Sunday, December 23, 2007

The last war?

When the West pours billions of dollars into Palestinian coffers one must wonder at their commitment to democracy and human rights. When they elevate Pres. Abbas, a weak and indecisive leader, as the hope of the Western world for "peace in our times," we know something fundamental must be wrong.
Here are some thoughts (not a solution) on this situation. Both Egypt and Jordan sued for peace with Israel not because they became Zionist, but because we beat them, over and over again in response to their direct attacks. Finally to cut their losses they agreed to a peace agreement with us, and since they are States with responsible Governments (by that I mean responsible for their actions) the peace agreements have mainly been kept.
On the contrary, we have never really defeated the Palestinians and further, since they are not a responsible State, but a hodge podge of terrorist organizations, including Fatah, they can always avoid their commitments. They simply do not keep agreements, and never intend to.
Here are two examples, on the front page of the Jerusalem Post today is the icon chosen by the Fatah leadership to celebrate the 43rd anniversary of the founding of Fatah, which shows a Palestinian flag draped over the whole of "Palestine" (including Israel) with an automatic weapon beside it and a photo of Yasir Arafat. If this doesn't directly contradict their commitment to peace with Israel what does? Imagine the fuss if Israel's leadership chose an icon to celebrate the upcoming 60th anniversary of Israel's founding with an Israeli flag draped across the whole of Israel and the West Bank and Gaza with an Uzi beside it.
The latest statement from PA Pres Abbas is that he will withdraw from negotiations with Israel unless Israel immediately commits itself to remove all settlements on "Palestinian land." If Israel does not do this he will complain to Pres. Bush (due here soon) to force Israel to do this as a precondition to any further negotiations. Naievely I thought that this was a topic for negotiations in the talks, not a precondition. Now it's not that I particularly think these negotiations are worth anything, but this kind of threat/pressure is typical of a side that doesn't realize it has been defeated.
That is the problem, in order to get the Palestinians to really want peace, like the Egyptians and Jordanians, they must, unfortunately, be utterly defeated. I have always believed this and have stated this many times, there needs to be a "last war" with the Palestinians. So far they haven't been defeated, partly because Israel has too many limitations fighting irregular terrorists hiding among civilians, and partly because they cannot stage a direct attack against the IDF as the armies of the Arab States once did. (It reminds me of the joke about the Briton, the American and the Israeli who are captured by a terrorist, and he threatens to kill them, so the Israeli asks him to kick him up the behind and when he does, the Israeli pulls out a gun and shoots him, then the others ask incredulously why didn't you shoot him immediately, and the Israeli replies "I had to have a good reason.") So the people in Gaza and on the West Bank still believe that they can defeat us and destroy us, and that these negotiations are merely another stage towards that objective.
In order to disabuse them of this attitude and to really make them want peace we must treat them like the "hostile entity" that Gaza is. We must mount a largescale ground assault on Gaza and destroy the terrorist army that the Iranians are helping them to build in Gaza along the lines of Hizbullah in Lebanon. We must fight them mercilessly as the army of terrorists they are, until they capitulate! Nothing else will work. Unfortunately this Olmert Govt. will probably do a deal with Hamas to obtain a hudna/ceasefire just as they are preparing to capitulate to the PA in Ramallah. So much for Annapolis and these ridiculous negotiations and the obscene amounts of money being thrown at them. These negotiations will not lead to peace!
Logically one way to avoid an Iranian threat is if the Palestinians are so totally defeated that they sue for peace with us and then the Iranians would have no basis for an attack to support them, although they would probably threaten us anyway, so maybe it wouldn't be the "last war" after all.

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