Yet another example of a Bush betrayal. This administration seems to view stabbing its friends in the back as a virtue. Bush and Powell are now going back to Arafat, who was never forced to relenquish control of the PA “security” forces. The one who I really don’t understand is Sharon in going along with this utter folly. Arafat should be regarded no differently than Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden - captured or killed.

The Palestinians by their own unprecedentedly savage behavior have long since given up any rights to a state in the West Bank. The only long term solution is expulsion of Arabs from West of the Jordan. In any previous period of history, (i.e., before the advent of modern liberalism), if a country had faced what Israel is facing, it would have expelled the Arabs a long time ago.

Would that “work”? would it assure Israel’s survival? No. But it is the only path that offers a _chance_ for Israel’s long term survival.

Robert Locke wrote an informative piece about ‘transfer’ on VDARE recently:

http://www.vdare.com/locke/palestinian_problem.htm

Something we should consider ourselves, I believe. Though even if we did, we would probably still insist that Israel must not.

Carl writes, “The one who I really don’t understand is Sharon in going along with this utter folly.” Here is the crux of the matter, in my view. Ariel Sharon has dedicated a very remarkable and rugged life to the State of Israel. He may be the most hated man in the world, for very reason of his dedication. Why would he, having spent a life in the service of Israel, suddenly, upon the achievement of power, embark it on a course of ruin? Because George W. Bush is twisting his arm? Come on.

The reason is he has no choice. Israel has shown truly heroic grit and bravery in enduring a horrible war of attrition; it has shown that it will not surrender; but no — NO ONE — has yet developed a workable solution for the Palestinian problem. This expulsion idea borders on lunacy. Forget for a moment how the world — even America — would react; the critical fact is that the Israelis themselves could not countenance such a “solution.” This is the same people, remember, that endorsed the Oslo delusion every step of the way.

All this talk of Bush’s “betrayal” mere frustration given a ragged voice; and it is plainly wrong. Do we imagine that President Bush can move to the right of Arik Sharon on Israeli politics? Ridiculous.

When Israelis say that George W. Bush is the best American friend they’ve had since Truman, they are not wrong. The “Road Map” is Sharon policy; if there were something better available, Bush would surely support it.

I don’t disagree with Mr. Cella that Sharon voluntarily endorses the “road map.” However, it’s not exactly correct to call it a “Sharon policy.” The road map came out of Blair’s deal with Bush: British participation in the war, in exchange for a renewed peace process.

As to the expulsion idea, most of the arguments Mr. Cella offers against it have to do with the fact that people would oppose it, not with its inherent worth. The whole world—following its wants and inclinations—has been _wrong_ about Israel, with disastrous results. So people’s inclinations on this would not seem a very good guide, would they? Therefore I am arguing for a radically different way of seeing this problem; it is in my opinion the only way that offers long-range hope of peace and survival for Israel. And the world (including Israel) would need to be won over to this other way.

No question that Bush, and Blair in particular, pushed for the policy, but my point is that Sharon would not accept a policy — from anyone — which he judged to be catastrophic for his country. The man is not marked by his pliability.

If the expulsion idea begins to gain currency among Israelis, I will take another look at it; but as things stand now, I persist in believing the Israeli population constitutionally incapable of conceiving, planning, and executing a very grave act of social engineering, which the world will undoubtedly call “ethnic cleansing.”

I do concede to Mr. Auster without hesitation that world opinion has been spectacularly, miserably wrong about Israel since at least 1967.

Yes, it’s as hard to imagine as Upper West Side Jews carrying out an ethnic cleansing of their neighborhood. Yet, there is a minority of Israelis who support it or something like it. Of course, the original idea of the Revisionist Zionists led by Zev Jabotinsky was that a Jewish state in Palestine could only be secure under conditions such as I am advocating here.

Let me add again, that in the world before modern liberalism, a country in Israel’s situation would long ago have expelled (or worse) the Arabs, and the world would have accepted it. It is the insane logic of liberalism, which never allows a conflict to be settled but would rather keep “negotiating” it for eternity, that creates this seemingly unresolvable mess.

I have seen polls among Israelis suggesting that 20-30% support transfer outright, a number that has grown since the Oslo War. One article from 2001 suggested that 2/3 of Israelis supported “voluntary transfer.” The article noted that “voluntary” was ill-defined — I don’t think there could be such thing as ‘voluntary’ transfer anyway.
http://www.israelinsider.com/views/articles/views_0182.htm

To underscore Mr. Auster’s point above, Kuwait expelled Palestinians in the hundreds of thousands after the 1991 Gulf War, during which Mr. Arafat brilliantly sided with Saddam Hussein. And article in the BBC notes:

“About 450,000 Palestinians lived in Kuwait before the Iraqi invasion. Most were expelled or pressured to leave after liberation, and the Palestinian community has dwindled to around 9,000.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1361060.stm

This is rarely mentioned though, and I suspect the average person doesn’t even know about it. Such things would only be controversial if performed by Israel in her quest for continued survival.

Probably the only policy that can solve the problem is to accelerate the program of killing terrorist leaders. Israel seems very good at it, but they have allowed immunity for Arafat, even though documents were found proving that he authorized terrorist attacks. It is hard to believe the Israelis are serious about stopping terror as long as Arafat is untouched. For that matter, Abbas apparently has terrorist credentials too.

I respectfully disagree with thucydides’s statement. I have doubts that getting rid of terrorist leaders would be any different than taking out the heads of drug cartels. There seem always to be others to take their place.

The Palestinian problem is too entrenched by now for this to come near solving the problem. Two generations have now been raised with a fanatical hatred and radicalism instilled in them from childhood, which includes a glorification of martyrdom. It would take much more than killing a few leaders — who will be instantly venerated as martyrs and heroes — to bring these people to heel.

Another reason has to do with the outside forces that prop up their ‘struggle’ to destroy Israel. I refer not only to the surrounding Arab nations, but to the European sympathizers and the UN.

Daniel Pipes recently wrote an article that expounds on just one way the UN has contributed to this problem in the matter of the so-called Palestinian refugees:

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/1206

Mr. Auster wrote,

“In any previous period of history, (i.e., before the advent of modern liberalism), if a country had faced what Israel is facing, it would have expelled the Arabs a long time ago.”

Damn right. Not only that, it would have expanded its borders at the expense of surrounding Arab lands, which is exactly what Israel should do.

I’ll go further: Israel’s ONLY hope of long-term survival lies in growing physically, meaning territorially and population-wise. (That’s JEWISH population-wise, BD, NOT the “multi-culti/diversity” insanity/suicide. They should allow no majority-threatening levels of Muslim or any other demography to accumulate, but always a clear and permanent majority of Jews. The Arab Muslims already have their countries — have them galore! The Jews don’t have theirs yet — or, not yet “free-and-clear,” they don’t — but if they play their cards right for a change, they will.)

The lie that Israel is the aggressive villain in this whole situation is one of the biggest politico-historical lies ever perpetrated. In fact, it is due precisely to the well-known Jewish ethnic traits of timidity, feelings of guilt, and tendency to over-intellectualize things that Israel finds itself in this current impasse: they aren’t bold enough to face the fact that they must either expand, or die by a long, planned-out process of carefully-calculated attrition.

Mr. Auster is one-hundred percent right: no European or North-American country in history would’ve tolerated what Israel is putting up with now, but would have stricken the Palestinians long ago (and likely also the Syrians, Jordanians, and/or Egyptians) with a major territorial balance-of-power fait accompli in their favor, which would have brought them some relief from present danger and some hope for their future, and shut all their critics up like the mindless jackasses they are.