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Does Israel Need a Plan?

(Commentary Magazine) Daniel Pipes - Every opinion poll confirms that the assault on Israel of the past 2 1/2 years has been wildly popular among Palestinians. The "street" is more aggressively anti-Zionist than the leadership, and Arafat's removal would not eliminate the ambition of destroying Israel. Although a neutral term like "Arab-Israeli conflict" makes it sound as if both sides were equally to blame for this decades-long war, and must therefore be brought to compromise by splitting the differences between them, this is a deceptive label. A more accurate term is the "Arab war against Israel." Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza cannot be the core of the problem. The Arab war against Israel predated Israel’s taking those territories in 1967; in fact, it was underway even before Israel formally came into existence as a state. Rather, the root cause of the conflict remains today what it has always been: the Arab rejection of any sovereign Jewish presence between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The conflict continues into its sixth decade because Arabs expect they can defeat and then destroy the State of Israel. Israel cannot end this conflict unilaterally, by actions of its own. It can only take steps that will make it more rather than less likely that the Arabs will give up on those expectations. The only way to make progress in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is by inducing the Palestinians to surrender their murderous intentions vis-a-vis Israel. Not only would the rewards of such a surrender be very great but, ironically, they would be yet greater for the Palestinians than for Israel.
2003-02-04 00:00:00
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