Caroline Glick and the "Israeli Solution"

Caroline Glick, former IDF officer, former advisor to PM Netanyahu and currently Senior Contributing Editor of the Jerusalem Post, spoke at the New Synagogue in Netanya.  She was highly articulate and stimulating and held a large audience in rapt attention.  Her main thesis was two-fold, first that Pres. Obama is a serial enemy of Israel and that his policies in the Middle East have led to a loss of US credibility and left a power vacuum being filled by Islamist forces, and second that the Palestine Authority is an enemy entity and should be closed down and Israel should gradually take over sovereignty of Judea and Samaria.   

She pointed out that the only negotiated agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, that founded the Palestine Authority, were the Oslo Accords, and they have failed.  Not only because of the Second Intifada that Yasir Arafat organized to unleash terrorism against Israelis that killed thousands, but also because his successor, Pres. Abbas, has now jettisoned the idea of a negotiating peace with Israel in favor of seeking unilateral recognition of Palestine at the UN.  Israel is now surrounded by a turbulent Middle East with an unknown and perilous future, in relation to civil war in Syria, the Sunni Islamic State and the Shia Iranian drive for a nuclear bomb.  We cannot afford to continue applying the failed policies of the past.

Regarding Pres. Obama, he is clever, he delivers excellent speeches, but his intent is malicious.  From the moment he went to Cairo in 2005 and tried to persuade a hostile Arab world that he is really their friend, until the US embargo of arm sales to Israel during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza this summer, the Obama Administration has been hostile to Israel.  Obama says that he has Israel's back, but he has stabbed us in the back.  From the first visit of PM Netanyahu to the White House, when he was kept waiting and humiliated, to the second visit when Obama delivered an anti-Israel speech while Netanyahu was en route, to the current denial of meetings with VP Biden, Secty of State Kerry and Security Advisor Rice to visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ya'alon, the Obama Administration has been openly hostile to Israel. That they criticize Israeli plans for construction on the West Bank is not new, but they have commited themselves to dealing with the "moderate" Abbas, and anything that stands in the way of that, including reality, is opposed.  Thus, Abbas' speech at the UN calling Israel an "occupying, colonial power" to his most recent pronouncement inciting the Palestinian population to rise up against Jewish presence on the Temple Mount, have been essentially ignored by the Obama Administration.

Glick does not regard Gaza as a further threat to Israel, particularly as it is also a threat to Egypt and Egypt and Israel have a common interest in keeping Hamas from rearming and rebuilding its infrastructure.  Note that Obama accepted the Qatari proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza that would have required Israel to accede to Hamas demands, while Egypt stood firm against that and gave Hamas nothing.  Over and over again Obama has sided with the Muslim Brotherhood against Pres. al Sisi and with Qatar against Egypt.  Meanwhile a completely new situation exists in the Middle East when Egypt and Saudi Arabia effectively supported Israeli action against Hamas, and hardly criticized Israeli actions (less so than the western publics).   This informal alignment of interests between Israel and the so-called moderate Sunni States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States (excluding Qatar) is a new situation in the Middle East, and even if it is only temporary, Israeli must take advantage of it and build on it.  The threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon is not being realistically removed by US policy vis-a-vis the talks with Iran, on the contrary Israel and the Sunni States are very concerned that Obama is prepared to compromise with Iran.

The fact is that Israel has an excellent claim to sovereignty to Judea and Samaria under international law, since they have never been under any other sovereignty since the Palestine Mandate was granted to Britain in 1922 by the League of Nations to establish a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.   We should be stating very clearly and loudly our rights there, but successive Israeli Governments have failed to do so because they were laboring under the misapprehension that if they held those territories for the Arabs, eventually they would want to negotiate with us for the establishment of a Palestine State.  In other words we accepted the "two-state" solution, that is now effectively defunct.  The only viable alternative for Israel to secure its future and avoid having a hostile Palestinian entity on its border which would attract a large influx of extremely hostile Islamic radicals in close proximity to all our vital heartland is a "one state solution."  Israel must take-over and annex Judea and Samaria. Not to do so will eventually become suicidal for Israel.  We did this with the Golan and with East Jerusalem, we need to do this now with the so-called West Bank.

The counter argument made by the Israeli left, that is clearly in decline, is the demographic argument, namely that this will bring a large hostile population into Israel.  That is not necessarily the case, first the population of the West Bank has been greatly exaggerated by the PA Bureau of Statistics, their original assessment was deliberately double the truth, but now we know that the Palestinian population there is probably no more than 1.5 million (this needs to be reassessed).  Also, we do not need to give all these people the vote, so that they can eventually out-vote us.  Just as in Jerusalem and the Golan, we give them resident rights, but only those that apply for Israeli citizenship and are accepted will be able to vote.  And we must ensure that no terrorists or enemies of Israel actually become Israeli citizens.  We have done this before and we can do it again.

However, although Glick would like us to annex Judea and Samaria she acknowledges that we must do this in a gradual and step-wise manner.  Certainly the world will oppose this, but we must re-state and establish our rights to these territories and we must use all means, especially the police to arrest and imprison hostile elements that throw stones and Molotov cocktails at Jewish worshippers In Jerusalem and currently are hardly prevented from doing so.  A combination of local moves, eventually ending in Israeli law being applied to Judea and Samaria, together with an aggressive campaign both internationally and locally must end in Israeli security control over these territories.  This is the only way that Israel can secure its future existence.  In any case we must get through the next two years of the Obama Administration and hope that whoever succeeds him will be more friendly and politically astute.

(for further details see Caroline Glick's book "The Israeli Solution: a one-state plan for peace in the Middle East")