Land for Peace is Fuel for Terror

Land-for-peace, peace plans which demand of the non aggressor state loss of land are the antithesis of the path to a true and lasting peace. Therefore any such peace process, including the Oslo Accords and the Roadmap to Peace only serve to strengthen the hold of terrorists within the Palestinian side. That means extremism within Palestinian leadership is encouraged by current Western Policy in the Middle-East. Some supporters of Palestinians have been afraid to face the truth, perhaps out of fear that putting Arabic rights at Israel’s mercy would risk loss of Arabic rights. Yet for those who know her, Israel’s mercy is its most potent character trait. The moment the gangster-like tactics of terror stop, the violence will end, and peace will come soon, it’s that simple.

Is not the goal of Western Foreign Policy to seek peace which will bring economic prosperity to all? But before you can bring actual peace, you must face the actual truth of things. This conflict is not Israel and the Palestinians with equal claims. Like the person who knows he is losing an argument, so he begins to shout his opinion louder rather than restating it more logically, because there is not enough logic to support it. So too is the people that resort to violence against a peaceful democracy rather than pacifistic civil disobedience. Is Israel’s human rights record truly comparable to China’s? Did Palestinians before the Intifada fear for their lives from the Israel’s military machine? No. The truth, for those who care to hear it is no. The truth is the Palestinian Arabic choice for terror proves that they know deep down that they have no equal claim to the land as does Israel.

The West Bank, by International Law, is Israel’s already (defacto annexation pending final status determination). If this is true, then the idea of avoiding any Israeli land for peace, peace process is not just right wing propaganda, but the basis for any real path to peace. Not just from the concept of being fair to Israel, but from the reality that today’s injustice brings tomorrow’s war. It does not matter which sides looses today’s negotiation. If there is objective International Law to back up a claim that is entirely ignored, there will likely be violence in the future unless a true peace process is implemented instead. A peace process such as the Everyone Wins peace plan, that endeavors to meet the needs of the bi-societal – specific, internal and delicate – healing processes before it tries to carve up territories and attempts to write out maps.

It is unjust to support terror. Land for Peace has become a symbol of a reward for Palestinian Terror, rather than what it should have been from the start, a required gift to a needy people. There should have been a grassroots movement by the Palestinian Arabs to express humble gratitude of a refugee nation over being given a new homeland by its benefactor, Israel. For if a Palestinian state is founded upon the ravenous bloodshed of terror then its future would be fleeting at best, logistically speaking. Morally speaking, support of terror makes the Palestinians’ the aggressor even if Israel has more power and also makes the Palestinian case wrong even before you review the facts. Legally speaking, once you do review the facts, however, it is clear that Israel has more legal rights to the land than the Palestinians under International Law. Allow me to illustrate:

The state is the primary actor in International Law. Individuals, when severed by International Legal Standards from statehood, are not complete entities to International Law, per say, as they are not in the hallowed designation of “State”, whereas individuals within a state are generally viewed as subservient to the greater needs of the greater state in which they reside, unless a universally accepted fundamental Jus Cogens law is clearly violated. Freedom of religious expression, for example, is not currently listed as a universal Jus Cogens law, even though it as I have argued it should be and it is very clearly a Human Right. (This explains why the U.N. is slow to react to Human Rights abuses throughout the world.) An example of this concept is found by refugees who are former members of a state that has completed the legal act of Succession or Cession (as is the case of Jordan in regards to the entire Arabic population of the West Bank, both Judea and Samaria). To keep this essay from getting too long, let’s cite the example of England who used this same premise to keep Northern Ireland as it’s own after its peace deal with the IRA; the full state comes first. But after terror is used by the conquered party, certainly then, no sane nation would assume that the attacked nation had even less rights because it was being terrorized. England certainly did not feel this way. Neither should Israel be made to forsake land for peace due to threat or fiction.

Further you can argue that Ireland was a full state itself before being conquered by England, whereas the Palestinians Arabs were not a full state, but members and former citizens of either Jordan (West Bank) or Egypt (Gaza Strip) before becoming refugees, nations that have abandoned their lands. Israel thus has even more right to the West Bank and Gaza than England has to Northern Ireland. Yet where is the international pressure for England to clear out of Ireland? Is something less than evenhanded afoot? Is it right wing to say emphatically, YES? Or it is simply correct to say so?

Yet political left and right are irrelevant to the issues at play here. Consider the source that tells you this. God blessed me with the Everyone Wins peace plan not only out of my desire to stop the bloodshed and protect Jewish religious rights to their land and Holy sites, but also from my desire to allow everyone, Jew and Arab alike to keep their homes, and out of a desire to enrich the civil rights of West Bank and Gaza Arabs. The only way to do all this is by facing the absolute truth of the matters at hand. That as of today Israel is the logistic, moral and legal owner of the entire Judea and Samaria.

True, it is unjust to support terror. So too, it is also unjust to support being heavy handed against the true land owner, Israel, in any final status negotiations. The restoration of moderation in attitudes toward Israel by those currently biased against her, is a must, just for a basic perception of the plain facts to occur.

The bottom line is, Israeli land-for-peace, peace deals are clearly fuel for terror and the world need only correctly identify the real aggressor in the conflict for true peace to come. For so long and with so much bloodshed the wrong way to peace has been pursued. The time has come to try it the right way.

Ezekiel's Jerusalem

We spoke of the brief lifespan of previous (land for peace) peace plans from a pragmatic, logic-based discussion in the context of International Law. Now we are going to discuss why they do not work from a religious perspective.

What if you knew what was going to happen before it happened? What if there was a prophecy that the current Roadmap to Peace would fail? What if Israel is absolutely destined to rule the land west of the Jordan River and you also believe that it is wrong to throw the thousands upon thousands of innocent men women and children amongst the Palestinians out of their homes and into the street; what would you do?

What if the only alternative to an apocalyptic war, was to find a way to keep Palestinian Arabs in the Holy Land, yet somehow also allow Israel to police the entire land west of the River Jordan. If you believed this were about to happen and you believe in fair play, then you would surely seek a peace plan that somehow allows the Palestinians to keep their homes in the post-prophecy-come-true Israel of tomorrow.

Most of the world’s population believes that there is a God, and in fact, a slight majority believes there is only one Deity, the God of Abraham. Yet most of them are probably not extremely conversant in the later prophets. If you look at the last chapter in the Book of Ezekiel, you will find that Jews are destined to rule the entire land in the vicinity of the immediate North and South of Ancient Jerusalem. The borders of Ezekiel’s Jerusalem based state of the future, in fact, encompass the entire West Bank, all of Judea and Samaria as well as the land within the Green Line.

There are three Peace Plans that are potentially consistent with Ezekiel’s prophecy. Rabbi Binyamin Elon’s Israeli Initiative, Rabbi Meir Kahane’s plan, and the Everyone Wins peace plan. Of the three of them, Everyone Wins is the most liberal, the most to the political center, and thus the most likely to win the broadest long term political support to last eternally. Of the three of them, Everyone Wins is the only one that allows for a Palestinian Arabic presence in the Holy Land, within the context of Ezekiel’s words. Effectively speaking, Everyone Wins seeks to allow a place for Palestinians within the utopian world of the Israel of tomorrow, unlike any other peace plan to its right or to its left. Every other peace plan to the right or left, are attempts at complete amputations of the Arabs from the Jews or the Jews from the Arabs. But Everyone Wins is a surgery, removing only the unhealthy parts (terrorists), so that the rest may live in serenity, together, forever.

People say that due to their fiery nature, religion and politics do not mix. Yet if the most controversial belief systems on Earth of religion and politics are not both addressed satisfactorily, in the context of claim and counter claim that oftentimes encompasses both belief systems, then how can any peace deal hope to find real success?

If you are a religious person, I am now going to ask a lot of you. I am asking you to have faith that God did not create man to live in a state of perpetual war, but that we should cast aside all prejudices and find eternal peace. The faith I speak of is in the conviction to act. A change of policy from that which we think is right, to that which God knows is best. That is true faith.

Have the faith to believe, and the courage to act.

The Unsubstantial Nature of Past Peace Plans

When Benjamin Netanyahu said (Arutz Sheva, April 22, 2008) that he was going to ignore any peace deal signed by Olmert upon what aspect of International Law was he basing this on? After all, if treaties signed by two nations are superior to even U.N. resolutions, as I stated in my previous post, then what is the legal justification for his statement? First of all, even if an outgoing leader signs a document, if it is unlikely to ever be ratified, it is not in the same classification of potency as a fully completed peace deal. Secondly, if the incoming leader can illustrate clearly that the most fundamental of International Laws was violated, Jus Cogens, then even a fully completed peace deal could become obsolete.

Whoa, what am I saying here?! Am I saying that all the peace deals in the past had the potential to become obsolete as soon as the next government that disagreed with it came into power? If so, then that would mean all these peace deals Israel has been running after was just for the sake of the POSSIBILITY of a few months of peace. Let’s consider this closely…

Let’s define peace between nations. The ideal form of peace would be one that does not just put an end to belligerence, but would also establish active friendship. An end to belligerence alone is a cold peace, essentially all but a cold war. Such a situation exists between Egypt and Israel. Active partnership exists between Israel and Jordan on several but not all matters. While not utterly perfect, the Israel-Jordan peace deal represents the current prototype of what is needed for a peace deal to be successful in the Middle East. We don’t know if the cold peace with Egypt is strong enough to keep Egypt out of a war between Israel and Syria, so we are caught in a perpetual wait and see mode to find out if there really is peace after all. What benefit does this bring to Israel? The only sure thing it did was to bring more oil to OPEC.

What is the physical difference between the peace deals? In the peace deal with Egypt, Israel had to withdraw from a large amount of territory, for a promise by Egypt to be nice from now on. While with Jordan, Israel withdrew from much less territory than Jordan relinquished (even though they could have gotten the peace deal done without giving up even a drop of land). This implies that when the non belligerent side (Israel) is tough during negotiations, they get true peace, and if they cede more territory than their former adversary, that is, if they show weakness, then they get cold peace at best. Such is the nature of the rough and tumble Middle-East.

Scientifically speaking, though, from a mere two cases alone we cannot base any conclusive statistical proof, except for the fact that the peace agreement between England and the IRA is almost a duplicate model of the Israeli-Jordanian pact. The non-belligerent side, in that case, England, stayed tough, did not give up land, and they got a complete dismantling of the IRA as well.

This would lead one to think that any peace deal that Syria would agree to in the near future would not likely have a chance at bringing true peace. Until Syria is prepared to forsake the Golan, no real movement towards peace should be expected on that front. Further still, this implies that the current Roadmap to Peace is at its heart, a failed attempt at peace, even in a theoretically perfectly ideal installation of the terms in the noblest of land-for-peace, peace plans.

So, yes, all land-for-peace, peace plans are high risk for minimal gain. There is no true expectation for peace by any the politicians involved except by the most left wing of dreamers. If so, then why do they do it? Perhaps due to a perceived lack of a viable alternative vision, but, I believe not due to intentional mischief. They cannot deal with the idea of eternal war, so they keep taking risks hoping to one day find a real solution for peace.

I would liken this to an electrician with a box of fuses, one of which he knows is good, so he keeps plugging in a different one into the socket hoping that this is the one that will restore power to the room, meanwhile everyone stands there in the dark.

These peace hungry politicians dredge forward and despite their near exhaustion and exasperation at the whole affair and continue onward with little trust in the very work they slave over year after year to achieve.

Certainly, if my suppositions are correct, all this seems like so very little motive to force thousands of people out of their homes over. It just does not seem worth it, settling for a less than optimum form of peace, when they should be seeking to use a peace plan that is the least likely to have long term causes to be regretted and repealed. They should not have to settle for so little.

Thank God, now that there exists a much more true path to peace, they no longer have to.