by Bill Bennett, Jack Kemp,
and Jeane Kirkpatrick
The
world’s attention has been focused on the Middle East. We are confronted
daily with scenes of carnage and destruction. Can we understand such
violence? Yes, but only if we come to the situation with a solid grounding
in the facts of the matter�facts that too often are forgotten, if ever they
were learned. Below are twenty facts that we think are useful in
understanding the current situation, how we arrived here, and how we might
eventually arrive at a solution.
ROOTS OF THE
CONFLICT
THE STATE OF
ISRAEL
In sum, a
fair and balanced portrayal of the Middle East will reveal that one nation
stands far above the others in its commitment to human rights and democracy
as well as in its commitment to peace and mutual security. That nation is
Israel.
* The
official Palestinian National Authority Web site (pna.org) is currently not
operating. Various reports provide different reasons and the Web site should
be operating again in the near future.
Bill Bennett, Jack
Kemp, and Jeane Kirkpatrick need no introduction. This report was produced
by Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, a project of
Empower America. Comment by
clicking
here.
� 2002, AVOT
- When
the United Nations proposed the establishment of two states in the
region�one Jewish, one Arab�the Jews accepted the proposal and declared
their independence in 1948. The Jewish state constituted only 1/6 of one
percent of what was known as “the Arab world.” The Arab states, however,
rejected the UN plan and since then have waged war against Israel
repeatedly, both all-out wars and wars of terrorism and attrition. In
1948, five Arab armies invaded Israel in an effort to eradicate it. Jamal
Husseini of the Arab Higher Committee spoke for many in vowing to soak
“the soil of our beloved country with the last drop of our blood.”
- The
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964�three years
before Israel controlled the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO�s declared
purpose was to eliminate the State of Israel by means of armed struggle.
To this day, the Web site of Yasir Arafat�s Palestinian Authority (PA)
claims that the entirety of Israel is “occupied” territory.* It is
impossible to square this with the PLO and PA assertions to Western
audiences that the root of the conflict is Israel�s occupation of the West
Bank and Gaza.
- The
West Bank and Gaza (controlled by Jordan and Egypt from 1948 to 1967) came
under Israeli control during the Six Day War of 1967 that started when
Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran and Arab armies amassed on Israel�s
borders to invade and liquidate the state. It is important to note that
during their 19-year rule, neither Jordan nor Egypt had made any effort to
establish a Palestinian state on those lands. Just before the Arab nations
launched their war of aggression against the State of Israel in 1967,
Syrian Defense Minister (later President) Hafez Assad stated, “Our forces
are now entirely ready . . . to initiate the act of liberation itself, and
to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland . . . the time has
come to enter into a battle of annihilation.” On the brink of the 1967
war, Egyptian President Gamal Nassar declared, “Our basic objective will
be the destruction of Israel.”
- In
2000, as part of negotiations for a comprehensive and durable peace,
Israel offered to turn over all but the smallest portion of the remaining
territories to Yasir Arafat. But Israel was rebuffed when Arafat walked
out of Camp David and launched the current intifada.
- Yasir
Arafat has never been less than clear about his goals�at least not in
Arabic. On the very day that he signed the Oslo accords in 1993�in which
he promised to renounce terrorism and recognize Israel�he addressed the
Palestinian people on Jordanian television and declared that he had taken
the first step “in the 1974 plan.” This was a thinly-veiled reference to
the “phased plan,” according to which any territorial gain was acceptable
as a means toward the ultimate goal of Israel�s destruction.
- The
recently deceased Faisal al-Husseini, a leading Palestinian spokesman,
made the same point in 2001 when he declared that the West Bank and Gaza
represented only “22 percent of Palestine” and that the Oslo process was a
“Trojan horse.” He explained, “When we are asking all the Palestinian
forces and factions to look at the Oslo Agreement and at other agreements
as �temporary� procedures, or phased goals, this means that we are
ambushing the Israelis and cheating them.” The goal, he continued, was
“the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea,” i.e., the Jordan
River to the Mediterranean Sea�all of Israel.
- To
this day, the Fatah wing of the PLO (the “moderate” wing that was founded
and is controlled by Arafat himself) has as its official emblem the entire
state of Israel covered by two rifles and a hand grenade�another fact that
belies the claim that Arafat desires nothing more than the West Bank and
Gaza.
- While
criticism of Israel is not necessarily the same as “anti-Semitism,” it
must be remembered that the Middle East press is, in fact, rife with
anti-Semitism. More than fifteen years ago the eminent scholar Bernard
Lewis could point out that “The demonization of Jews [in Arabic
literature] goes further than it had ever done in Western literature, with
the exception of Germany during the period of Nazi rule.” Since then, and
through all the years of the “peace process,” things have become much
worse. Depictions of Jews in Arab and Muslim media are akin to those of
Nazi Germany, and medieval blood libels�including claims that Jews use
Christian and Muslim blood in preparing their holiday foods�have become
prominent and routine. One example is a sermon broadcast on PA television
where Sheik Ahmad Halabaya stated, “They [the Jews] must be butchered and
killed, as Allah the Almighty said: �Fight them: Allah will torture them
at your hands.� Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in
any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill
them.”
- There
are 21 Arab countries in the Middle East and only one Jewish state:
Israel, which is also the only democracy in the region.
- Israel
is the only country in the region that permits citizens of all faiths to
worship freely and openly. Twenty percent of Israeli citizens are not
Jewish.
- While
Jews are not permitted to live in many Arab countries, Arabs are granted
full citizenship and have the right to vote in Israel. Arabs are also free
to become members of the Israeli parliament (the Knesset). In fact,
several Arabs have been democratically elected to the Knesset and have
been serving there for years. Arabs living in Israel have more rights and
are freer than most Arabs living in Arab countries.
- Israel
is smaller than the state of New Hampshire and is surrounded by nations
hostile to her existence. Some peace proposals�including the recent Saudi
proposal�demand withdrawal from the entire West Bank, which would leave
Israel 9 miles wide at its most vulnerable point.
- The
oft-cited UN Resolution 242 (passed in the wake of the 1967 war) does not,
in fact, require a complete withdrawal from the West Bank. As legal
scholar Eugene Rostow put it, “Resolution 242, which as undersecretary of
state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969 I helped produce, calls
on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the
territories it occupied in 1967 until �a just and lasting peace in the
Middle East� is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to
withdraw its armed forces �from territories� it occupied during the
Six-Day War�not from �the� territories nor from �all� the territories, but
from some of the territories.”
- Israel
has, of course, conceded that the Palestinians have legitimate claims to
the disputed territories and is willing to engage in negotiations on the
matter. As noted above, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered almost
all of the territories to Arafat at Camp David in 2000.
Despite claims that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank are the
obstacle to peace, Jews lived there for centuries before being massacred
or driven out by invading Arab armies in 1948-49. And contrary to common
misperceptions, Israeli settlements�which constitute less than two percent
of the territories�almost never displace Palestinians.
- The
area of the West Bank includes some of the most important sites in Jewish
history, among them Hebron, Bethlehem, and Jericho. East Jerusalem, often
cited as an “Arab city” or “occupied territory,” is the site of Judaism�s
holiest monument. While under Arab rule (1948-67), this area was entirely
closed to Jews. Since Israel took control, it has been open to people of
all faiths.
Finally, let us consider the demand that certain territories in the Muslim
world must be off-limits to Jews. This demand is of a piece with Hitler�s
proclamation that German land had to be “Judenrein” (empty of Jews). Arabs
can live freely throughout Israel, and as full citizens. Why should Jews
be forbidden to live or to own land in an area like the West Bank simply
because the majority of people is Arab?
Because of their animus against Jews, many leaders of the Palestinian
cause have long supported our enemies. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem allied
himself with Adolf Hitler during WWII. Yasir Arafat, chairman of the PLO
and president of the PA, has repeatedly targeted and killed Americans. In
1973, Arafat ordered the execution of Cleo Noel, the American ambassador
to the Sudan. Arafat was very closely aligned with the Soviet Union and
other enemies of the United States throughout the Cold War. In 1991,
during the Gulf War, Arafat aligned himself with Saddam Hussein, whom he
praised as “the defender of the Arab nation, of Muslims, and of free men
everywhere.”
has, in fact, returned most of the land that it captured during the 1967
war and right after that war offered to return all of it in exchange for
peace and normal relations; the offer was rejected. As a result of the
1978 Camp David accords�in which Egypt recognized the right of Israel to
exist and normal relations were established between the two
countries�Israel returned the Sinai desert, a territory three times the
size of Israel and 91 percent of the territory Israel took control of in
the 1967 war.
three-quarters of Palestinians approve of suicide bombings�an appalling
statistic but, in light of the above facts, an unsurprising one.
| Twenty Facts about Israel and the Middle East
|
| From Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, a project of Empower.org |