The Problem with Creating Palestine on Jewish Land (Judean Rose)

Trump’s peace plan for Israel has a major flaw: it assumes the Arabs can govern themselves, when they have proven just the opposite, and it rewards them for their failures in statecraft, with a state on Jewish land. The Arabs, meantime, are not only an abject failure at self-government, their economy is a failure, too. They exist by the grace of UNRWA/EU life support. Despite these facts, Trump’s deal of the century calls on Israel to write off territory in order to create the State of Palestine on Jewish land, along Israel’s border.

It is true that this state would exist on land already Judenrein, a place where no Jews live, land that is under PA autonomy. It must be stated that, nonetheless, this is Jewish land.

Trump’s deal is not new. It is a reprise of the land for peace formula. In this tired paradigm, Israel offers Jewish land to the Arabs in exchange for peace. But the peace somehow never arrives.

The narrative which accompanies the land for peace formula on the face of it looks as though both sides give something up. The Arabs, their arms, the Jews their land. Giving away precious land stands as a statement that Israel cares more about peace than land–a statement forced on Israel by outside parties. But what land for peace really represents, is Jews ceding Jewish land to the PA, a foreign, latter-day terrorist entity.

In land for peace the Jews are told to take a leap of faith and hope for the best. The outcome has, historically, never been favorable to the Jews.

Some would say that Israel has already ceded the territory in question, when it gave the Arabs autonomy. Self-rule and a territory free of Jews! Is this not, already, a de facto state?

But no, a state it was never meant to be.What Begin offered with autonomy, was something less than than a state: the right to self-determination, but never a state:

We do not even dream of the possibility—if we are given the chalice to withdraw our military forces from Judea, Samaria and Gaza–of abandoning those areas to the control of the murderous organization that is called the PLO. . . . This is history’s meanest murder organization, except for the armed Nazi organizations. 

And of course, in the light of day, autonomy is a failure. The PA government is corrupt, the people poor, their economy dependent on outside support. From Wikipedia (emphasis added):

In 2013, $1.1 billion was contributed to UNRWA, of which $294 million was contributed by the United States, $216.4 million from the EU, $151.6 million from Saudi Arabia, $93.7 million from Sweden, $54.4 million from Germany, $53 million from Norway, $34.6 million from Japan, $28.8 million from Switzerland, $23.3 million from Australia, $22.4 million from the Netherlands, $20 million from Denmark, $18.6 million from Kuwait, $17 million from France, $12.3 million from Italy, $10.7 million from Belgium as well as $10.3 million from all other countries.
In 2016, the United States contributed $368 million to the agency, and $350 million in 2017, but has cut around one third of its contributions for 2018. In January 2018, the United States withheld $65 million, roughly half the amount due in the month, again creating a financial crisis for UNRWA. Belgium and Netherlands plan to increase their contributions to UNRWA.
In August 2018, the United States cut its annual contribution of $360m to UNWRA. In mid-2019, Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland temporarily suspended funding to UNRWA. In December 2019, Netherlands restored funding to UNWRA, increasing its donation by €6 million for 2019, to €19 million.

If the Arabs have been unable from the 1977 Autonomy Plan until now, to either effectively rule themselves or build an independent economy, even with a never-ending pipeline of foreign money, how will Trump’s money make any difference at all? The peace has never arrived because the Arabs do not want lots of money and some Jewish land for their state. They want all the land, and they want the Jews gone. Ignoring these realities, Trump asks Israel to pretend that this time, with his plan, things will be different: the Arabs will build Canada on Israel’s border, bearing nothing but maple syrup and goat’s milk fudge. At least that is the message conveyed to the people of Israel by President Trump by way of Ambassador Friedman:

“I understand them, but [we are saying] you don’t have to live with that Palestinian state, you have to live with the Palestinian state when the Palestinians become Canadians. And when the Palestinians become Canadians all your issues should go away.”

Alas and alack, the Palestinian Authority will never be other than what it is, the “meanest murder organization” save the Nazis: a terrorist regime. In spite of this, Trump asks Israel to look the other way, to give the PA a state on Jewish land, a state that will sit on Israel’s border, run by the democratically-elected leader of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, the man behind the Munich Massacre who succeeded Arafat, a president in the 15th year of a four-year term.

Abbas is Abbas. The same Abbas who uses his platform to incite the masses against the Jews.

Abbas has not changed and will not change.

Now we do not say that the PA, under Abbas, has no achievements. But unfortunately, the greatest achievement of the PA under Mahmoud Abbas has been ensuring the continuation of the pay-to-slay salaries to terrorists in Israeli prisons, in contravention of the Taylor Force Act. In its insistence on giving financial incentives to terror, the PA thumbs its nose at Taylor Force, Donald Trump, and America, and should this peace deal go forward, Trump will effectively be looking the other way.

This is quite bad enough. But Trump also asks Israel to reward the PA, to give them yet more Jewish land. Abbas and his PA, however, have never acted in good faith. They are bad actors and should not be rewarded, let alone with de jure recognition as a genuine state, even if they lie some more and say they’ll behave. There is no doubt that hiding behind any such lies, the true intention of any such state is to continue as a belligerent welfare project perched along Israel’s border, poised to strike at the Jews.

Trump’s plan of partial Israeli sovereignty and a new Arab state, like all the plans before it, is not really new. It’s just more of the same salami tactics, no different really from the creation of Transjordan as the national homeland for the Arabs on 78% of the land that the British had already promised the Jews.

As the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. From the time of the Brits, and way before, the world has pressured Israel to cut up its body like an ever-shrinking salami, to feed bits and pieces to the wolves outside the door, as it waits for a peace that never quite arrives.