"When philosophy paints its grey in grey then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk." -- G.W.F. Hegel, 'Preface', Philosophy of Right.
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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx
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time for change
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October 13, 2004
This article in Maarive International, entitled, 'No More Free Lunches', by Jonathan Ariel adds to, and reinforces, some of the points of the previous posts on Hanan Ashrawi's 1993 Sydney Peace Lecture. Ariel argues that both Israel and the Palestinians have come to a cross roads where they can no longer evade confronting their situation of destructive violence.
The first part of the article deals with Israel. It says:
"Israel has every right to occupy the land, but not to be an occupier of an alien population that does not want it. Israel decided to keep the Palestinians there, it must now pay for this historic mistake, since eventually every free lunch runs out, and the time to pay arrives. The price is going to be steep, the acceptance of the fact that for the foreseeable future, Israel will have to relinquish its dream of maintaining its sovereignty over all of western “Eretz Yisrael” or Palestine. It has the right to do so, but not the ability, given demographic realities. Numbers do matter. ..... Five and a half million Jews occupying 3.5 million Arabs is just not on, this may be neither fair nor right, but that’s the way it is. Israel created a situation in which it became an occupier of those Arabs, it is going to have to do what is necessary to change that."
Jonathan Ariel says that Israel has to deal with that reality. The options of driving the Arabs out or keeping them indefinitely under occupation as stateless people are neither morally nor practically viable in today’s world. The longer Israel tries to procrastinate, the less of the West Bank it will end up with.
Ariel goes on to spell out the implications of the demographic argument. He ays
"By the end of the decade it is estimated there will be six million Jews and five million Arabs, at which point all the Palestinians have to do is renounce the two state solution and demand Israeli citizenship. They will get it, since Israel would have no other alternative, after having occupied them for two generations it could not keep them as stateless residents, devoid of civil and political rights. That would make Israel an apartheid state, something it today most certainly is not."
Ariel then says that the Palestinians have also run out of room to maneuver:
"In their case the price is to come to terms with the fact that they will have to relinquish their dreams of a greater Palestine, and that the refugees are never going to return, because after over fifty years Israel no longer is their home.
Just as Israel risks losing everything by refusing to come to terms with reality, so do the Palestinians. In their case this means one simple thing, the uprooting of the entire Palestinian nation. If after Israel has withdrawn from all of Gaza and most of Judea and Samaria, the Palestinians do not establish a stable state, willing and capable of living side by side with Israel, preferring instead to continue a war of terror, Israel will have no choice but to evict all the residents of Gaza and the West Bank."
Ariel says that the options are closing down for the Palestinians:
"Unfortunately there is no other option. Reoccupying the Palestinians is not a viable option, been there, done that, it didn’t work. Withdraw, well if the Palestinians continue down the path of terror after Israel has already withdrawn, than clearly that would not have been the solution either. Since living under a constant threat of terrorism is a non-starter, that leaves only one option, chuck them out. It’s not a pretty option.... But, under this worst possible scenario it would be the only possible one, since every other option would have already been a proven failure."
So the Palestinians have to do something more than give tacit support to Arafat's terror. By going along they become the object of military attack by the Israeli's.
So neither side can continue doing what they are doing.
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I have to wonder what will your neighbors think when you, Israel, decide to evict the economically decimated and militarily defenseless Palestinians. There are already campaigns led in those respective countries designed to undermine and even destroy an Israeli state, do you think it will go unchallenged? Do you think it will happen that not one single Saudi or even Iranian missile graces your soil? I bet there will be more opposition than endorsement of this tactic. Not to suggest there is a better solution than to evict the Palestinians; there is probably not. I am only wondering what does Israel think will happen during the course of this action; will it come off without a single nuke or foreign intervention.