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Israel Needs a Border, Not a Fence
David Harsanyi 13 Jan 2003
In its most recent impotent attempt to put an end to the suicidal
butchery
arriving from the Palestinian-controlled territories, the Israeli
government
has proposed a fence that would run from the Salem checkpoint in the
north
to Kafr Qasem in the south, while another stretch of fence would run
through
the Jerusalem area. The planned length of the entire fence is around
115
kilometers, and it will cost around $1 million per kilometer. There has
already been impassioned disagreement over how advantageous such a
fence
would be, considering it seemingly abandons Jews on the wrong side of
the
green line, but psychologically it unmistakably demonstrates what
Israelis
urgently desire and deserve: absolute separation from Arabs.
The poet Robert Frost once said that good fences make good neighbors.
But
please forgive Israelis if their attention isn´t fixated on neighborly
pursuits anymore. Rummaging through debris to recover the limbs and
charred
bodies of their slaughtered children, the latest victims of two suicide
attacks in Jerusalem this past week, Israelis have a feeling of
helplessness
and anger.
The fence plan already has been denounced as a new "act of racism" by
the
Palestinian Authority, which makes many suspect it might be a
first-rate
idea after all. The PA opposes any separation between themselves and
the
Jews, primarily because it would reduce the opportunities to terrorize
Israel´s civilian population, and second, because they cling to the
idea of
"right of return" for all Arabs. Any fence, they say, would create an
Arab
"ghetto" -- though any quasi-intelligent person can glance at a map of
the
Middle East and immediately recognize which people are in a ghetto.
The foremost grievance against the new fence is that it would run
through
multinational neighborhoods and damage Arab businesses that rely on
Israel´s
charitable, capitalistic society -- in much the same way the PA relies
on
funds from similar economies to keep its terror state up and running.
Worldwide, there has been very little compassion about the effects of
the
Intifada on Israel´s economy, which has seen over 2,000 businesses go
bankrupt and unemployment rise from 8.8 percent to 10.6 percent. Over
270,000 Israelis are without jobs in a nation of only 6 million.
Tourism, a
stronghold of Israel´s economy, is at its lowest point in a decade.
If Palestinian businesses suffer, they have only their support of
depraved
terrorists to blame. Last week, a Palestinian poll was published
showing
that a clear majority of the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza regard the
extermination of Israel as the proper goal of the Intifada. These
people are
not guiltless spectators but rather active participants. They are the
enemy.
That doesn´t mean civilians should be slaughtered in retribution --
that is
an Arab specialty -- there should, however, be a permanent and
indissoluble
separation between the populations.
Does any sane person still believe in the ludicrous notion that
suicidal
Arabs fight for a creation of disjointed Palestinian State in the West
Bank
and Gaza? They wage war for the eradication of Israel and the removal
of the
Jewish people from the Middle East. That´s the veiled intention of the
PA,
the unambiguous intention of Hamas -- a group Arafat invited into the
Palestine government a few weeks ago -- and the intention of all other
terror groups, Arab governments included.
In response to a suicide bombing that killed 19 bus passengers and
wounded
55 others in Jerusalem last week, the Israeli government also said it
would
seize and hold Palestinian-controlled lands until terror attacks
against its
civilians end. If that policy were ever honestly implemented, the IDF
would
be driving Palestinians over the Jordan River within months, because
Arab
terror against Jewish civilians will never end. From 1948 onward, it
has
been systematically employed against Israelis and Jews worldwide. The
Associated Press reports that 70 Palestinian suicide-bombing attacks
against
Israelis have occurred since the current violence erupted in September
2000,
killing 243 Jews.
Yet, even as children burn in detonated buses, the uninterrupted
rationalization of suicide bombings continues from the likes of Cherie
Blair, who said that "as long as young people feel they have got no
hope but
to blow themselves up, you are never going to make progress."
Not to be outdone, Ted Turner, who continues to demonstrate his rapidly
deteriorating capacity for rational thought, says that "the
Palestinians are
fighting with human suicide bombers, that´s all they have. The Israelis
...
they´ve got one of the most powerful military machines in the world.
The
Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a
case
that both sides are involved in terrorism."
With this type of thinking in the West, and the pitiless extremism of
Arabs,
any thought of an independent Palestinian state along the pre-1967
borders
should be obliterated right now. Permanent occupation of secure borders
should begin now and terms of a Palestinian national homeland should be
exclusively dictated by Israel, because only through her generosity can
it
ever come into existence. This may mean the implementation of
population
movement. If an Arab already in Israeli territory pledges allegiance to
Israel and promises to maintain its strength and prosperity, he should
be
welcomed as a citizen of the free Jewish State. Others would have to
pick up
and leave. Israel should welcome any Jews from Arab lands in return.
Population exchange is nothing new. One of the most famous exchanges
took
place between India and Pakistan in the 1950s, when 8,500,000 Sikhs and
Hindus from Pakistan fled to India and almost 6,500,000 Muslims moved
from
India to Pakistan. One need only look toward Kashmir to see what type
of
violence would consume India had this exchange not happened. In 1945,
the
Allies gave their consent in the Potsdam Agreement to the "humane and
orderly transfer" of almost 3.5 million ethnic Germans from the
Sudetenland
and of over 9.5 million Germans from the "formerly German territories"
of
Poland, plus another more than 1.5 million people from other parts of
Poland.
Israel has the moral right to remove terrorist sanctuaries and set up
secure
borders for a lasting pace with its neighbors. Whether they also desire
this
peace is irrelevant.
http://www.liquid2k.com/transfer-/transfer9.htm
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