Will Dennis Ross Broker A Hebron Deal Right Into The Hands Of The De-Judaizers?

(Washington, D.C.): As President
Clinton’s Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross,
shuttles around the region seeking a
compromise that will induce Israel to
complete the removal of most of its
troops from Hebron, the context in which
such a withdrawal would occur is taking
on ever more ominous overtones: This
deal may remove the last impediment to a
full-fledged Palestinian Arab state and
set the stage for the ultimate redivision
of Jerusalem.

A Palestinian Arab State
Would Pose a Mortal Peril to Israel

In the past, the myriad, sound
arguments against such a Palestinian
state have been made compellingly by
individuals across the political spectrum
in Israel — from Yitzhak Rabin and
Shimon Peres to Benjamin Netanyahu. As
the Center for Security Policy noted in
its recent Transition Brief entitled
Israel’s Settlements:
Legitimate, Democratically Mandated,
Vital to Israel’s Security and,
Therefore, in U.S. Interest⁽¹⁾,
Yitzhak Rabin put it in
his memoirs published in 1979:

“Although Labor and Likud
differ in their views on the solution
to the Palestinian question, we
both oppose in the strongest terms
the creation of a Palestinian
‘mini-state’ in the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip, first and
foremost because it cannot solve
anything….The leaders of the PLO
have declared — and I believe them
— that they view such a ‘mini-state’
as but the first phase in the
achievement of their so-called
secular, democratic Palestine, to
be built on the ruins of the State of
Israel.” (Emphasis added.)

And in the Spring of 1980, Shimon
Peres wrote in Foreign
Affairs:

“A PLO state on the West Bank
could never settle the problem of the
Palestinian refugees. The open space
of Jordan could. A PLO state
would prolong, not end warfare; it
would build a base for the
continuation of the struggle, not
work for reconciliation.“
(Emphasis added.)

More recently, Likud leader
Netanyahu cited similar concerns
as he made a pledge to prevent the
creation of a Palestinian Arab state west
of the Jordan River a centerpiece of his
campaign for the Israeli premiership. Not
least, he was determined to prevent the
claim that would inevitably be staked by
such a state to the eastern section of
Jerusalem.

As recently as 2 December 1996, Prime
Minister Netanyahu responded to a
question from the Los Angeles Times
about whether his “vision [of the
final status agreement] will not
encompass a Palestinian state” by
responding:

“That is right. In the final
settlement [between Israel and the
Palestinians] we need to define a new
model for Israel and the
Palestinians. People seem caught in a
bind that says either there will be
military subjugation by Israel or
complete unbridled self-determination
for the Palestinians. We need to
escape this bind and find a modus
vivendi in between.

“This is not only true in the
case of Israel and the Palestinians,
but in dozens of countries that are
faced with the same problem. It is
seldom accepted anywhere any more
that the solution is just to split up
countries where national groups are
embedded in the territory of a larger
national group into separate and
equal sovereign states.

“Such a solution
would be hugely problematic for us.
Most Israelis shudder at this not
only because of their historical
attachment to the heart of the Jewish
homeland — the Judean and Samarian
hills — but because of the threats
that can emanate from such an
open-ended, sovereign state. They
could bring in a large army, rockets,
missiles, control the air space above
Israel and the water table beneath.
Sovereignty usually implies the
control of all these things. And
that is an unacceptable risk for
Israel.”

The enormous pressure being brought to
bear on Israel to abandon this historic
view of the dangers associated with a
Palestinian Arab state was evident in an
interview with the Prime Minister’s
senior policy advisor, David Bar-Ilan,
published in the Jerusalem Post
on 20 December 1996. To be sure, Mr.
Bar-Ilan reiterated the Prime Minister’s
determination to ensure that any future
Palestinian entity cannot enjoy
“unlimited sovereignty [– i.e.,]
that it cannot have an army of a quarter
of a million people; produce its own
non-conventional weapons; make alliances
with radical regimes like Iraq and Iran,
control the airspace over Israel,
etc.” He nonetheless opined:
“You can call [such an entity]
anything you want. You can call it
autonomy-plus or you can call it a
state-minus.”

If press reports are correct that —
as part of the incipient Hebron deal —
Israel has decided to give up its right
to hot pursuit into the Arab areas that
will, henceforth, be controlled by the
Palestinian Authority, a
“model” for Palestinian
self-rule is being created that will not
only be tantamount to unlimited
sovereignty. Such a model, if applied
beyond Hebron, would eviscerate Israeli
efforts to deny the Arabs whatever they
desire in terms of access to weapons,
armed forces, diplomatic ties or
restricting Israel’s limited airspace and
access to fresh water.

First Hebron, Then
Jerusalem

What is more, the emerging
Hebron deal will inevitably create a
precedent for a racist segregation of
Arabs and Jews that will greatly
complicate efforts to resist the
repartition of Jerusalem. For
one thing, if the Israelis can relinquish
control over all but a small ghetto in a
community to which the Jewish people have
far longer ties than they do to
Jerusalem, who is to say they cannot
agree to relinquish control over a part
of their capital city?

For another, the Hebron agreement
appears likely to encourage the already
widespread belief that, if only
Jewish settlement in the disputed
territories can be frozen⁽²⁾
(and, ultimately, made so dangerous as to
be reversed), a durable peace
between Jews and Arabs will be at hand.
The lack of historical foundation for
this contention is made clear in an
article recently written by Morton Klein,
president of the Zionist Organization of
America, to appear shortly in the Philadelphia
Inquirer. He observes:

“It is instructive to note
the in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936-39, when
there were no Jewish settlements nor
even a State of Israel, there
was still no peace. In those years,
the Arabs repeatedly launched
pogroms, massacring hundreds of
Jewish civilians. From the
establishment of Israel in 1948 until
the 1967 war, Israel did not control
the ‘occupied territories’ of Judea,
Samaria, Gaza, the Golan Heights,
Sinai or eastern Jerusalem — the
Arabs did. Nor were there any Jewish
settlements there.

“Yet there was no peace
then, either. The Arab states
waged war against Israel in 1948,
1956 and 1967, and sponsored hundreds
of terrorist attacks in addition.
Their openly declared goal was the
annihilation of Israel. When
the Arabs established the Palestine
Liberation Organization in 1964
(before there were ‘occupied
territories’ or ‘Jewish
settlements’), the ‘Palestine’ that
they were trying to ‘liberate’ was
Israel itself, including Tel Aviv,
Haifa and the rest of Israel proper.”
(Emphasis added.)

Next Step: ‘Dejudaization’

The full import of the policy that is
pressuring Israel to complete its
withdrawal from Hebron, to suspend
settlement activity and, in due course,
to agree to the creation of a Palestinian
Arab state was laid bare in a brilliant
op.ed. article by the respected New
York Times columnist, A. M.
Rosenthal on 20 December 1996. Entitled
“Judaizing Jerusalem,’ this article
(a copy of which
is attached) uses the prism of Jewish
efforts to settle in eastern Jerusalem to
focus critically on the policy of denying
Jews the opportunity to live where they
wish:

“‘Judaization.’ It is an
accusation: Jews who live in
neighborhoods demographically Arab
are interlopers…, pushing in where
they have no right to be, threatening
the daily lives and religions of the real
Jerusalemites….For me, it
recalls the [term] Judenrein.
Arabs are familiar with that. It is
what they accomplished when Jordan
occupied the West Bank from 1948 to
1967 — all Jews out.“
(Emphasis added.)

The Bottom Line

The traditional view that a
Palestinian Arab state on the West Bank
of the Jordan River could give rise to an
existential threat to Israel continues to
be valid. Obviously, such risk
remains an intolerable for the Jewish
State — and should be an unacceptable
prospect for all committed to Israel’s
security.

It behooves President Clinton
and his new national security team
— assuming they share such a commitment
— to suspend the pressure being applied
to achieve a virtually complete Israeli
withdrawal from Hebron. They should
decline to be associated with complaints
about the Judaization of east Jerusalem,
or any other region. And they should
vigorously resist steps that could
facilitate a renewal of Judenrein
through the “dejudaization”
of the ancient land of Israel, initially
in any area identified as a Palestinian
state, and then ultimately within the
Jewish State’s pre-1967 borders.

The Center for Security Policy
commends Senator Jesse Helms
and Rep. Benjamin Gilman,
the chairmen respectively of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee and the House
International Relations Committee, for
their forceful rejection of the thrust of
the anti-settlements letter recently sent
to Prime Minister Netanyahu by former
senior U.S. officials and endorsed by
President Clinton. Similar
leadership is no less needed with respect
to the Hebron deal and the dejudaization
agenda that it may help advance.

– 30 –

1. See ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_130″>No. 96-D 130, 17
December 1996).

2. As noted in the
aforementioned Center paper, new Arab
construction in the disputed territories
is estimated to be ten times greater than
that by Israeli Jews.