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.

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.

Individualistic Moral Accountancy: The Ideological Foundation of Healing Societies

Supporters of Two State Solutions typically state that there will be no method to stop terrorist violence until there is the surrender of land in some sort of a treaty. Even though there has never been any capitulation to terror in history that was as effective to halt terror as police action is (such as building walls and fences or actual military usage).

What then is the theoretical philosophic foundation to this reasoning? The needs of individuals are subservient to the needs of society. Take away the societal frustration of no land for peace, and individual would-be terrorists will start breeding doves and loving their former enemies.

In the real world, however, it is the needs of individuals that direct the course of societal streams of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Take away the feelings of lack of opportunity and personal sense of injustice and loss of freedom, and societal problems will seem far away to the individual. So to heal a society, one must first treat the molecular structure of the society, that is, individual families and then the very atoms themselves, the individuals within those families.

Thus we have it that the foundation of healing a society is the antithesis of Two State Solution advocacy.

Another logical argument toward this point would be to ask: historically, how did Palestinian society degrade from a peaceful group of refugees into the public worship of terrorism as a legitimate form of resistance. Individuals forsook morality and chose evil. History tells us it was not a societal decision to become terrorists in creed. It was the growth of distinct bunches of individuals, not in any single neighborhood or town, but multifarious seedlings of terror worship popping up here and there.

I blame the misappropriation of American and Israeli Tax dollars by the Palestinian Authority, in the administration of the broadcast of pro-terrorist, society perverting television programming, as the fuel to the fire that created the terrorist loving predicament that exists in Palestinian Arabic society today. But it was only a fuel that was ignited by countless tiny individual flames, due to a mass loss of self responsibility by countless individual Palestinian Arabs. It was not a thousand families grouping together to become one massive terrorist network, rather it was one thousand families with one thousand individual black sheep who veered off the path of those who seek to uphold truth and life. And it was the one thousand families whose failure to deliver sufficient consequences to the chaotic lovers of terror in their midst. And only then was it a societal breakdown by leaders who not only did not condemn the evil of individual terrorists, but both clergyman and politician actually encouraged individuals to die the “death of the brave.”

Thus we have it that the foundation of healing a society is INDIVIDUALISTIC MORAL ACCOUNTANCY.

Individualistic Moral Accountancy is also the antithesis of Two State Solution advocacy, which claims that an ill society must be nurtured in order for its families and individuals to desire to behave morally. Therefore we can say that Two State Solution advocates are pushing a fallacious belief and are attempting to label it as our only hope. The time for such small thought has passed. The actual best hope for peace is for lovers of peace everywhere to mobilize and to publicly forsake such erroneous thought from now on and for all time. Let them declare that the age of Individualistic Moral Accountancy has arrived.

Making Peace With Syria

Why would Syrian dictator Assad wish to forsake all of his terrorist cronies in Damascus for the sake of a mere majority of the Golan Heights, when he had always demanded all of the Golan? The timing is puzzling of Assad's new willingness to give up the equivalent of an extra army in his land for the sake of only part of what he has always claimed was entirely his. Especially when you take former Israeli Prime Minister and current Defense Minister Barak's opinion into account. From today's Jerusalem Post:

According to the defense minister, Assad's first priority is the survival of his regime. His second priority is getting the international tribunal into 2005's assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri canceled, a tribunal that is expected to point an accusatory finger at the highest echelons of the Syrian government.

Third, according to Barak, is securing a "special status" for Syria in Lebanon, followed by getting itself into the good graces of the US and the West. Only after all those interests does the Golan Heights enter Assad's list of priorities. (Herb Keinon's, 'Peace not a priority for Damascus', Jerusalem Post, May 25, 2008)

It is vital that the Knesset stops any pseudo peace plan with Syria that current Israeli Prime Minister Olmert may try to run through. In 2006 Olmert pledged to never give up the Golan in any peace deal with Syria. (April 24, 2008, Israel National News) Now Olmert, under investigation, and eager to make a mark of some kind of positive legacy before he may have to leave office abruptly, announces discussions to give up most of Golan, the territory that borders Israel and Syria.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the likely next Prime Minister of the State of Israel pledged to ignore any peace deal Olmert signs with Abbas. (April 22, 2008, INN) Let's hope he intends to do the same toward any possible deal with Syria as well, though it is more problematic from an International Law perspective. Abbas is not a head of State, Syria's Assad is. That has huge implications in International Law. It would be significantly more difficult to change a signed deal between two heads of state. The two most potent forms of International Law are Jus Cogens/primal rights, and also treaties between two officially recognized states. So it is vital that any false peace plan be stopped before it is signed.

Despite what Olmert has done in the past I have nothing against him doing good for his people, and getting a little honor along the way with it. But the giving of strategic land to an unrepentant regime that historically has only used the exact territory in question as a platform to wage war from is the worse thing Olmert could try to do to his people. What is Olmert thinking? For the sake of true peace in the Middle East, we cannot assume that Olmert, under such serious pressure, is fully thinking this through. Assad's closest ally is Iran of all countries.

Even if Assad agrees to forsake terror, he has a signed treaty with Iran that if any country attacks Syria, Iran will attack that country. Now that Israel took out Assad's secret nuclear program, there is no hope for Syria individually to defeat Israel via a surprise attack, at a moment when Assad's hatred for Israel is at its peak over the embarrassing nuclear set back at the hands of Israel. Yet Assad knows that if he attacks Israel, he forces Iran to fight Israel as well, God forbid. Ahmadinejad may be telling Assad even now, the price for fulfillment of that scenario is optimum strategic advantage, which for Iran would be Syrian control of the Golan. We need to seek paths to perpetual peace, not empower potential pretexts for war!

Syria must reject terror bases in its land, it must desire peaceful relations, and it must give up its constant demands for the Golan as a prerequisite for its civilized behavior. Paradoxically, then Israel would be empowered to consider some sort of land for friendship deal if they so choose to. But not land for peace. Land for peace, in an age of terror, is nothing less than fuel for terror. A pseudo justification used by enemies of peace to deceive their people that Israel is still their enemy, when all Israel wants to do is the same as any other Western nation wants to do; business with its neighbors and never war.

Assad, on the other hand, wants his people distracted from their lack of freedom, and the only way to do that is if Israel is an enemy. Therefore, we must assume that any attempt to get peace exclusively on condition of gaining the Golan when Iran is primed to attack Israel at the slightest excuse, is nothing other than a preparation for war in the immediate future by the leaders of both Syria as well as the silent partner in this sorted affair, Iran. All friends of peace should be opposed to such a disgusting perversion of the concept of peace, and discourage Israeli leadership from making such a tragic mistake!

When dealing with people like Assad, you do not seek common ground, you make them leave their philosophy of evil and chart a new course. The path toward the concept of true peace is education of all sides of what objective peace is. Such as no backstabbing, no support of terror, and a host of other concepts that you and I take for granted, but corrupted people may not fully grasp. That is why evenhanded mediation with terrorists only strengthens them, not the cause of true peace.