Bibi’s Choice: Allow The Palestinians to Acquire a Real — and Threatening — State or Just a ‘State of Mind’

(Washington, D.C.): Tuesday’s vote in the UN General Assembly according the Palestinian
delegation “super-observer” status puts the handwriting on the wall: Whenever Yasser Arafat
actualizes his threat to declare the creation of a Palestinian state, this entity will be widely — if not
universally — recognized. That being the case, the question Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu must ask himself is: Will Israel be better off if this entity enjoys the
characteristics that make it more than, in the words of Middle East expert Douglas Feith,
“a state of mind” (i.e., physical control of appreciable territory and resources)? href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾ If, as the
following analysis suggests, the answer is in the negative, Mr. Netanyahu would be most
ill-advised to agree to withdraw from additional areas of the West Bank, a step being
insistently
demanded by not only Arafat and his partisans in Europe, the UN and elsewhere, but also by the
Clinton Administration.

Palestinian Statehood: A Threat to Israeli Security

The establishment of a Palestinian state would, by definition, entail the creation of
internationally
recognized borders. As a result, should Israel find it necessary to move into the Palestinian
Authority’s territory in order to prevent its use — for example, as a base for terrorism or the
preparation of more wholesale conflict with the Jewish State — the Israelis will be charged with an
act of aggression against a sovereign member of the United Nations. href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

What is more, a Palestinian state would surely proceed to create sizeable forces armed for and
capable of conducting destructive offensive operations against the Israeli population.
This
prospect is made less hypothetical by the steps being taken even now by the PA in the
absence of such status. Consider the following account of Palestinian military and
paramilitary
activities that, according to the 1 June editions of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, href=”#N_3_”>⁽³⁾ are being
monitored with growing concern by Israeli intelligence (emphasis added throughout):

• “Palestinian security forces have recently accelerated and intensified their
  training ….
  The security bodies are training in the use of formations (such as teams or squads) for defined
  missions, while civilian bodies are increasing the pace of civil defense training.”
• “‘We know that the Palestinians are training for combat and aspiring to being able
  to
  use anti-tank missiles,’ one high-ranking officer told Ha’aretz. ‘They are training to fight
  in
  formation, and to carry out assignments by means of formations: gaining control of an area of
  land, holding down a post, taking over one of our positions, attacking a settlement.’ Other
  sources report ‘training in military formations, of teams and squads, which is far from the usual
  training of a police force.'”
• “The PA is holding self-defense courses for civilians. The first group of Shabiba members,
  the
  Fatah youth group, recently finished a two-week course in Gaza that included combat training
  and weapons …. Defense sources say that this training includes lessons in shooting,
  hand-to-hand combat and ceremonial drills. This is raising concern in Israel, according to the
  sources, because it is being done on a massive scale, primarily in Gaza.”
• “Sniper training is part of the training of Palestinian security forces. In
  several
  confrontations, the Israeli Defense Forces identified Palestinians carrying Kalashnikov and
  M-16 assault rifles with telescopic sights. The Palestinians claimed that the telescopic sights
  were purchased by individuals on a personal basis, but Israel believes that they are part of the
  military equipment being smuggled into the PA from abroad.”
• “The PA continues to try to smuggle in more weapons. Arafat issued an
  authorization to
  smuggle weapons and to purchase them on the black market.”
• “The Palestinians have anti-tank missiles and a large number of land
  mines, which they will
  try to place in the path of Israeli tanks should Israel attempt to re-enter and occupy Palestinian
  cities. They may also have rocket-propelled grenades.”

Ha’aretz reported on 7 July that Israeli intelligence recently warned the
Netanyahu
government that there is: “a concentrated, continuous and deliberate effort by officials in
the
Palestinian Authority to smuggle arms in their possession, including an attempt to put their
hands on anti-tank missiles.”

The Intelligence Dimension: The dangers posed to Israeli security by such
PA-sponsored
military and paramilitary activities is compounded by the liquidation of Israeli intelligence
operations that has taken place in Palestinian-controlled areas. As internationally renowned
terrorism expert Steven Emerson put it in the Wall Street Journal of 4 August 1997,
“Israel’s
once-vaunted intelligence network, which had prevented suicide bombings prior to the Oslo
accords, has been systematically destroyed by Mr. Arafat’s forces” who have “killed, tortured,
kidnaped or threatened hundreds of Palestinians who once formed the core of Israel’s early
warning system in the Palestinian territories.”⁽⁴⁾ This PA
operation has contributed materially to
the setting of an odious record: According to Mr. Emerson, more Israelis have been
killed by
terrorism since the Oslo accords were signed in 1993 “than in any comparable period since
the state was created 50 years ago.”

How Much Worse With a Real Palestinian State?

All of these problems will be substantially exacerbated if Israel surrenders still
more
territory to the PA. That territory will enable further infrastructure building, smuggling
of arms
and training of military and paramilitary units for the purpose of carrying out the jihad
against
Israel that Arafat and his lieutenants continue to espouse. For example, as the Zionist
Organization of America reported on 7 July:

“Speaking at the funeral of an Arab terrorist in Gaza on June 24, 1998, Ahmad
Hils,
secretary-general of Yasir Arafat’s Fatah movement in Judea-Samaria, said: ‘The path
of jihad, struggle, and heroism continues to be the only way to liberate Palestine
and to establish our independent state with Jerusalem as its capital, and so it will
be in the future.’ (Quoted in the Palestinian Authority-affiliated newspaper Al
Ayyam,
25 June 1998.)”⁽⁵⁾

More territory will also make it easier for the Palestinian Authority to accommodate the
tremendous infusion of immigrants claiming the “right of return” — many of
whom who will be
recruited (or conscripted) into the PA’s armed forces. With access to its own airport and
seaports, as well as the covert tunnel(s) between Egypt and Gaza, the PA will doubtless find ways
to arm such a force, over and above the caches of weapons now being amassed.

Limited Sovereignty? Fuggedaboudit

To be sure, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government has stressed that any future Palestinian
entity
will have to be subjected to certain limitations on its sovereignty. Israeli officials have at various
times described these as including: no foreign alliances; no standing army; limits on
non-conventional and conventional weaponry; no control of Israeli airspace; limits on access to
and use of the Jordan River and its aquifer; restrictions on immigration.

If the conduct of the Palestinian Authority to date — aimed at undercutting or circumventing
such
limitations before a state of “Palestine” is formally declared — were not warning
enough of the
untenableness of such limitations, America’s First Lady has signaled that not even
the United
States will agree to them. As she put it in her infamous Voice of America
address in early May,
remarks that were clearly part of an orchestrated U.S. campaign to euchre Israel into making
further concessions⁽⁶⁾:

“I think that it will be in the long-term interests of the Middle East for Palestine
to be a state and for it to be a state that is responsible for its citizens’ well-being,
a state that has responsibility for providing education and health care and economic
opportunity to its citizens, a state that has to accept the responsibility of
governing
…. The territory that the Palestinians currently inhabit and whatever additional territory
they will obtain through the peace negotiations should be considered and evolve into a
functioning modern state …. [one] responsible for the well-being of its people and …
seen on the same footing as any other state in terms of dealing responsibly with
all of the issues that state governments must deal with.“

The Bottom Line

A National Public Radio report last night concluded with the remarkable line: “Benjamin
Netanyahu does not want to be remembered as the man who created a Palestinian state.” The
implication was that, if he agreed to withdraw now — as the Clinton Administration demands —
from thirteen percent of the West Bank territory, such a state will not come about. This is, of
course, utter rubbish.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s only viable option — and Israel’s only hope for future
security
— is that Bibi Netanyahu proves to be the man who prevented the Palestinians from
acquiring a real state. They may yet claim their islands of non-contiguous
PA-controlled
population centers to be a nation, but the danger posed to Israel by such an entity and the ability
of the international community to make mischief with and through such a “state of mind” will be
trivial compared to the alternative now being sought: a base for “jihad…to liberate Palestine, and
establish an independent states with Jerusalem as its capital.”

It behooves the Israeli government — and those in the U.S. concerned with Israel’s
security
— to defer any further withdrawal of the IDF at least until such time as the Palestinian
leadership demonstrates a commitment to peaceful coexistence with Israel. At the very least, the
PA must formally and publicly renounce the vision of a Palestinian state that would require the
destruction of another state, Israel — a vision symbolically represented in this, the PA’s official
map of “Palestine”:

Source: Palestinian National Authority

– 30 –

1. It is absurd that we are in a situation where the world is panting to
recognize Palestine.
Taiwan, despite its legitimate claim to independence, a claim supported both by its political
history as well as its physical geography, increasingly finds itself abandoned by even its most
stalwart supporters.

2. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
‘Say It Ain’t So’: Ross’ Trilateral Intelligence
Gambit Threatens U.S. Security, Interests (No.
97-D 112, 14 August 1997).

3. The Center for Security Policy appreciates the assistance of the
Zionist Organization of
America in bringing this article to its attention.

4. See Denial Is No Basis For Securing A Durable
Mideast Peace (No. 97-D 110, 11 August
1997). Also, see The Road To A Palestinian State
(No. 97-D 10,
20 January 1997).

5. Translation provided by the indispensable Middle East Media and
Research Institute
(MEMRI).

6. See Clinton Legacy Watch # 24: An Odious
Ultimatum to Israel (No. 98-D 78, 6 May
1998).