In June 1967 Arab leaders declared their
intention to annihilate the Jewish state, and the Jews decided they wouldn’t
sit still for it. For the crime of self-preservation, Israel remains a nation
unforgiven.
Unforgiven, Israel’s milder critics say,
because the Six-Day War, even if justified at the time, does not justify 50
years of occupation. They argue, also, that Israel can rely on its own strength
as well as international guarantees to take risks for peace.
This is ahistoric nonsense.
On June 4, 1967, the day before the war,
Israel faced the fact that United Nations peacekeepers in Sinai, intended as a
buffer with Egypt, had been withdrawn at Cairo’s insistence; that France,
hitherto Israel’s ally, had imposed an arms embargo on it; and that Lyndon
Johnson had failed to deliver on previous American assurances to break any
Egyptian blockade of the Israeli port of Eilat.
On June 5, the first day of the war, the
Israeli government used three separate diplomatic channels to warn Jordan —
then occupying the West Bank — not to initiate hostilities. The Jordanians
ignored the warning and opened fire with planes and artillery. Some 6,000
shells landed on the western side of Jerusalem alone.
On June 19, 1967 — nine days after the
end of the war — the Israeli cabinet decided it would offer the return of
territories conquered from Egypt and Syria in exchange for peace, security and
recognition. The Arab League categorically rejected peace with Israel at its
summit in Khartoum later that year.
In 1973 Egypt and Syria unleashed a devastating surprise attack on Israel, puncturing the myth of Israeli invulnerability.
It took a decade after 1967 for the
Egyptian government of Anwar Sadat finally to accept Israel’s legitimacy. When
he did he recovered every inch of Sinai — from Menachem Begin, Israel’s
right-wing prime minister. Syria remains unreconciled.
It took another decade for Yasir Arafat’s
Palestine Liberation Organization to recognize Israel and formally forswear
terrorism. But its pledges were insincere.
Only after the Soviet Union’s collapse and Arafat’s disastrous support for
Saddam Hussein in the gulf war did the P.L.O. finally seem to get serious. It
led to the Oslo Accords of 1993 and further Israeli withdrawals.
In 2000, at Camp David, Israel offered
Arafat a state. He rejected it. “I regret that in 2000 he missed the
opportunity to bring that nation” — Palestine — “into being,” was Bill
Clinton’s bitter verdict on the summit’s outcome. Within two years Arafat was
calling on a million “martyrs” to march on Jerusalem.
In 2005, another right-wing Israeli
government removed its soldiers, settlers and settlements from the Gaza Strip.
Two years later Hamas seized control of the territory and used it to start
three wars in seven years.
In 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
offered a Palestinian state in Gaza and 93 percent of the West Bank. The
Palestinians rejected the proposal out of hand.
This is a truncated history. Israel is
not a nation of saints and has made its mistakes. The most serious of those is
proliferation of West Bank settlements beyond those in historically recognized
blocs.
But before we fall prey to the lazy trope
of “50 years of occupation,” inevitably used to indict Israel, let’s note the
following:
There would have been no occupation, and
no settlements, if Egypt and its allies hadn’t recklessly provoked a war. Or if
the “international community” hadn’t fecklessly abandoned Israel in its
desperate hours. Or if Jordan hadn’t foolishly ignored Israel’s warnings to
stay out of it. Or if the Arab League hadn’t arrogantly rejected the possibility
of peace.
A Palestinian state would most likely
exist if Arafat hadn’t adopted terrorism as the calling card of Palestinian
aspirations. Or if he hadn’t rejected the offer of a state 17 years ago. Or if
he hadn’t renounced his renunciation of terror.
A Palestinian state would also most
likely exist if Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas — now in the 13th year of his
elected four-year term — hadn’t rejected it again nine years ago, and if Gazans
hadn’t turned their territory into a terrifying model of Palestinian statehood,
and if the United Nations didn’t treat Hamas’s attacks on Israel as a nuisance
but Israel’s self-defense as a crime against humanity.
The cover of a recent issue of The
Economist purports to answer the question “Why Israel
Needs a Palestinian State.” The argument isn’t wrong. It just isn’t
wise.
Israel needs a Palestinian state to
safeguard its democratic future — in the long term. But the character of such a
state matters at least as much as its mere existence. The Middle East doesn’t
need another failed state in its midst. Israel doesn’t need another Hamastan on
its border. Palestinians in the West Bank don’t need it over their heads.
In 1967 Israel was forced into a war
against enemies who then begrudged it the peace. Egypt, at least, found its
Sadat. The drama of the Six-Day War will close when Palestinians find theirs.
****
My comment:
****
My comment:
Let’s look at this from a Muslim perspective:
“And kill them wherever you overtake them and
expel them from wherever they have expelled you”
“And expel them from wherever they have expelled you” means
that no land that has ever belonged to Muslims or been ruled by Muslims can
ever legitimately in the eyes of Islam be ruled by non-Muslims.
What about Sadat?
Muslims
are permitted not to wage jihad if the infidel side is perceived as too strong,
in which case 10 years of hudna or
cease-fire is permitted, after which the conditions for jihad are reevaluated.
Here we are in the 4th back to back hudna with Egypt. During Morsi
the hudna had almost been broken.
