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Another Type of Shahid (Martyr)
Elyakim Ha'etzni
"He is a holy martyr. He will attain Paradise." We are used to hearing such sentiments voiced by an Arab family from Samaria only when glorifying the names and memories of slain terrorists. Here they were uttered following the death of Omri Jada, aged 24 years, father of 2 with a pregnant wife, who jumped into the waters of the Kinneret to save a Jewish child but he himself drowned. This is not an isolated case. In June this year, Ahmed Frej died in a traffic accident and his family donated his organs,which were transplanted to 8 recipients. The deceased is named after his grandfather who was murdered in the Kfar Kassem massacre of 1956. His other grandfather, Mahmud, who was wounded in the same incident, said: "Despite all that our family has experienced, we didn't consider the past. We just wanted to make many Jewish families happy. We have no desire for vengeance. This will lead to rapprochement between Jewish and Arab hearts". In 1998 the family of yet another traffic accident victim, this time from the El-Burej refugee camp in Gaza, donated his organs, and explained:" This will contribute to the creation of better relations between the two peoples. Our blood is identical." In a special file in my archives, entitled "Light" I located another case and there are probably many others. Veteran Kiryat Arba residents, including myself, can recall from their personal experience the assistance which Arabs render Jewish travelers in distress on the roads. Only two weeks ago, an Arab neighbor surprised us and passed on through the fence a sack of cucumbers which he had just extracted from his field, accompanied by his blessings.
Reality Mocks All TheoriesI have not noted these items in order to depict a nonexistent idyllic state of relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Alongside the personal and human relations which each of us has probably experienced, there is the familiar terror, there are rocks, Molotov cocktails, threats and hostile acts. These very days we are readying defensive measures to counter violent Arab forays into our communities, while at the same time these communities are filled with Arabs in building, services, trade and industry. Alongside the examples of light which I have cited, one can counterpose many pictures of shadow. For example, Jewish ambulances rushing to aid Arab victims, being simultaneously targeted by Arab stone throwers, endangering the lives of the rescuers. This is the true picture -- a confusion of light and shadow. As someone once said: "It's impossible with the Arabs and it is impossible without them." Undoubtedly there are Arabs who say the same thing about us. Reality mocks all the theories. None other than Ehud Barak, the prime contractor executing the blueprints of Matzpen and Peace Now, employs the Kahanist expression: They will be there...we will be here." The principle of separation is common to the extreme left and the extreme right. Here, at the junction of theories which cannot be implemented in reality -- the extremes meet.
The "Heart of the Problem" is not PalestinianMany theories have shattered against the cliffs of Camp David. For example, the essential leftist conceptual assumption that the "Palestinians constitute the heart of the conflict". Barak and those who foolishly idolize him, take pride in "his courage" "to place everything on the table", and to touch the "exposed nerves", including Jerusalem - the very heart of the conflict. But what emerges is that the very heart of the conflict is not Palestinian, but Pan-Arab. For Mubarak and other Arab rulers, together with Arab public opinion, will not give Arafat a free hand to compromise on Jerusalem. Arafat as well announced at Camp David: "I am not the proprietor of this house..." If so, maybe those who contended, that a solution to the Palestinian problem (a mission impossible in itself) does not solve anything, are correct. Maybe all the Israeli governments erred when they ignored the explicit statements voiced on the matter by the Arabs themselves. For example, Zuhir Muhsein, head of the Operations Department of the PLO is quoted in the Dutch Daily "Trouv" (31.3.77). "We take pains to emphasize our Palstinian identity only for tactical purposes. Because it is in the national interests of the people to encourage a separate Palestinian identity in order to counterpose it to Zionism. The establishment of a separate Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing struggle against Israel. After having obtained all our rights in every bit of Palestine – we will not postpone for a single moment the re-unification of Jordan and Palestine..." Take, for example, a dialogue between two Arab rulers at the Amman Conference of 1987, cited by Maariv (30.11.87) "Assad: Palestine is mine, part of Syria There was never an independent state called Palestine. Hussein: The appearance of a distinct Palestinian national personality emerged for the purpose of rebutting the Israeli argument that Palestine is Jewish. But the truth is that one cannot deviate from the national Arab framework...". It emerges, that the attempt to bring about the end of the conflict with all the Arabs by turning Jerusalem over to Arafat (and the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians -- in the face of an apprehensive and antagonistic Jordan) was merely rash and almost puerile naivete.
"The Right of Return" -- An Impossible ObstacleAnother fundamental and axiomatic assumption of the "Peace Camp" was that one could induce the Palestinians to waive their demand for the "right of return". Here too Barak managed to expose an unusually raw and sensitive nerve, but to what avail? It was again demonstrated that Arafat and his establishment do not exercise exclusive ownership to the problem. It emerged that Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the refugees too are direct parties and they are also partners to the sacred myth of dispersion and return, material, spiritual and ideological assets that they will not forfeit. Arafat explained this to Clinton with the brutality characteristic of Arab political reality: "If I do concede on the matter of the refugees, they will lodge a bullet in my brain." Once upon a time, the late Yitzchak Rabin visited the military government in Hebron and in an ensuing argument,I told him that the rocks which I absorb on the road to Jerusalem near the Dahaishe Refugee Camp are not targeted at me because the people in Dahaishe don't want Kiryat Arba. They only desire the places from whence they came. For example, they want the site in Tel-Aviv where Defense Minister Rabin's house was constructed. The rock was hurled at me simply because I chanced to pass by at that particular moment but he, Rabin rather than myself, was the target. Indeed, the Israeli government once offered the residents of Dahaishe adjacent (Jewish) land for building without even waiving their demands for their former original places. The reply was negative. Rabin heard; he didn't respond and he didn't internalize. They say that Clinton now discovered for the first time that he had been deceived by those who had spoken about an "end to the conflict" or "final peace" since for the two central problems -- Jerusalem and the refugees – there is no solution. Now he is looking for intermediate substitutes to create the illusion of an agreement, yet another "spin" job at which he is so adept. For example, he would support the establishment of a Palestinian state while destroying the settlements and expelling their residents, in return for tranquility which will last at least until the end of his presidential term of office. What has Barak therefore attained by "exposing the raw nerves"? At home everything is topsy-turvy talks, with the Arabs have exploded, and the nakedness of the "peace" has been publicly exposed. Barak did not pay heed to the English dictum: "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread"… Perhaps Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef referred to this expression when he termed the Prime Minister a fool who rushes in to make peace with a snake.
There is No SolutionSo what? queries the Peace Camp, "Will the sword forever feast?" Not necessarily. As long as we are strong and broadcast determination and confidence in the justice of our cause, there is no necessity for war to erupt. But at the same time there is not the slightest chance to attain "Peace", there won't be peace, at least in our time, and it is doubtful if there will be peace in our children's and grandchildren's generation. On the contrary, the "exposure of sensitive nerves" in order to obtain peace, the irresponsible attempt to bring about a "solution" at any price, is a sure recipe for war. The leftist sages never considered the simple notion that one can live without peace and without war, in other words -- without a "solution". Have we not - without a "solution", grown from the 50,000 residents eighty years ago to reach a Jewish population of 5 million, one hundred fold -- without "peace"? Where would we be today if the boundaries would have been fixed and frozen in the year 1937 with the map of the Peel Commission giving us the Sharon, the Jezreel Valley, and a morcel of the Galilee? And what would have happened had we been confined to the 1947 UN partition boundaries without Naharia, Acre, Nazareth, without Jaffa, Ramle and Lod, without Ashdod, Ashkelon and the Lachish district (Kiryat Gath), without Beersheba, the corridor to Jerusalem and with an internationalized (western!) Jerusalem? And where would be in Yesha and Jerusalem without the results of 1967? We didn't want these wars and we wouldn't have voluntarily sacrificed the lives of our children, as well as the lives of our enemies' children in initiating wars and not for any price whatsoever. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the fact that in the absence of peace we have established a sound and strong state, we have gathered in the exiles, we built a flourishng economy. And why wasn't there peace? Precisely because the Arabs opposed such growth. And the converse is also true. Our growth would not have been possible, our very existence in doubt, had we been prepared to pay the real price for peace - boundaries a la Luxembourg, a halt or drastic reduction of Jewish immigration, together with the Arab "right of return". The Jordanian king offered Ben Gurion a signed peace treaty which would have irrevocably established the loss of historic Jerusalem and Yesha and Ben Gurion refused. No signed peace treaty exists between the WW2 allies and Germany, despite the fact that they are alliance partners. There is no formal peace between Russia and Japan, because of Russia's refusal to forego the Kurile Islands, which it snatched in the last days of the Second World War. There is no peace but conflict between India and Pakistan - both of them nuclear powers - because India refuses to waive its hold in most parts of Kashmir, despite the existence of a local Moslem majority. And there is no peace between the parts of the former Yugoslavia. There is no peace in the Caucusus. Northern Ireland as well is not tranquil, despite a peace process. The French will not forego Corsica, nor Spain the Basque region, despite unceasing terror. The Italians stubbornly retain Southern Tyrol (Alto Adige) which is populated by Austrians who don't want her rule. On the contrary, Italy shepherds "settlers" there to change the demographic balance in her favor. In all these areas and in tens of other locations throughout the globe - there is no solution. But despite this, "Peace-Nowism" doesn't flourish there, and peoples live without a solution, amidst contradictions, just as in our private lives not everything is harmonious and not all problems are "solved".
The Dis-assembler of WatchesThe Left loves to slay sacred cows. Not a single national cow has survived the left's slaughtering knife and yet the left has not even partially slaked its desires. Maybe the time has come to slaughter also some sacred cows on the opposing side? For example, the cows named "Peace", "Solution" and "End to the Conflict"? Is it not, perhaps, more sensible to seek a modus vivendi - which means to live albeit without a "solution" - precisely because one sagaciously ignores "the exposed nerves" and overcomes the childish impulse to dis-assemble the watch at any price, even at the cost of breaking it? Maybe our Prime Minister's great expertise in disassembling watches is a liability, rather than an asset? Again an absence of peace is not perforce war. The peace on the Golan which has lasted since Yom Kippur 27 years ago demonstrates this. We live with the Arabs and they live with us – without peace. Who fills our hospitals? Who mans the reception tables in the hotels? Who prepares and serves food in our restaurants and cafes? How many Arab doctors and academics do we employ? What percent of Israeli Jewish trade is with the Arabs? What part of the country's G.N.P. is produced by Arabs? Why do over 80% of the Arabs in Um El Fahm and most of Jerusalem's Arabs refuse to separate themselves from us? They have not signed the "Basel Program", they have not become Zionists. It is the necessities of life that speak, the economic benefits as well as the advantages of living in a democratic regime despite all the complaints - some of them justified. All this, the "Peace Camp" is attempting to destroy by "running amok" in Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's expression, to attain a formal peace at any price, which will quickly result in a terrible war where the blood of the casualties, ours and theirs, will erase even that measure practical co-existence which exists today, and will extinguish the few points of light such as Omry Jedda's sacrifice and the noble words of his family.
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