There were a few lone voices screaming about Abu Mazen's doctoral thesis, in which he described the Holocaust as a hoax. There were a few who screamed about the fact that he was the financier for the Munich Olympic massacre in 1972. There were even those who pointed out that Arafat still pulled the strings.
The world paid no attention. Rather, yet another attempt was made to ignore reality and dream in living colour about peace finally descending on the Holy Land as two nations sat down next to each other in peace and democracy. The world seems to enjoy preferring illusion over fact when dealing with Israel.
Abu Mazen himself, certainly never gave them any cause for such celebration. From the outset he hued to the line that Arafat set -- no peace: we won't force the militias to lay down their weapons; no democracy: Arafat is the "President"; and we will not abandon our demand for the "Right of Return".
The Right of Return is an interesting issue. The Palestinians use Israeli history as their own. In Israel, anyone who is a Jew has the right to automatic citizenship upon touching the soil of the country. This is enshrined in law since 1950. It is the elemental basis of the Zionist realization of Israel as the homeland for the Jewish nation. The Palestinians look at the underpinning of Israeli society, and see in it something they can use to capture world imagination for themselves. It is yet another example of them stealing our history and identity in order to make their case more palatable to the world. And so they demand the "Right of Return" for all "Palestinians" in the world, as if there are so many such people that have been denied their homeland for the past millenia. Never mind that the term "Palestinian" referred to Jews in Israel until 1948. Never mind that Palestinian nationalism was never given any legitimacy -- even by the Arabs -- until the 1964 creation of the PLO by Egypt and other Arab countries with the express purpose of displacing Israel.
And that is exactly what the Palestinian "Right of Return" is about. No one in the world, least of all the Jews, would ever dream of preventing any person from returning to his own State. The main issue here is the "Right of Return" for Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 -- at the behest of the invading Arab armies -- to return to the homes they fled in present day Israel. In places like Ramle, Lod, Tel Aviv, Rehovot, the Negev, the Galilee, etc. By demanding this "right", and by then applying it to over 2 million people who claim they are Palestinians even though they have never once set foot in this land, would be to immediately make the Jewish population of Israel a minority in its own homeland.
The world demands that we negotiate. Peace, they say, is an elemental interest that underpins world stability. And there isn't one single Israeli who doesn't dream of the day when security guards in every restaurant, bank, mall, and bus are no longer a necessity. There isn't a single Israeli who doesn't long for the day when the Zionist dream of a secure national existence in peace and security will be a reality. Israel is prepared to negotiate. The most right-wing leaders in this country can sit down tomorrow and put our heartland on the table without blinking an eye, because the dream of peace is paramount.
George Bush speaks of two nations, independent, free, and democratic, living side-by-side with each other in peace and friendship, and every Israeli sheds a tear of hope. Could it really be? The International Quartet puts forth a Road Map for Peace. Everyone holds their breath and hopes.
This morning, as Israel prepared to bury another 9 dead Jews, I drove to work, to an office where I would be devising new methods to raise badly needed funds for the victims of terrorism to help them cope with their new circumstances. As I listened to the radio and heard the horrific details of the latest bus bombing and the attempted homicide bombing that followed mere minutes later not two kilometers away, and as the descriptions of the murders in Hevron were uttered yet again, I had some time to reflect.
In twelve years of negotiation, appeasement, agreement, abrogation, hopes and dreams and turning the other cheek, I don't recall ever once hearing a Palestinian (or Syrian, or Lebanese, or Iraqi, or Iranian) leader ever call unambiguously for peace. Plain and simple, live and let live. Not once. I began going over in my mind all the speeches, all the banalities about negotiation, agreements, arrangements, compromises, courage, bravery, vision. For Arafat, I do not believe the word peace is in his vocabulary. The same holds true, I believe, for those in his cabinet -- for it remains his cabinet. And that includes Abu Mazen, who since he took office last month, has not uttered the word once.
Even today. Abu Mazen did not condemn the attacks. He "expressed pain" over the carnage, but we all know from listening to Arafat and other leaders that their pain stems not from the death of Jews, but from the disasterous effects such terrorist attacks can have on the chances for negotiating more useless concessions out of Israel.
And it was with utter seriousness that he expressed pain this morning. For the attacks took place before and after he met with Sharon -- the first meeting in what many hope will lead to more Israeli concessions to a regime that is not interested in peace. Sharon was supposed to leave for Washington this afternoon to update President Bush on his meetings and lay out plans for the next stage of achievement in the Road Map. That trip was cancelled due to the attacks, and when it does finally take place, the agenda will now be quite different. It won't be to discuss how to further negotiate, it will be to discuss the next step in fighting terrorism.
The Palestinian leaders do not recognize Israel's right to exist. They are not prepared to allow us our capital city. They are not prepared to allow us quiet and safety. They are not prepared to allow Jews to live in their territory even as they demand the right to "return" to what will be left of ours in any future agreement.
There is one logical fallacy guiding international efforts in this conflict. While the international community grasps the reality that the world is locked in a World War Three between the forces of freedom and the forces of terrorism, that same community looks to Israel and demands that we sit down with the grandfather of world terrorism and cede to him more land and more legitimacy for his terrorist war.
Imagine, for one moment, the year 1943. Winston Churchill and General Allenby meet with FDR and decide that they will demand of Egypt to submit to German invasion and control. Would Europe then stand a chance of surviving Hitler's tyranny?
Yet on a larger scale, that is what Israel is being asked to do -- to grant terrorism its single greatest victory -- the one thing that would end terrorism once and for all worldwide, by giving it ultimate victory.
The roots of international terrorism can be found in the birth of the PLO in 1964. Up until then, plane hijackings, disco bombings, restaurant bombings and the like were unheard of. The PLO created it and the rest of the world followed. The PLO is still fighting that war, and has been joined by other groups around the world, many of which it helped train (such as the IRA, the Basques, the Japanese Red Army, etc.) While Al-Qaeda has taken it to a new level, it is the same war.
President Bush realized on September 11, 2001, that the war must be fought. This is a war for the survival of the world -- nothing less. It is a war of freedom and liberty and democracy versus tyranny, despotism, and oppression. The forces of tyranny know they cannot win a military battle. So they fight in a manner that side-steps the strengths of their opposition and attacks at the weak underbelly of society. Soldiers are not the target: civilians, women, children, the elderly are all targets. Instead of military barracks, they target office buildings, busses, shopping malls, and restaurants.
If the forces of freedom are allowed to win, by adapting their military methods and hitting the right targets, freedom will prevail and the world will emerge a far better place to live.
If the forces of tyranny are allowed to win, oppression will slowly envelope the globe, surging from the Middle East westward. It is already happening in parts of Europe, such as France, Germany, and Austria.
Israel is in this war what Czechoslovakia and Poland were in World War 2, and what France was in World War One: the major, front-line battleground. Israel is where this war will be decided. If Israel prevails over the Palestinian terrorist leadership, the tide will turn and terrorism will be eradicated. If Israel loses this battle, the war itself will be lost. To the terrorists and the tyrants they fight for, all else is of secondary importance.
The US tactic of winning control in Afghanistan and Iraq is much like the British tactic of defeating Germany in North Africa first. The enemy is now outflanked and the allies can now work their way back, ultimately destroying them. It worked in WW2. But only once the fight was taken to Germany itself and to the heart of Berlin.
The tactic can prove successful now as well. But the fight must be taken to the Palestinian territory, and to Ramallah, where Arafat and his henchmen must ultimately be destroyed.
Copyright 2003. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.
