Against a two state solution in Isreal
Author: Stephen Kruger
Originally Published at Peace and Conflict Monitor on: 12/14/2010
Category: Opinion
National interests and territorial integrity
Israel is intent on negotiating away the national interests of Jews at international meetings, by way of the loser’s plan known as the two-state “solution.”
Compare China. No negotiation is permitted by China in relation to its national interests in Taiwan, in Tibet, in the Spratly Islands, or in the Paracel Islands. China does not entertain a two-state solution for Tibet, or a two-state solution for Taiwan. Rather, China invaded Tibet in 1950, and annexed it. In the decades since, there were sinofication of Tibet and strong measures against the Tibetan population. China retains sovereignty over Tibet.
Further, China does not refer to Taiwan as the Republic of China, in the manner of the reference by Israel to Judea, Samaria and Aza as “Palestine.” China refers to Taiwan as “Chinese Taiwan.”
The world accepts those facts.
Compare Russia. No negotiation is permitted by Russia in relation to its national interests in Chechnia. Russia does not entertain a two-state solution to Chechnia. Rather, Russia fought two wars against Chechnian attempts at independence (1994-1996; 1999-2000). Tens of thousands of Chechnians were killed by the Russians. They leveled half of Grozny. Russia retains sovereignty over Chechnia.
The world accepts those facts.
Compare India and Pakistan. No negotiation is permitted by India or by Pakistan in relation to its respective national interests in Jammu and Kashmir. Neither India nor Pakistan entertains a two-state solution to Jammu and Kashmir. Rather, India and Pakistan fought three wars (1947; 1965; 1999) over Jammu and Kashmir. Each of India and Pakistan retains sovereignty of its respective part of Jammu and Kashmir.
The world accepts those facts.
In light of history, it is strange for the United States to insist that Israel negotiate away the national interests of Jews, or to pursue the two-state “solution.” When, in 1861, southern states of the United States seceded from the Union, the United States did not negotiate its national interests at an international meeting. The United States did not entertain a two-state solution in relation to the Confederate States. Rather, the United States denied entirely the right of the southern states to secede and to form the Confederate States. The United States fought to complete victory over the Confederate States, and the United States took for itself the entirety of the territory claimed by the Confederate States.
Moreover, the United States retains the benefits of its wars against American Indian tribes. In 1973, a meeting took place between members of the American Indian Movement and members of the Oglala Sioux of South Dakota, who lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the site of 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. There were violent clashes between traditionalists and modernists.
On February 23, 1973, AIM proclaimed the Second Battle of Wounded Knee. They occupied buildings, and vowed to fight to the death, if necessary. The next day, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, U.S. Marshals Service deputies, and Bureau of Indian Affairs police, surrounded the AIM-occupied buildings.
On March 11, 1973, members of AIM and elders of the Oglala Sioux met, and they proclaimed the revival of the Independent Oglala Nation. They proposed discussion, between the Oglala Nation and the United States, as equal nations, of the nineteenth-century treaty between the Oglala Nation and the United States. The fruitless discussions included talk about the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, cited by the Indians, and about an act of 1871, cited by the United States. The act provides that no Indian nation may be recognized as an independent nation capable of entering into a treaty with the United States.
On May 9, 1973, after 71 days, AIM and the traditionalists surrendered. The United States arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned those who participated in the takeover of the buildings. Nothing ever came of Indian independence or of treaty revision.
Failure at Lake Success
There was no creation of the State of Israel by the United Nations. In 1948, bureaucrats at Lake Success devised a partition plan which the Jews accepted and the Arabs rejected. The proclamation by Ben-Gurion of re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel was independent of bureaucratic machinations of the United Nations.
Had there been creation of the State of Israel by the United Nations, the legal position of Israel, and of Jews in the Land of Israel, would be always tenuous. Whatever the United Nations gives, the United Nations can take away.
Settlor, trust instrument and beneficiary
When God gave the Land of Israel to the Jews, as recited in the Bible, He did so in trust. In law, an owner of property (the settlor) may transfer ownership of specified property (the corpus) to an entity (the trust) for the benefit of a named person (the beneficiary). The means of transfer is a document (the trust instrument).
The corpus is in the hands of the manager of the trust (the trustee). His duty is to fulfill the intention of the settlor, in accordance with the terms of the trust instrument. A trustee has the further duty of utmost fidelity to the beneficiary of a trust.
God is the Settlor of the trust, the corpus of which is the Land of Israel. Portions of the Bible are the trust instrument. E.g., Genesis 15:1-21; Numbers 21:21-22:1, 34:1-15; Deuteronomy 2:17-3:27. The trust is a concept expressed in the Bible, rather than an entity. The beneficiaries of the trust are all Jews, throughout their generations. By default, the present trustee of the trust is the government of Israel. Terms in the trust instrument include the boundary of the Land of Israel, the transfer of the Land of Israel to Jews, the permanence of the possession of the Land of Israel by Jews, and the permanence of the trust.
The world does not accept those facts, because the facts are critical to Jews. Without God and the biblical trust, there is no superior claim of Jews to the Land of Israel.
The giving away by Israel of swathes of the Land of Israel to Arabs, and the potential giving away by Israel of more swathes of the Land of Israel, stem from the contempt of the government of Israel for the Settlor of the trust, for the corpus of the trust, for the terms of the trust and the book in which it is written, and for the beneficiaries of the trust.
Instead of fulfilling the role of trustee, and declaring and enforcing the rights of Jews, Israel continues the touchy-feely policy toward Arabs, put in place by left-wing Jews in Mandatory Palestine after World War I. The self-defeatism inherent in that policy caused Israel to lose the peace in 1948, to lose the peace again in 1956, to lose the peace once again in 1967, and, in ensuing years, to cement its loss of the peace. Baseball has a rule: three strikes, you’re out. That rule should have been applied in 1967, after the third major Israel-Arab war. It was not.
Denial of Jewish sovereignty
Creation of a “Palestine” populated by “Palestinians” was made possible by denial, by Israel, of Jewish sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Aza. Denial created the condition precedent for some other sovereignty there. To bring into ex-nihilo existence a populace for some other sovereignty, Israel connived with Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi and Jordanian Arabs who lived in Judea and Samaria, and connived with Egyptian Arabs who lived in Aza (see Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine (1984)), to get those Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian and Egyptian Arabs to be labeled “Palestinians,” a term which theretofore never connoted a national identity. With further connivance of Israel, those Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian and Egyptian Arabs manufactured the potential other sovereignty of “Palestine.”
Like a Dr. Frankenstein, Israel engendered the monster of “Palestine,” and that monster turned and wreaked vengeance on its creator. Unlike the fictional monster, the Arab monster will express no remorse, and will not immolate itself. Rather, that Arab monster, along with other Arab entities and along with Moslems generally, make repeated vows to immolate Jews and to destroy Israel. Through weakness over the decades toward Arabs, and through creation of the monster “Palestine,” the government of Israel was, and continues to be, responsible for thousands of murders of civilian Jews at the hands of Arabs; responsible for thousands of killings of military-service Jews at the hands of Arabs; responsible for the social mayhem caused by fear of bomb attacks by “Palestinian” nationalists; and responsible for the political instability of a society divided between Israeli national defense and pandering to “Palestinian” nationalism.
“International law” and “international community”
There is no “international law” any more than there is an “international community.” The term “international community” is a euphemism for the totality of disparate, motley countries, which fight endless wars of all against all. Thomas Hobbes wrote, in another context, that “. . . during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.” Leviathan, ch. 13.
Attention by Israel to “international law” is anomalous. No member of the “international community” does so, because there is no “international law” and there is no “international community.” Every country acts in accordance with its national self interest. Countries large and small have a single unifying factor: Jew-hatred.
The dysfunctional “international community” uses “international law” as a club with which to clobber Israel. Two examples among many are the countless anti-Israel resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly, and the innumerable anti-Israel resolutions by the UN Human Rights Council and its predecessor UN Commission on Human Rights.
A visitor from Mars who counts all those resolutions, and who takes note of the diplomatic efforts monomaniacally devoted to proposing them, circulating them, discussing them and passing them, would be forgiven for thinking that, to the “international community,” the overriding threat to the third planet is Jews living in the Land of Israel and governing the Land of Israel. During the sixty-five years of the existence of the United Nations, no plight or predicament — not the murders of seventy million people by the Red Chinese; not the brutalization of North Koreans and not the brutalization of Burmese; not the Gulag archipelago maintained by the Soviet Union; not the loot-motivated wars in Africa; not the genocide in East Timor or the genocide in Rwanda or the genocide in Cambodia; not the despoliation of lands and seas — has been of greater concern to the “international community” than “the Jewish problem.” The “international community,” which knew of the World War II death camps but refused to bomb the railroad tracks which led to them, regrets that the Nazis did not solve that problem.
The one-sidedness of “international law” is illustrated by a hypothetical response by Israel to its “obligation” under “international law” to create a “Palestine” out of Judea, Samaria and Aza, which are parts of the Land of Israel. Suppose that Israel were to issue a call to Moslem Iraq and to Moslem Turkey for them to give away land for peace; for them to create a homeland. Suppose further that Israel would refer to the obligation, under “international law,” of Iraq to deny its sovereignty over Kurdistan, and of Turkey to deny its sovereignty over Anatolia, and for Iraq and Turkey to create ex nihilo, out of Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkish Anatolia, a homeland for Kurds, with Mosul as its capital.
There would be no road map for establishment of an independent Kurdistan. There would be no international conferences. There would be no meetings at Camp David. There would be no resolutions by the UN General Assembly or by the UN “Security” Council. There would be no United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Kurdish Refugees in the Near East, as there is an UNRWA.
Iraq and Turkey, respectively, would respond with outright rejection of, and outraged nationalism about, alienation of even a square foot of homeland. Each would say that territorial integrity is an unshakeable standard of “international law.” Iraq and Turkey would be supported by the “international community,” yet it is otherwise for Israel.
Two recent events should be juxtaposed. In June, 2010, there were systematic attacks by ethnic Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan against ethnic Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan. More than 2,000 Uzbek were murdered. Hundreds of houses and shops owned by ethnic Uzbeks were destroyed. There were 400,000 refugees, as ethnic Uzbeks fled to or toward Uzbekistan. The “international community” took no notice. “International law” was not invoked.
In May, 2010, a “humanitarian” flotilla of three ships, one passenger ship with Jew-haters as passengers, and two cargo ships with goods of unknown quality and quantity, attempted to break the Israeli blockade of Aza. The “humanitarian” passengers disdained delivery to Aza via the port of Ashdod, because the aim of the “humanitarian” passengers was not to deliver “humanitarian” goods, but was to prove the illegitimacy of Israel, and to prove that it is illicit for Israel to protect itself from the onslaughts of the Hamas gang which is in control of Aza.
The “international community” took notice of the meretricious blockade-running by praising it.
Nine “humanitarian” participants on board the passenger ship were killed in self defense by Israeli military personnel. The “international community” invoked “international law,” and concluded that self defense by Israel is illegal thereunder.
After the self defense by Israel, “spontaneous” anti-Israel demonstrations were held in various cities around the world.
There was a declaration by the leadership of the “humanitarian” flotilla that the blockade of Aza is illegal under “international law.” A moment’s thought leads to the conclusion that a blockade is permissible. It is well within the war powers of a state to deny war materiel and other supplies to an enemy. Here’s a baker’s dozen of blockades of recent history, among numerous instances in history of blockades:
a. By the United States of the Confederate States during “ the War Between the States (duration of war: 1861-1865).
b. By the Great Powers of Constantinople during the Ottoman-Greek War of 1897.
c. By the United States of San Juan, Puerto Rico, during the Spanish-American War (duration of war: a few months in 1898).
d. By the United Kingdom of Germany during World War I.
e. By the United States of Japan during World War II.
f. By the Soviet Union of West Berlin in 1948-1949, during the Cold War.
g. By Egypt of the Strait of Tiran prior to the 1956 Suez War.
h. By the United States of Cuba in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
i. By Egypt of the Strait of Tiran prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
j. By India of East Pakistan during the 1971 Bangladesh War.
k. By Egypt of Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
l. By NATO of Yugoslavia in 1993-1996, during Operation Sharp Guard.
m. By Turkey and Azerbaijan of Armenia during the Nagorno-Karabakh War (duration of war: 1988-1994).
The gist of the “international law” prescribed by the leadership of the “humanitarian” flotilla in particular, repeated Goebbels-like by the Left comprehensively, and accepted by the “international community” generally, is that Israel, alone among states, has no legal right to act in its behalf. The United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Egypt, NATO, and Turkey and Azerbaijan may maintain blockades. Israel may not.
It is asserted by the “international community” that “international law” prohibits acquisition by Israel of territory in consequence of the 1967 war. There is no assertion by the “international community” that “international law” prohibited acquisition by China of Tibet as a consequence of the 1950 war waged by China against Tibet; or that “international law” prohibited acquisition by Russia of Finnish territory in consequence of World War II, or by Russia of Japanese territory likewise in consequence of World War II; or that “international law” prohibited acquisition by India and Pakistan of their respective parts of Jammu and Kashmir in consequence of the 1947 war; or that “international law” prohibited acquisition by India of Goa, Daman and Diu in consequence of the 1964 war by India against those Portuguese territories.
Two-state solution and 22-state solution
There is the demand by the “international community” that there should be a two-state “solution” detrimental to Israel. There is no demand by the “international community” that there should be a two-state solution detrimental to Spain or detrimental to France, concerning the Basque country. There is no demand by the “international community” for application of a two-state to the Philippines, concerning Mindanao. There is no comparable demand regarding Cyprus, concerning the Greek and Turkish parts of the island; or regarding Georgia, concerning each of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. There was no demand by the “international community” that there should have been a two-state solution detrimental to Sri Lanka, concerning the Sinhalese and the Tamils.
It is said over and over by the “international community” that the rightful presence of Jews in each of Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights, and the Sheba’a Farms (and, formerly, in Aza) is an “occupation,” and against “international law.” The wrongful occupation by Arabs of each of Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria et al. is ignored. Nothing at all is said about the United Kingdom contravening “international law” by occupation of Northern Ireland; or about Spain contravening “international law” by occupation of the Canary Islands, Melilla, and Ceuta.
It is time for the “international community” to get over its fixation with the two-state “solution,” and to sign up for the 22-state solution. Arabs keep the 5,300,000 square miles of the 21 members (i.e., excluding “Palestine Authority”) of the League of Arab States. Jews keep the Land of Israel, and its mere 11,000 square miles.
If a “Palestine” is desired, it can be established east of the River Jordan. The Hashemite carpetbaggers would be sent packing, and good riddance to them.
The two-state “solution” is a bill of goods, bought by Israel at a heavy price: tens of thousands of deaths of Jews at the hands of Arabs, and severe social splits in the Land of Israel. The bill of goods is not yet paid in full by Israel, and, so, by Jews. Despite the impermissible disowning by the government of Israel, as trustee, of Judea and Samaria, and despite the impermissible disowning and abandoning by the government of Israel, as trustee, of Aza, the government of Israel will be expected, at forthcoming international meetings, to make further impermissible disownings: the “painful concessions” that the Golan Heights is Arab, that the Sheba’a Farms is Arab, that the essential part of Jerusalem is Arab, and that the Temple Mount is Arab.
If implemented, the two-state “solution” would find a vulnerable Land of Israel, hemmed by an irrational border, and surrounded by a post-Mubarak Egypt, a Hamas-controlled Aza, a post-Abbas “Palestine,” an Assad-controlled Syria, and a Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon. A coordinated ground attack from those Arabs, coupled with a rain of rockets from Iran, would cause irreparable harm.
National interests of Israel
It’s high time for the government of Israel to define the national interests of Israel and to implement them:
1. The government of Israel should abandon its Jew-hating subservience to the “international community.”
2. The government of Israel should say “No” to its Judaism-hating two-state “solution.”
3. The name of the country should be changed to Yisrael, as the name of the Ivory Coast was changed to “Côte D’Ivoire”; as the name of Burma was changed to Myanmar.
4. The name of the capital of the country should be changed to Yerushalayim, as the name of Rangoon was changed to Yangon; as the names of Bombay and Calcutta were changed to Mumbai and Kolkata.
5. Embassies should be required by the government of Israel to be located in Yerushalayim. A foreign government has no authority to demand that the location of its embassy be New York or Philadelphia rather than Washington; or Rio de Janeiro rather than Brasilia; or Lagos rather than Abuja. If a foreign government demurs, its representation in Israel should be a mission. (Not a consulate — a consulate implies an embassy.)
6. There should be a declaration by the government of Israel that the entirety of the Land of Israel, from the north to the south, from the Mediterranean to the east side of the River Jordan and along the east side of the Salt Sea, is Jewish.
7. The declaration should be implemented by kicking out all Arabs in the Land of Israel.
Why not? Serbians were successful in their kicking out of Bosnians, thereby getting Republika Serpska for themselves. South Ossetians were successful in their kicking out of Georgians, thereby getting South Ossetia for themselves. It is not by-the-bye that Arab countries kicked out Jews, thereby getting for themselves Arab countries which are judenfreien (free of Jews) and judenreinen (free of Jewish influences).
The accusation of “racism” would be hurled at the Jews, though that accusation is not hurled at China or Japan or Russia or Malaysia, in each of which racism is woven into the woof and warp of society. The accusation of “racism” is not addressed to Moslems, though Jew-hatred is a pestilence fomented throughout the Moslem world, including Arab countries.
Racism does not describe the proposed kicking out. An action is racist if it is motivated by the color of a man’s skin. The proposed kicking out is not motivated by skin color. It is motivated by the incompatibility of Jewish culture and Arab culture. It is motivated by the unbounded hatred of Muslims, Arabs among them, of Jews and Judaism. It is motivated by massacres and murders and killings and maimings of Jews, since the end of World War I, by Arabs. It is motivated by three Arab wars against Jews (1948; 1956; 1967), and repeated promises of a fourth one. It is motivated by Arab bombs, Arab bullets and Arab rockets. It is motivated by two intifadas (Arabic for “crime waves”) against Israel. It is motivated by the beheading of Daniel Pearl. It is motivated by the torture-murders at the Chabad house in Mumbai.
All coexistence schemes concocted for Jews and Arabs are doomed to failure. Jews are Jews, Arabs are Arabs, “and never the twain shall meet” (Kipling).
Conclusion
The alternative to the defining and implementing by Israel of the national interests of Israel is yet more harm to the Land of Israel, to Jews, to Judaism, and to future generations of Jews. The government of Israel would do better to look after and preserve the Land of Israel for all Jews and their progeny, than to be the enabler of the second and ultimate stage of the Final Solution.
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