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exercise restraint and threaten her with sanctions. They will pressure Israel to make more concessions to the Arabs. The UN will denounce Israeli aggression and war mongering. Palestine will demand that Israel enter negotiations on withdrawal to the 181 (1947) borders and give up the Galilee and Negev and parts of West Jerusalem. Jews will be denied access to the Old City. More shells will rain. More buses will explode. More bombs will go off.The PLO will try to draw Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Iran into a full-scale war. If unsuccessful, it will continue the war of attrition.
With hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Israelis killed each year, mass emigration will begin. Headhunters from hi-tech firms from Santa Clara to Macau will flood in to reap the windfall. The skilled secular yuppies will be the first to rush their children to safety and to engineering salaries overseas. Israel will empty out slowly. But fast enough for Palestine. After all it took cen-turies to evict the Crusaders.
Israel might retaliate after a year or two of atrocities, but this will make no difference. Palestine will not care about even a few thousand deaths of Palestinians. And the entire world will pressure Israel to follow the example of South Africa and disband its apartheid state.
An Israeli anti-apartheid movement will flour ish, led by university professors and poets. Its leaders will be awarded Nobel Peace Prizes. It will insist that peace is impossible without complete dezionization. Israeli Zionist obstinacy is the barrier to peace. Palestine is offering de luxe dhimmi-plus status, where the Jews can accept Palestinian citizenship, no forced conversions, keeping their property, at most adding some Arabic courses in their schools.
The anti-apartheid movement grows, enters negotiations with Palestine on its own. Three Jews are appointed to the cabinet in Palestine. Rabbis Against Apartheid, including some Orthodox, urge peace negotiations based on the merging of Israel and Palestine into a Palestinian state. Where everyone will be free and equal. At last.
Israel at some point will probably have to refight the Six Day War, after Labor has largely disarmed the country to make money available for social programs. The Arabs will be shopping for advanced weaponry. Israel might win the Second Six Day War, but it might not. In which case no one will admit to having been part of the wall-to-wall Oslo consensus.
Steven Plaut is Professor of Economics at the University of Haifa.
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Outpost - 12 - June 1999