How To End the Palestinian Problem - For Once and For All
(this reprints a post I made over a year ago, on January 1st 2007, and adds a postscript)
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Twenty years ago, I would have been more optimistic about the possibilities for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. In particular, I assumed (in 1990) that the end of the Cold War would inevitably lead to such a peace, because absent the Soviet Union, Palestine had lost its Great Power support and Israel still had American backing.
What happened since then? George H. W. Bush failed to stand by the Israelis, and Clinton (*) and the Europeans sucked up to the Palestinians. I don't know if this was why the Palestinians refused to accept the peace deals, but it probably contributed to their intransigence.
But really, I think that the Palestinians themselves are mostly to blame. They are a self-selected minority of the stupid and insane: the smart and sane Palestinian Arabs long ago either became Israeli Arabs or emigrated to other lands. What is left in Palestine are the dregs -- the people and the children of people who insisted on staying and fighting in a hopeless and pointless cause.
It was the Palestinians, after all, who repeatedly rejected Israeli peace offers that included territorial cessions and mutual diplomatic recognition. They seemed to believe that every Israeli manifestation of reasonable compromise proved cowardice and weakness, and that if they only kept on killing Jews they would someday get a better deal. They brought what is now happening to them upon themselves, in so many ways.
So I now think that it would be a good thing if the Israelis simply expelled the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, announced formal annexation of those territories, and vowed to respond to any further state-sanctioned artillery bombardments by airstrikes against valuable targets in the territory of the nation-states backing the terrorists, with the intent of doing disproportionate damage (**). Do that, and the problem would die down of its own accord.
Oh yes, the world would complain. For a year or so. And then something new would come up. The Palestinians would have no more villages, only refugee camps, and eventually the countries hosting them would get tired of their violence and expel them elsewhere. In a few decades, there would be no more "Palestinians" -- only people living in other countries.
And the continual warfare would be over. There would probably be a few spasm wars, until the "frontline" Arab states realized "yes, Israel really is going to smash our economy every time we launch a few rocket attacks on them, so that game's too expensive to play." Or not -- in which case the attritional warfare would plunge the frontline states into such poverty that they would fail -- and perhaps, a generation or two later, be annexed into a growing Greater Israel -- their choice (***).
But either way, the Palestinians would no longer be a problem.
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(Postscript, October 7th, 2008)
Nothing in the last year and a half has changed my mind on this. What I have observed, however, is Israel continuing down the inexplicably self-destructive trail blazed at Oslo. So far, the Israeli electorate seems utterly unwilling to face up to the fact that the Arabs want to destroy them and that no peace is possible with them, save one vigorously enforced by superior Israeli strength. I must assume that things will continue in this fashion until either Israel wises up, or falls.
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(*) It horrifies me to think that Bill Clinton invited Yasser Arafat -- a man who once had an American ambassador TORTURED TO DEATH to the White House as an honored guest. I'm mildly surprised that he didn't follow this up by having Charles Manson over for tea with Hilary and Chelsea.
(**) In other words, if Syrian-backed terrorists lobbed some rockets against an Israeli settlement, doing a few tens of thousands of dollars of damage and inflicting a few casualties, the Israelis might respond by launching an airstrike against a Syrian power dam, causing tens of millions of dollars of damage and hundreds of Syrian casualties. This would negate the Arab numerical advantage in attritional warfare.
(***) I have a high enough opinion of Arab sanity, at least among the leadership, that I believe that the Arabs states would back down rather than risk strategic warfare of this sort with Israel. But hey, I could be wrong -- in which case the devastation couldn't happen to countries more deserving of such.
===
Twenty years ago, I would have been more optimistic about the possibilities for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. In particular, I assumed (in 1990) that the end of the Cold War would inevitably lead to such a peace, because absent the Soviet Union, Palestine had lost its Great Power support and Israel still had American backing.
What happened since then? George H. W. Bush failed to stand by the Israelis, and Clinton (*) and the Europeans sucked up to the Palestinians. I don't know if this was why the Palestinians refused to accept the peace deals, but it probably contributed to their intransigence.
But really, I think that the Palestinians themselves are mostly to blame. They are a self-selected minority of the stupid and insane: the smart and sane Palestinian Arabs long ago either became Israeli Arabs or emigrated to other lands. What is left in Palestine are the dregs -- the people and the children of people who insisted on staying and fighting in a hopeless and pointless cause.
It was the Palestinians, after all, who repeatedly rejected Israeli peace offers that included territorial cessions and mutual diplomatic recognition. They seemed to believe that every Israeli manifestation of reasonable compromise proved cowardice and weakness, and that if they only kept on killing Jews they would someday get a better deal. They brought what is now happening to them upon themselves, in so many ways.
So I now think that it would be a good thing if the Israelis simply expelled the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, announced formal annexation of those territories, and vowed to respond to any further state-sanctioned artillery bombardments by airstrikes against valuable targets in the territory of the nation-states backing the terrorists, with the intent of doing disproportionate damage (**). Do that, and the problem would die down of its own accord.
Oh yes, the world would complain. For a year or so. And then something new would come up. The Palestinians would have no more villages, only refugee camps, and eventually the countries hosting them would get tired of their violence and expel them elsewhere. In a few decades, there would be no more "Palestinians" -- only people living in other countries.
And the continual warfare would be over. There would probably be a few spasm wars, until the "frontline" Arab states realized "yes, Israel really is going to smash our economy every time we launch a few rocket attacks on them, so that game's too expensive to play." Or not -- in which case the attritional warfare would plunge the frontline states into such poverty that they would fail -- and perhaps, a generation or two later, be annexed into a growing Greater Israel -- their choice (***).
But either way, the Palestinians would no longer be a problem.
===
(Postscript, October 7th, 2008)
Nothing in the last year and a half has changed my mind on this. What I have observed, however, is Israel continuing down the inexplicably self-destructive trail blazed at Oslo. So far, the Israeli electorate seems utterly unwilling to face up to the fact that the Arabs want to destroy them and that no peace is possible with them, save one vigorously enforced by superior Israeli strength. I must assume that things will continue in this fashion until either Israel wises up, or falls.
===
(*) It horrifies me to think that Bill Clinton invited Yasser Arafat -- a man who once had an American ambassador TORTURED TO DEATH to the White House as an honored guest. I'm mildly surprised that he didn't follow this up by having Charles Manson over for tea with Hilary and Chelsea.
(**) In other words, if Syrian-backed terrorists lobbed some rockets against an Israeli settlement, doing a few tens of thousands of dollars of damage and inflicting a few casualties, the Israelis might respond by launching an airstrike against a Syrian power dam, causing tens of millions of dollars of damage and hundreds of Syrian casualties. This would negate the Arab numerical advantage in attritional warfare.
(***) I have a high enough opinion of Arab sanity, at least among the leadership, that I believe that the Arabs states would back down rather than risk strategic warfare of this sort with Israel. But hey, I could be wrong -- in which case the devastation couldn't happen to countries more deserving of such.