Israel Strikes Back

In attempting to understand any conflict, one must define one's terms. In the Israel-Palestinian dispute, the Jewish state is a democratic polity recognized by the United Nations in 1948,but placed under immediate assault as an attempted liquidation by the forces of all her Arab neighbors. Israel survived, but in spite of armistice, continued to face attrition attacks from said neighbors. In 1948, the so-called Palestinians left mostly of their own accord at the behest of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who in the era of World War II had been a confidant of Hitler and an honored guest of Nazi Germany. The Grand Mufti had called for the Muslims to evacuate the area, so that the combined Arab armies could unleash their might to sweep the Jews into the sea. Without Muslim civilians on the battlefield, the Arab Legion of Jordan, the Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese, Saudis who sent a contingent, Iraq, which was among the most eager to see the Jews sent to their reward, the indigenous Arab Liberation Army, and even Yemeni killers could be as ruthless as they wanted to be in the eradication effort. Many of the Arabs forces had received British training, equipment, and were even led by British officers. Among the Arab officers and NCOs numbered some Nazis. Yes, local Arabs were displaced by the 1948 war but most left on their own volition so they would not be collateral damage of the slaughter and could return to claim the forfeited property of the Jews once the Arab military had annihilated them. Many Jews in Arab lands had no option but to leave or die and though their plight is largely ignored, were also made refugees. The difference is Israel made every effort to absorb them while the Arab states abandoned the Palestinians to live without passports, without legal status, and often in incredible squalor to have as a constant irritant and a bloody shirt to hold over the Jews and on which they could scapegoat their national deficiencies. For more on the Arab-Israeli conflict's beginnings and the expulsion of the Jews from Muslim states, I must commend to the reader the scholarship of Shlomo Alfassa and the more accessible work of Bernard Lewis. The Palestinian Liberation Organization was founded in 1964, three(3) years before Israel acquired the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 War which preempted another attempted liquidation. Therefore, the Palestinian cause can not credibly be claimed to be the liberation of the lands Israel liberated in 1967. To define Palestinian aspiration is now necessary. As I see it, while the Palestinians have grievance, much of which could be held against wealthy Arab oil states who have done little to resettle Palestinians on a permanent basis, Iran which has done nothing as an Islamic Republic but give terrorists material aid, murderous inspiration, and military training to serve as gasoline on a fire to further inflame violence, and their own Palestinian leadership which was notoriously corrupt under Arafat whose close circle looted the aid meant for the destitute Palestinians and who rejected the permanent settlement offered to Palestine by Ehud Barak in the Clinton negotiations. The Palestinians now fall into two major camps:1.) The irridentist camp, by far the largest, which sees the only option as the complete destruction of Israel with the one state remaining being a Muslim entity governed under Sharia law. Members of Hamas, currently under Israel's counter-attack response to Kassams, the Popular Resistance Committees, the Islamic Jihad(Jihad Islami), and the al-Qaeda sympathizers including the Dogmush clan are rejectionists who will never accept a two-state solution.2.)The accommodationist camp of Palestinians including the Palestinian Authority and Abbas who believe a temporary accommodation of a two-state solution is possible to gain tactical advantage for an eventual strategic coup de main to achieve precisely the same goal as the irridentist camp-that is a one state solution with any surviving Jews as dhimmi. The only difference between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is in the best method to create a one-state solution with the Jews dispatched. Only a statistically insignificant number of Palestinians want peace, and if they speak up for two states living side by side in harmony, they will be killed by their own neighbors. The only answer embraced by Muslims by in large is a "final solution".