Love of the Land: End the Arab Occupation of Israel

End the Arab Occupation of Israel

Ron Breiman
Haaretz
04 October 09

(How this ended up in Haaretz is anyones guess.)

From Gideon Levy to Barack Obama, from Yariv Oppenheimer to Ismail Haniyeh, from Zahava Gal-On to Tzipi Livni - they all recite the same phrase: It's time to put an end to the "occupation." Once the "occupation" ends, peace will be sealed. Once the Jews are expelled from the heart of their country, redemption will come to Zion. From here emerges "the solution" - two states within the tiny piece of prized property that remains, the western Land of Israel, not the Greater Land of Israel.

We would do well to recall that the PLO - the (all of!) Palestine Liberation Organization - was founded in 1964 before there was an "occupation," "the West Bank," "territories," and the other political terms that were designed to disinherit the Jewish people from the heart of their country, those swaths of land that were occupied - without quotation marks - by the Jordanian army in 1948, an occupation that lasted just 19 years. The PLO's goal was not to liberate the territories from Jordan, because those lands were in Arab hands. Rather, it aimed to liberate the "occupied" territories from the State of Israel, which lay within "the Green Line."

We would do well to recall that the PLO never changed its spots. It failed to do so when it signed for "peace" with the naive Yitzhak Rabin, who was lured into the trap sprung for him by the Osloites. And it failed to do so when it allegedly abrogated its charter. Even the recent Fatah conference and the statements by the "moderate" Holocaust denier, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, can attest to this. The goal was and remains to this day: the liberation of the "occupied" territories from Israel, namely the State of Israel within the confines of the Green Line.

On the other hand, when the Osloites let Yasser Arafat and his gang of henchmen come into the heart of the country with his army of terrorists, they brought with them their own army of occupation. As things went, thanks to the shock after the Rabin assassination, the Osloites quickly handed the cities of Judea and Samaria over to the occupier, an error that the slain prime minister apparently did not intend to commit. This is how liberated territories became occupied territories, without quotation marks. In Operation Defensive Shield, the Israel Defense Forces was compelled to pay a steep price in blood to liberate the heart of the country from Arab occupation.

Most of the Arabs in the Land of Israel immigrated here after our waves of aliyah. In other words, Zionism and the prosperity it engendered spawned "the Palestinian people." Since the Arab occupation of the Land of Israel in the seventh century, and throughout the centuries of Muslim occupation, not one of the occupiers viewed this land as anything more than a distant imperial outpost.

The demand to grant a state to Arab immigrants to this country and their army, which is stationed here thanks to the blindness of certain Jews and the nations of the world, is without foundation. It is tantamount to legitimizing a reality that was created here after the criminal act that allowed an occupying army to enter this country.

The critics' responses are predictable: What do you propose, that the Arabs just evaporate into thin air? In contrast with the critics who espouse a racist transfer of Jews from Judea and Samaria, I reject any forcible transfer of any population group. Perhaps there is no solution to the problem. There is certainly no solution at this point. But this is no reason to commit suicide or sacrifice the Zionist vision on the altar of "peace."

I do not want a binational state. If there is a solution, it cannot be found within the confines of just the western Land of Israel. In the long term, the solution will be a regional one that combines democracy, demography and geography. The Arabs of the Land of Israel will continue to live in their present homes and will hold Jordanian and Egyptian (for Gazans) citizenship, voting for their respective parliaments. In the long term, citizens of Jordan who comprise an overwhelming majority in eastern Transjordan will gain power in Amman. It is there that a solution will be found for their brothers who live west of the Jordan River.

But in the meantime, we must end the occupation. The Arab occupation in the Land of Israel.

The writer was the chairman of Professors for a Strong Israel from 2001 to 2005.

Love of the Land: End the Arab Occupation of Israel

Love of the Land: Be Happy

Be Happy

And you shall rejoice in all the good that Hashem, your G-d has given you and your household, you and the Levi and the convert in your midst.
(From this week's Torah portion, Ki Tavo, Deuteronomy 26:11)

You got everything on a silver platter. You received a young state that triumphed over seven Arab armies and instilled fear in the hostile world around it. After that, you wondrously received Jerusalem and Biblical Israel. You received the Sinai and the oil fields in a victory that military experts defined as a "miracle of miracles." You received the Golan Heights and Mount Hermon. You received a burgeoning economy. Your enemies were destroyed. The terror organizations fled to Tunis in despair. Their leader was denied entry into the U.S. and many other western countries. You were internationally admired. All that you had to do was to rejoice in all the good that G-d had given you.

But you were not happy. All of these wonderful gifts forced you to face the truth of your national existence in the Land of Israel. The Temple Mount - where the rebuilt Temple should be standing - frightened you and you scurried out of there and desperately handed it over to your enemy, once again. You called Biblical Israel "territories" and since then you have done absolutely everything to get your enemy to take them back from you. You took the murderers who want to see all of you dead, who murdered your sons and daughters in cold blood, the terrorists that your Father in Heaven had given into your hands - and turned them into statesmen - so that you would have a recipient for the Biblical lands that you were trying so hard to be rid of. You turned your brothers who returned to Biblical Israel and made it flourish with their blood, sweat and tears into enemies of the nation. You expelled some and destroyed their homes, and still scheme to do the same to those who remain.

And now, the entire world (even America, your great ally) does not recognize your right to exist at all. And why should it, if you yourself are afraid of existing?

Instead of projecting the image of the victorious David triumphing over seven Arab armies, you have become the heavy Goliath, not even capable of liberating one captured soldier being held a few kilometers from your border. You have surrounded yourself with an entanglement of fences, walls and watchmen. The world scorns you. Israeli citizens abroad hide their true identity. There are neighborhoods in your capital, Jerusalem, where a Jew will not dare enter. The same is true for parts of Jaffa, Acco and Natzeret. You now buy the oil that you drilled in Sinai for top dollar. You have given the abundant water supply granted you by G-d - for free - to the Arabs living in Jordan, part of Israel's inheritance.

All that you had to do was to rejoice in what G-d had given you - and to rejoice in who you are. That is all.

Shabbat Shalom,

Moshe Feiglin

taken from

Love of the Land: Be Happy