[Caroline Glick will be speaking about her new book, The Israeli Solution, to the Wednesday Morning Club in Los Angeles on March 25, 2014. For more info, click here.]
To Caroline Glick, senior contributing editor at the Jerusalem Post,
the concept of a “two-state solution,” carving an invented state of
Palestine from the tiny body of Israel and hopefully expecting the two
resulting entities to live in harmony is, at best, a “chimera.” Worse,
it is a “humiliating, dangerous nightmare”; and worst of all, it spells
the end of Israel.
What Glick proposes in her provocative new book, The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East,
(available March 4) is to brush away the web of mischief, ignorance,
deceit and hatred that surrounds the “peace plan,” and with newfound
clarity, get rid of the misbegotten thing entirely. In its place, she
proposes a one-state plan, the one state being Israel.
In Glick’s own words:
The Israeli one-state plan entails the application
of Israeli law– and through it, Israeli sovereignty– over the west bank
of the Jordan River: the area that, from biblical times through the
1950s, was known to the world as Judea and Samaria. In Israel, Judea
and Samaria remain the terms used to refer to the territory….
Judea and Samaria are the terms she uses
throughout. Israel having withdrawn from Gaza in 2005, Glick does not
include Gaza in her plan, nor does she believe, for legal and strategic
reasons, that it should be reabsorbed into Israel. Her one-state
solution, the application of Israeli law and sovereignty in Judea and
Samaria, which is “based on actual Israeli rights rather than fictitious
Israeli culpability,”
would liberate
Israel to craft coherent strategies for contending with the…evolving
regional threat and the international assault on its right to
exist….Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria will increase the
security of all. It will transform the region from one governed
alternatively by a military government and a terrorist kleptocracy into
one governed by a unified, liberal rule of law.
The sine qua non of her plan, of
course, is the understanding that the Jewish people are the indigenous
Palestinians, not “colonial usurpers” or “occupying powers.” ”At no
time,” she reminds us, “have there been no Jews in the Land of Israel.”
She gives us census figures from the Roman holocaust of the first
century CE and the subsequent Bar Kochba rebellion up to the 19th
century “dawn of modern Zionism,” when Jews again were the majority in
Jerusalem. And she touches on some of the archeological finds that
suggest a significant Jewish presence as early as 1050 BCE.
Considering that the Palestinians have been trying to erase all
vestiges of Jewish presence in Israel,
[T]he reconstitution of the Jewish state in the Land
of Israel is an unprecedented historic accomplishment. No other
indigenous people has preserved its national identity for so long and
against such great odds, only to repatriate itself to its historic
homeland….
But Glick stresses that her
one-state plan is not intended as punishment of the Palestinians. On
the contrary, she repeatedly demonstrates that Israeli rule has always
been and will continue to be of great benefit to the Palestinians.
After the Israeli victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, for instance,
Israel’s recapture of Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria was, for the
Palestinian Arabs, “an economic and civil rights boon.” The entire
population of 65,000 “lined up to receive Israeli identification cards
that granted them permanent residency status in Israel.” Among the
positive results of “Israel’s benign rule,” she cites impressive
statistics on improved Arab living standards, employment, GDP, literacy,
schools and universities, life expectancy (48 in 1967, 72 in 2000),
infant mortality, clinics, sewage, electricity and health insurance.
Equally important,
[U]nder Israeli rule, the Palestinians of Judea,
Samaria, and Gaza exercised political freedoms that were nonexistent in
the rest of the Arab world. These included freedom of association,
freedom of the press, enfranchisement of women, and the ability to seek
the protection of the Israeli court system.
Keep in mind that during the illegal Jordanian
occupation of Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem from 1949 to 1967, not only
were Jews prohibited from buying land, but any Arab accused of selling
land to Jews faced the death penalty, and in many cases, still may.
Moving us to the present impasse requires Glick, of
course, to provide a look at the historical background and context. In
her necessarily condensed summary, Glick draws an inexorable line from
European anti-Semitism through the treacheries of the British, with
their Peel Commission and infamous White Paper, and the murderous antics
of their Nazi sidekick Haj Amin El-Husseini, inventor of the
Palestinians. Then come the spawn of El-Husseini, Arafat and now
Abbas. There was the insanity of the Oslo Accords, which led in turn to
the American “bipartisan pipe dream,” currently embodied in the
tragicomic farce that is John Kerry.
This is a history of heroes, villains and dupes,
including numerous Israelis. But when it comes to American involvement,
no one escapes whipping. In the face of continuous and open
Palestinian calls for the complete destruction of the Jewish state,
American administrations from Nixon’s to Obama’s have committed
themselves to some version of a plan to establish a Palestinian state on
all or most of the land won by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.
The story of American pro-Palestinianism does not
make for pleasant reading. It is difficult to be reminded of the
slippery words of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama; to confront again
the loony obsession with Israel while the entire world is ablaze; to
have to face, as Glick forces us to do, that were it not for America’s
feckless policy, the PLO would probably have self-destructed. To add to
the irony, the Arab world would not have cared: Witness King Hussein of
Jordan’s 1970 slaughter of thousands of Palestinians. Or recall that
in 1982, when Israel forced the PLO out of Lebanon, “no Arab regime
offered to host them. It took U.S. pressure to persuade Tunisia to
accept them. It would seem, says Glick, that the “wider Arab world’s
assessment of Arafat was voiced by Jordan’s King Hussein, who reportedly
remarked, ‘Arafat never came to a bridge that he didn’t
double-cross.’” But successive American administrations were snookered.
One significant result of this misguided policy is
that it “has affected America’s ability to assess Israel’s strategic
importance to U.S. national security; to understand the motivations and
interests of Israel’s Arab neighbors; and to comprehend how those
motivations and interests affect those of the United States.” Worse
yet, it has damaged American standing in the Arab world. And perhaps
most damaging, the United States has failed to learn from Israeli
experience: “Israel’s experience in Lebanon was a textbook case for how
events would likely unfold for the United States and its British allies
in Iraq.” If only we’d paid attention.
Glick, then, provides three options open to Israel:
1. Reassert the military government as the sole
governing body [in Judea and Samaria]. This response, she says, is not
tenable over the long term. The Palestinians definitely live better
under Israel’s military government than they did under any previous
government. However, “both Arabs and Jews have the right to expect to
be governed by a democratic, civilian government.”
2. Maintain the current dual governance by the
[Israeli] military government and the Palestinian Authority. If this
were possible, she says, “the two-state paradigm would also be viable —
and indeed, a Palestinian state would have been established fifteen
years ago.” But once again, the Palestinian hierarchy is completely
opposed to peaceful co-existence with the Jewish state, period.
3. Incorporate Judea and Samaria into sovereign
Israel. This, of course, is Glick’s proposal, and, she stresses, for
many strategic reasons, the sooner the better. As she describes the
plan,
Applying
Israeli law to the areas would end the authoritarian repression that the
Palestinians suffer under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. As
permanent residents of Israel, with the option of applying for Israeli
citizenship, the Palestinians would find themselves living in a liberal
democracy where their individual rights are protected.
Contingent on
security concerns—applied on individual rather than on a communal
basis—Palestinians will have the right to travel and live anywhere they
wish within Israeli territory. Similarly, Israeli Jews will also be
allowed to live anywhere they wish. All prohibitions on property and
land sales to Jews will be abrogated.
From the
outset, as permanent residents of Israel, Palestinians will have the
right to elect their local governments. Those that receive Israeli
citizenship…will also be allowed to vote in national elections for the
Knesset. The Israeli education system will be open to them. The
Israeli economy will be open to them.
Washington will have to “acknowledge that the
two-state paradigm has been a disastrous failure,” but it will be able
finally to cease its funding of the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli
military government will be dissolved, and the PA will no longer be the
Palestinians’ representative.
Glick sees one immediate problem: “the sudden influx
of a large, unassimilated Arab population,” but she sees it as a
potential burden on Israel’s welfare services, not as a demographic
“time bomb,” as is often feared. She whacks this straw man, noting that
“the actual population data — together with current population growth
trends for Israel and the Palestinians — make clear that there is no
Palestinian demographic time bomb. In fact, demography is one of
Israel’s greatest advantages.”
To be sure, there are many potential problems, and
perhaps the least persuasive section of the book attempts to deal with
some of the “likely responses,” which are, after all, unknowable. But
Glick is nothing if not intrepid, and we, fingers crossed, follow her
arguments.
The Palestinians, for example:
The Palestinians have two means of responding to an
Israeli decision to apply Israeli law to Judea and Samaria: terrorism
and diplomatic warfare. But these are, of course, the same means
available to them today…and the Palestinians are already operating at
full capacity or near-full capacity in both spheres. As a result, it
is difficult to imagine how the Palestinians could respond more
forcefully to an Israeli one-state plan than they are already behaving
on a daily basis.
Of course, terrorism would still be a possibility,
and even a “massacre.” But, she coolly asserts, “Such an attack would
likely be a one-time deal,” and Israel, which experienced a “sustained
campaign of mass terrorism” from September 2000 to April 2002, will not
suffer another such.
Another threat that cannot be ignored is that the
Palestinians “might call for an international boycott of Israel.” But
the attractiveness of Israel’s economy minimizes the effectiveness of
that option. “In Britain, for instance, hatred for Israel is galloping,
yet bilateral trade between Israel and Britain is booming and growing,
with the trade balance in Israel’s favor.”
What about Egypt? It is far from clear, says Glick,
that Egypt “has the logistical capacity to move its U.S.- made M1A1
Abrams tanks across the Sinai to engage Israeli forces, and to replenish
its forces with spare parts, food, and reinforcements. Egypt is, in
fact, impoverished.”
And Jordan? “[T]he Hashemite regime’s likely, indeed
all-but-certain response to an Israeli decision to apply its laws to
Judea and Samaria will be to publicly condemn the move and privately
celebrate it.” It is also far from certain how long the Hashemites will
be in power.
Then, of course, there is Syria, “deeply dangerous
for Israel and for the wider region.” But under the awful circumstances
of today’s Syria, “Assad would have little capacity to respond.”
Hezb’allah is the wild card: Now tied down in Syria, it is weaker at
home. Should Iran emerge as a nuclear power, Hezb’allah would be freer
to concentrate on Israel. Thus, she repeats, “Israel would be well
advised” to make its move before that happens.
Her predictions about Europe are the most
convincing. A pacifist, de-militarized, toothless giant, Europe, she
feels, poses absolutely no military threat. Its only coherent foreign
policy, she says, is its hatred for Israel. Then too, “EU member state
governments aggressively compete with each other in courting Israeli
internet, biomedical, agri-tech, and other high-tech companies to
partner with their countries.” And for Israel’s part, with its newfound
Asian partners rapidly expanding trade with Israel, it may in the end
need Europe less than Europe needs Israel.
Finally and most importantly, Glick turns back to America, for whom she frankly admits she is writing this book:
[T]he Israeli one-state plan will liberate Americans
from the stranglehold of the two-state solution’s mythology. For the
first time in a generation, American foreign policy hands, politicians,
and regular citizens will be able to see the Arab and Islamic worlds for
what they are, and not view them through the distorting, mendacious
lens of a policy paradigm that falsely places the blame for all their
failings and problems on Israel.
In other words, the United States will regain something it seems to have lost: the truth.
