The Bush administration's announced goal for Israel and the "Palestinian
people" has been two states, living side by side in peace. The
administration is two-thirds there. There are now two states - one in Gaza,
headed by the militant Hamas organization, which shot its way to power; and
another in the West Bank headed by accused Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas.
Unfortunately for Israel, there is no peace, which should not surprise those
who have been predicting exactly what is now coming to pass.
Whatever their names, be they groups like Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, Islamic
Jihad and al-Qaida, or states like Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran, their
objectives are identical: the annihilation of the democratic Jewish State
and the elimination of all Jews, either by death or displacement, from the
land. To argue otherwise and to continue believing the fiction that
"infidel" diplomats from the State Department or European Union can
magically transform people commanded to hate Jews and Israel based on a
twisted mandate from their corrupt notion of God, is to be in extreme
denial.
Hamas won't stop with Gaza. After its victory over poorly directed Israeli
forces in Lebanon last summer, why should it? The one thing terrorists
understand is weakness. They perceive Israel, under Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert, as weak and they are going for Israel's jugular. Benyamin Elon, a
conservative member of Israel's Knesset, said, "The Fatah is diminishing in
front of our eyes, and a group of gangsters is taking over. Israel can wake
up now from the delusion of an independent Palestinian state."
Will it, or will Olmert be passing out and swallowing, himself, more
diplomatic sleeping pills during meetings this week with President Bush,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and members of Congress? The violence
and broken agreements are not being perpetrated by Israel. They are being perpetrated on Israel. It is mystifying why Western diplomats continue to pressure Israel to "do more" when "more" has brought Israel less.
Each time Israel gives up something necessary for its security, it receives
in return more war, more terror and more insecurity. If more for less
remains the "strategy" of the United States, then Israel has two choices:
surrender now, or prepare for all-out war with catastrophic results.
Since President Bush laid out his "vision" for a two-state solution to
Middle East turmoil four years ago this month, Israel has frozen expansion
of Jewish communities beyond the armistice lines of 1949 (a major
Palestinian demand). As Caroline Glick wrote in The Jerusalem Post, "Israel
expelled all Israeli residents of Gaza and northern Samaria in order to
render the areas Jew-free to the Palestinians."