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has not ceased day and night to proclaim its determination to wipe out the Jewish state.The residents of Yesha must grasp the fact that their fate is about to be entrusted to the worst of Israel's enemies. It makes no difference whether this has been done out of malice, folly, incompetence, or a combination of the three. In any case, the fate of the residents of Yesha is in their hands alone.
Moshe Shamir is a prominent Israeli novelist; Martin Sherman is a political scientist at Tel Aviv University; Ezra Sohar is a specialist in climatological medi-cine and currently acting director of the Ariel Center for Policy Research; Arieh Stav, chairman of the Ariel Center for Policy Research, is editor of the Israeli journal Nativ.
This essay is an edited version of a summary paper produced by the Ariel Center for Policy Research, the full study to be published August 20. The views are those of the writers whose names are affixed to it and do not necessarily express the opinions of all members of the Ariel Center for Policy Research.
In the Biblical story of the Exodus, God intentionally hardens Pharaoh's heart as part of the Divine Plan. No doubt He could have forced the Egyptians to release all the Hebrew slaves with a twitch of his pinky, but that did not fit His overall scheme. He wanted the slaves released only after a full show of His pyrotechnics. He wanted to make Pharaoh run the full gamut of the Ten Plagues, with wonders a-plenty besides.
In the past few months, Israel has been twice saved from self-annihilation thanks to the mysterious hardening of the hearts of two Pharaoh-wannabes. In both cases the imminent danger was caused by the stupidity and shortsightedness of Israel's own political leadership. In the first miracle of redemption, the heart of the dying Fuehrer of Syria was hardened. Despite the offer by Ehud Barak to turn over to Syria all of the Golan Heights and slices of pre-1967 Israel as well, Assad demanded that Israel grant Syria the Sea of Galilee. Knowing that no such deal could pass any ballot referendum in Israel, Barak was forced to walk away from the talks with Syria.
In the second mysterious redemption, the same Barak with the same Clinton trying to get his last-minute Nobel Peace Prize, was offering to appease the Arabs by accepting conditions at Camp David that had been rejected by every Israeli government since 1948. Israel would not only effectively return to its 1949 borders, but it would turn over to the Arabs slices of its pre-1967 territories. It would also acknowledge the Palestinian "Right of Return" and flood Israel with Palestinian "refugees." Israel would pay reparations to the Palestinians, or--more properly--tribute. It would pay Palestinians for any property they held or pretend to have held in 1948, no doubt at their 2001 market prices. Only the most naive believe Barak would have held out for some offset of Palestinian claims against those of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, who left behind property worth far more than even the inflated claims of the Palestinians. All of this of course being besides dividing Jerusalem into two cities, with PLO control over the eastern parts.
As it turns out, Jerusalem enjoys a temporary reprieve from the designs of Barak, thanks to the hardening of the heart of the ugly mini-Pharaoh. Arafat wanted no compromise at all on the Old City of Jerusalem. He demanded complete Palestinian sovereignty there. He magnanimously offered to allow the Jews freedom of access to the Western Wall, a site he has long denied has any real Jewish religious significance and insists is essentially a Moslem site. No doubt Jews could pass through Palestinian cordons exactly as freely as they do today when they visit Joseph's Tomb in Nablus under the existing Oslo Accords, which is to say they will not pass through at all and will risk death if they try.
As the information leaks about what Barak was in fact prepared to give away at Camp David, it is impossible to downplay the horror--especially because nothing has been learned and Barak is still determined to hand over even more to Arafat to get him to sign on the meaningless line. We already know that every interruption or breakdown in negotiations simply means that the Arabs will demand and Israel will acquiesce to starting the next round of talks from an opening position equal to Israel's last offer and then insisting that Israel sweeten its offer.
Ehud Barak was prepared to turn over to Arafat about 96% of the West Bank, including all of the Jordan Valley, and possibly even including the Latrun salient (which Arafat has always noisily demanded; the Latrun salient is the perfect position from which to lay siege and starve out West Jerusalem and was used for precisely this in 1948-9).
The Jordan Valley residents are by and large Labor Party loyalists who had been smugly silent as long as the Left was "only" threatening the "bad settlers," those mainly-Orthodox residents of West Bank and Gaza settlements. They also were silent when Barak was trying to pass the Golan Heights to Assad. Suddenly their lemmings came home to roost, and the Jordan Valley "settlers" found their own homes on the line, with Barak willing to toss them out onto the streets. Overnight, they became militant protesters. Too little, too late.
Barak was also willing to allow tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Palestinian "refugees" to enter Israel as a Fifth Column, and to recognize the Palestinian "Right of Return." This despite the moldy old argument that a Palestinian state is needed to play the role that Israel has always played--a national refuge for refugees. Arafat had gone beyond that; "Palestine" would
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August-September 2000 - 7 - Outpost