Hoffstra;
et al,
The issue is not about Israel wanting the West Bank. It is an "Albatross." The issue is about Israeli security and defensible borders.
How can the Jews
not belong in Judea?
The issue isn't Jews living in the West Bank, Gaza, Japan, Berlin, or Cairo.
The issue is Israeli sovereignty, and Israel has no right to sovereignty over the West Bank.
Especially since the land is 82% Arab Muslim.
(COMMENT)
- It cannot be overlooked that the Arab League and the Hostile Arab Palestinian (HoAP) have an established practice of periodically launching attacks against Israel.
- It cannot be denied that both the major government bodies that claim to represent the HoAP believe that the entire State of Israel is "Occupied Territory" --- not just the discussion of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. As the Palestinian National Authority puts it:
- Article 1. Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the greater Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.
- Article 2: Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.
Granted, there are factions within Israel that make some ancient claim to the West Bank. And that mindset has to be suppressed. The League of Nations/UN never intended to allow the Jewish Agency to establish a homeland over the entire region. The intent was to establish a safe have for the Jewish people to protect them from further persecution by unscrupulous populations and leaderships
(including both European and Arabian). And while the forward thinkers of the early 20th Century started this project early on, it wasn't actually established until after WWII; a time in which the Jewish People faced the Holocaust.
Yet again, the Allied Powers and the UN, face a critical moment in time. They face a people, the HoAP, which wants to again persecute the Jewish People. The world is faced with a people that have proclaimed:
- There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.
- Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine.
The Jewish People did what they were suppose to do according to General Assembly Resolution 181(II); in 1948. The HoAP did not, well --- not at that time.
(They later did in 1988.) But then, the UN ad Allied Powers allowed the Arab League (none of them more than a decade old and all born of a similar process) to start yet another war.
6. The Secretary-General has been informed by the Arab Higher Committee that is determined to persist in its rejection of the partition plan and in its refusal to recognize the resolution of the Assembly and “anything deriving therefrom”. The Subsequent communication of 6 February (1948) to the Secretary-General from the representative of the Arab Higher Committee set forth the following conclusions of the Arab Higher Committee Delegation:
“a. The Arabs of Palestine will never recognize the validity of the extorted partition recommendations or the authority of the United Nations to make them.
“b. The Arabs of Palestine consider that any attempt by the Jews or any power or group of powers to establish a Jewish State in Arab territory is an act of aggression which will be resisted in self-defense by force.
c. It is very unwise and fruitless to ask any commission to proceed to Palestine because not a single Arab will cooperate with the said commission.
d. The United Nations or its commission should not be misled to believe that its efforts in the partition plan will meet with any success. It will be far better for the eclipsed prestige of this organization not to start on this adventure.
e. The United Nations prestige will be better served by abandoning, not enforcing such an injustice.
f. The determination of every Arab in Palestine is to oppose in every way the partition of that country.
g. The Arabs of Palestine made a solemn declaration before the United Nations, before God and history, that they will never submit or yield to any power going to Palestine to enforce partition.
“The only way to establish partition is first to wipe them out – man women and child."
They scope and nature of the danger represented by the HoAP is not something I or the Israelis dreamed-up or exaggerate. It comes from them directly in their own words, and by demonstrated by more than a half century of hostile conflict and terrorism; to include 3 wars.
When we discuss the situation, keep in mind that we are following a HoAP and their political and military position. They set the conditions for today's reality. If there is a case for genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and all the other allegations the HoAP make on a daily basis, just reread the communique from the Arab Higher Committee. Both the Covenant and the Charter show that it has not changed in all this time.
Until such time that the HoAP abandons this pol-mil position, it still represents the greatest threat to peace and security the Middle East has seen since the end of WWII.
Most Respectfully,
R
