And Israelis will have to at least discuss, rather than avoid rational discussion, of how to limit or diminish the number of Arabs living within Israel. More than half of Arabs interviewed all over the Middle East have said they would emigrate if they could. That includes the Arabs of Palestine. Not everyone wishes to serve as a member of the shock troops of the Muslim Arab campaign against Israel. Some would like better opportunities than Israel, a country poor in natural resources, is likely, under the circumstances of self-defense imposed on it by the Arabs themselves, to be able to offer. Nor are they likely to be welcomed in great numbers in the West, which has grown wary of Muslim immigration and now realizes, if it did not before, that Muslim immigration to the Lands of the Infidels, the Dar al-Harb, is regarded by many Muslims as a weapon in the world-wide jihad.

Some "Palestinian" Arabs will seek and find jobs again in the Gulf, perhaps in a newly-revivified Iraq. Currently most of the real work in the Arab oil states is done, at the top, by Europeans and Americans, while construction is performed by Koreans, and domestic help supplied by Thais, Filipinos, Indians, Pakistanis, and others from the genuinely poor regions. But after the overthrow of Iraq, the Gulf Arabs are likely to see security threats from foreigners (whose numbers, in any case, will diminish as those foreigners see themselves threatened). An obvious replacement will be the Arabs from Israel, many of whom will find they can do better for themselves outside Israel, and may weary of bearing the main burden of the pan-Arab, nearly pan-Muslim siege of Israel.

But if voluntary emigration is not enough, there is no reason to shy away from other means. Unless one believes that demography is all, and that the deliberate overbreeding of children as a political weapon is to be rewarded, and that all that matters is a counting of heads, then the Israelis will have to do, with or without the approval of the world (to which they owe exactly nothing), whatever it takes to preserve their tiny state. A durable peace for Israel must also be an endurable one for its citizens.

The next time there is a major disaster, for example, they should expel from each of the eight main Arab population centers in the West Bank a few thousand of the worst offenders -- to Gaza, or across the Jordan River. It could be announced in advance, and then, when the attack comes, there will be no surprise. The numbers can rise with the threat, and war, and the aftermath of war, are suitable occasions for mass expulsions. If Kuwait could expel 400,000 "Palestinians" because they had sympathized with Iraq, Israel can do the same with the cheering crowds who call on Saddam to rain down rockets and bombs on Israel. It has to be considered.

The main point is, as American college students like to say, to keep your options open. The Arabs should not be led to believe that expulsions are a weapon of self-defense that Israel will simply never use. Mere discussion of the matter should alarm enough of them sufficiently so that some will be chastened in their activity. But it has to be done with reference to historical analogues, including the example of the Sudetenland, so that the burden is placed on others to explain why they think that there should be one rule for everyone else in the world, and another, much harsher rule, imposed by "morality" on the people, and state, of Israel. Meanwhile, perhaps everyone can ponder the words of Elfan Rees, made back in 1957, which appear at the beginning of this essay.

Hugh Fitzgerald is a lecturer on the manipulation of language for political ends.

October 2002               - 5 -               Outpost