy pushing us into the sea. It turns out that that is far too easy an end for us for, as we saw last week, tied up and burned alive, decapitated, abased in every inconceivable way – those are their preferred methods by which to dispose of us.
Two State Solution (aka Partition) – Demise: On 15 June 2007, Hamas took complete control of the Gaza Strip, seizing PA government institutions and replacing Fatah and other PA officials with Hamas members. In order to achieve that, Hamas threw the PA “enemy” off the roofs of buildings or, if they were lucky, shot them in the neck. The Red Cross estimated that some 120 people were so despatched. That was the end of the Two State Solution, over 25 years ago. since then, Hamas has been working for years to take control of Judaea and Samaria (aka the West Bank) too, but the Israeli army has been protecting the PA.
Israeli Intransigence: It is alleged against us that we have made no efforts to achieve peace with the Palestinians. Following the overwhelming victory of Israel in the Six Day War of June 1967, which was launched by Egypt and Syria (into which Jordan belatedly joined), with the intention of killing some two million Jews and ending the State of Israel, we offered “a piece of land for a piece of peace”. The response from Khartoum came the following September: the infamous “Three No’s”: “No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it”.
In 2000, Arafat rejected Barak’s offer of 93% of the West Bank. In 2008, Olmert’s similar offer was rejected.
In the past three years, Israel has entered into normalisation agreements (the Abraham Accords) with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
Appeasement Increases the Body Count
Let us start with two manifestos. In Mein Kampf, Hitler proclaimed his intention to exterminate the Jews – the Hamas Charter likewise. We should know by now to take self-declared genocidal maniacs at their word. Appeasing them leads only to a higher body count. After Hitler had been appeased from 1933, the war of annihilation he launched in 1939 resulted in 50 million deaths in Europe, possibly including the six million martyrs of the Shoah, possibly not.
Interestingly, the once-perceived most successful politician of our times, German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, pursued a similar policy with Putin: do sufficient business with him and he will never jeopardise it by continuing the war in Ukraine he initiated in 2014. Wrong! As wrong as Stalin was after Nazi Germany entered into five commercial agreements with the Soviets. The fourth was the Molotov-Ribbentrop mutual non-aggression pact, with its secret clauses for the dismemberment of Poland. Stalin ignored all intelligence reports because of these agreements and the Red Army was overwhelmed at the start of Operation Barbarossa.
Israel has been appeasing Hamas for years, believing that allowing thousands of Gazans to work daily in Israel, providing Gaza with water and electricity, and allowing into Gaza concrete and steel irrigation pipes (for tunneling and rocket manufacture? Surely not) would mean they would be sufficiently appeased, provisioned and disinclined to launch a war against Israel. Wrong!
Boots on the Ground v The Best Hi-Tech Systems in the World, Fences and Walls
All those who thought that having the world’s most advanced systems would not be sufficient protection against a surprise attack have been vindicated. It turns out that with or without the technology, boots on the ground are indispensable. Also, putting one’s faith in defensive structures helped not at all in the case of the Maginot Line, when Rommel’s panzer tanks drove into France 100 kilometres to the north of the Line’s northernmost point – as with the Bar Lev, line built to protect Israel from Egyptian attack, but hosed away in a matter of hours. With this historical record, the fence around Gaza should have appeared no more effective than a mosquito net.
Netanyahu as Chamberlain
Having spent years mocking Winston Churchill, who warned war was coming from Nazi Germany, British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in September 1938 waving a tissue signed by Hitler and proclaimed “Peace in our time”. Churchill said, “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.” Within a year Chamberlain had to declare war on Germany. Dishonoured and disgraced, Chamberlain knew, when the British Army needed to be evacuated from France in June 1940, that he had to retire. This is Netanyahu’s Chamberlain moment. In the name of our Simchat Torah martyrs, or in the words of Oliver Cromwell, “In the name of God, go!”
© HOWARD EPSTEIN – October 2023
