From Ian:
The Palestinian Authority cannot meet the most basic requirement for statehood
The supreme test for a stable, sustainable and legitimate state is a monopoly on the use of force within the territories it controls. In the case of the P.A., this territory is currently composed of Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria—constituting around 40% of the area. The P.A. does not have the capability or willingness to confront the armed factions in these areas, never mind an expanded area provided for a Palestinian state. Moreover, the P.A. does not control an inch of the Gaza Strip, which is under the control of the terrorist entity Hamas, which sometimes appears to hate the P.A. and its chief Mahmoud Abbas even more than the Jews.
According to Melanne Civic and Michael Miklaucic in their book Monopoly of Force, “While no state has an absolute monopoly of force, to be accountable for actions taken within its borders, a state must have at least a preponderance of force; it must be able to prevent hostile acts toward other states. This is a minimum assumption of effective sovereignty.” The belief that the P.A. would be capable of this minimal level of sovereignty is wishful thinking.
The current unrest in Judea and Samaria is a perfect example of the P.A.’s ineptitude. The cities of Jenin and Nablus in Area A and B are lawless spaces controlled by a toxic mixture of armed elements of Abbas’ Fatah Party, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, among others. If Israel were not doing the P.A.’s dirty work, these groups would not only attack citizens of the Jewish state but, within a short time, overthrow the P.A. itself.
According to Efraim Inbar, the president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, “To a significant extent, the P.A. is a failed state, defined by the lack of a monopoly on the use of force. … Abbas shied away from confronting the armed gangs and failed to centralize the security services. Indeed, the P.A. lost control of Gaza to Hamas and has continuous difficulties dismantling militias in the territory under its formal control.”
Ordinary Palestinian citizens are responding to this by arming themselves—a logical decision under the circumstances. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said, “We need to recognize that in an imperfect world, we cannot blame a man for wanting to maintain his arms for the protection of his family, land and community when all around him is chaos, lawlessness and corruption, with little or no opportunity.” This is the environment created by an impotent P.A. The vacuum is being filled by terrorists, thugs and Islamist fanatics.
The willful delusion that the P.A. would have a monopoly of force in any proposed state would be laughable if it were not so dangerous. Indeed, the most likely outcome of the creation of a Palestinian state is a Hamas coup. One can support the two-state solution, but refusing to acknowledge that there is no entity capable of a monopoly of force in a Palestinian state—except perhaps for Hamas—is a danger to Israel’s existence and undermines American interests, which depend on a stable Israel. For the foreseeable future, the only realistic option is the status quo.
Jordan Is the Reason There Is No Palestinian State and Minorities Are Threatened
Clearly, the Jordanians have a poor record when it comes to safeguarding the rights of non-Muslims. Thus, it is quite hypocritical for the current Jordanian monarch to criticize Israel’s policies on religious freedom, especially since the Jewish state lifted the aforementioned discriminatory laws imposed on non-Muslim religious minorities once it assumed control over the West Bank and reunified Jerusalem.
Unfortunately, King Abdullah II’s hypocrisy is not limited to the matter of protecting religious freedom. The Hashemite ruler also used his speech at the General Assembly to call for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying that the Palestinians “cannot be denied the right to self-determination.” But who has been denying the Palestinians their right to self-determination? Not Israel, whose leaders have offered the Palestinians statehood on several occasions, only to be turned down and met with terrorist violence at the urging of the Palestinian leadership. In fact, if anyone has been standing in the way of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, it is King Abdullah II’s Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The Palestinians could have had a country of their own as far back as 1921, when the British literally handed the territory of their Mandate of Palestine east of the Jordan River to King Abdullah II’s Hashemite clan, instead of giving it to the Palestinian Arab population for which it was originally intended. Then, during the 1948 war, the Jordanians captured what they labeled the West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem and all its holy places. But did they end up giving this territory to the Palestinians so that they would have a country of their own? Nope. Instead, the Jordanians annexed the newly-conquered territory — an annexation that was not even recognized by the other Arab states.
The bottom line is that King Abdullah II and his Hashemite clan have stood in the way of Palestinian statehood, not Israel. The king’s diatribe about a two-state solution is as hypocritical as his argument that the Jewish state threatens the rights of Christians. Besides, without Israeli support, the Jordanian monarch would probably not have his kingdom, so I think it’s time he stopped biting the hand that feeds him.
David Singer:
Lapid rejects Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution
The emergence of the Saudi Solution offered these reticent politicians a real choice – yet not one of them has had the intestinal fortitude finally – if belatedly and unrealistically – displayed by Lapid.
The Saudi Solution – in distinct contrast to the United Nations Solution – offers Israel the following concessions before negotiations are even commenced on implementing the proposal:
· -Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel only
· - No new State will be created between Israel and Jordan
· - The right of return by Palestinian Arabs to Israel will be abandoned
· -Jewish sovereignty in part of Judea and Samaria ('West Bank') will be recognised for the first time in 3000 years
· -Saudi Peace proposals made in 1981 and 2002 that were unacceptable to Israel will be superseded.
The universal silence by Israeli politicians on the Saudi Solution since its publication almost four months ago is shameful.
One cannot expect every Israeli politician to embrace the Saudi Solution, but then they should publicly state their opposition.
But is there not one Israeli politician – Jew or Arab – other than Lapid - prepared to express his own opinion on conducting negotiations to determine if agreement can be reached on the Saudi Solutions’ groundbreaking proposals?
In particular why have the leaders of sixteen of the major Israeli political parties contesting the elections – Netanyahu, Gantz, Sa’ar, Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, Deri, Litzman, Gafni, Shehadeh,Odeh, Tibi, Michaeli, Galon, Abbas, Shaked, Liberman and Hendel - refused to comment on the Saudi Solution since its publication?
Hopefully these leaders - like Lapid – will break their silence on the Saudi Solution well before November 1.
Leaders lead from the front – not cower and huddle silently together behind the voters whose votes they seek.
From Ian:
The Yom Kippur War: Fifty minus one
Next year will mark fifty years. Fifty years ago, as a young, almost twenty-three-year-old, I had the experience of a lifetime.
Was I a foolish idealist? Perhaps. I had wanted to be “kravi,” a warrior soldier. I had wished for a combat unit. I excelled and had all of the recommendations that accompanied that excellence. Although assigned to guard an IDF intel unit and fully aware of what was happening “de facto” in front of my eyes, nothing prepared me for the brutality of what was to come a few months later, Yom Kippur, October 6th, 1973. Nothing.
The sounds, the deafening roar of low-flying fighter jets, the explosions of artillery and mortar shells all around, the firing of my own weapons. The smell, cordite and death, fire and destruction smoldering everywhere, along roads and fields. The sights, yes, those sights, leaving indelible imprints on my memory to this very day.
And yet, the war itself prepared me for my love of peace. After countless days in Syria, after a new call to duty to become a tank commander, after so many deployments to Israel’s southern front, the Sinai at first, later Egypt and the new border, and then the Gaza Strip and Gaza City itself, all that prepared me for the love of peace.
I served with farmers, kibbutzniks like myself, and like myself watched as we collectively allowed our idealism to slip away. I served with small-town entrepreneurs, small business owners, calculating their economic losses while they bravely defended the homeland. City dwellers, bankers and professionals, CEOs and police detectives, we all wore green and we all came when we were called. And with our own eyes, we saw the dire poverty within the Strip and the contrasting opulence of the villas in Gaza City.
And then Hebron, where some residents of Kiryat Arba went on nightly excursions to vandalize Palestinian property. And, the next morning it was our small two-jeep patrols who would pay the price, having rocks and Molotov cocktails hurled in our direction.
Yes, the Yom Kippur War, fifty years less one ago, prepared me for all that and prepared me for peace. Do not mistake my love of peace. I remain a hawk when it comes to dealing harshly with those who wish to harm the citizens of Israel. Do not mistake my love of peace for weakness in the face of terror. I have seen it. I have experienced it. I have lost dear friends to terror.
The trauma of Israel's Yom Kippur War was fully justified
One of the first decisions that Gen. David Elazar faced when he was appointed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff in 1970 was whether to continue resting Israel’s front line on the Suez Canal. Gen. Ariel Sharon and others warned that such a deployment in an area dominated by massive Egyptian artillery and anti-tank weapons could become a trap – not just for the soldiers in scattered outposts along the 100-mile-long canal but for the tanks that would undoubtedly be sent to rescue them if war broke out. Sharon recommended establishing the front line well back from the canal, beyond Egyptian artillery range, to reduce the danger of a surprise attack. But Elazar decided to remain on the canal where – for political reasons – Israel could “show the flag.” Of the 500 Israeli soldiers manning the line, a third would be killed, a third taken prisoner and a third would manage to escape at night through the Egyptian encirclement.
THE SAGGER
The Armored Corps had been informed by AMAN that the Arab armies had acquired large stocks of a new Soviet anti-tank weapon, the Sagger. Unlike the ubiquitous RPG, which could kill a tank within 300 meters, the Sagger could be fired accurately by a soldier lying in the sand a mile away, virtually invisible to the Israeli tank crews. The armored corps was attempting to devise tactics to deal with the threat but meanwhile it had not informed the corps as a whole about the Sagger’s existence. When Israeli tanks attempted to reach the beleaguered Bar-Lev Line in the opening hours of the war many were knocked out by Saggers without the tank crews knowing what hit them. For several days, these weapons succeeded in keeping Israel’s formidable tank units at bay just as the air force was being kept at bay over the battlefields.
Despite the war’s nightmarish opening, the IDF succeeded, after the ground steadied under its feet, in staging one of the most dramatic turnarounds in military history, a feat too complex to be described here. The war ended with the Israeli army on the roads to Damascus and Cairo. It was a victory not only over Egypt and Syria but over the Arab world, from North Africa to Iraq, which sent fresh contingents to the battlefronts, even as Israeli troops were being steadily eroded. In Iraq’s case, two tank brigades blocked the Israelis who had reached artillery range of Damascus.
The cost of the fierce battles on both fronts would be high. Israel suffered three times more fatalities per capita in 18 days of combat than the Americans suffered in Vietnam in a decade.
It would be years before Israelis could view the war as anything but a disaster. Eventually, however, most would concede to themselves that it had been a military victory. In fact, Israel’s greatest. If the country could overcome the terrible hand it had dealt itself on Yom Kippur it would survive. The war was an extraordinary demonstration of Israel’s resilience and the Arab world would see it too. Six years later Israel would sign a peace treaty with its most formidable opponent, Egypt – the first with an Arab country but not the last.
Yom Kippur War: Why Israelis haven't made fictional films about it
Why have so many years gone by since the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and so few Israeli filmmakers have turned their hands to depicting it? There have been a plethora of television documentaries about bereavement and about the soldiers – those who survived and those who didn’t – but, not many feature films have been made about this important war in Israel’s history.
Why have our most successful filmmakers, all of whom have made serious (anti-)war films, not made fictional accounts of the Yom Kippur War?
The answer is certainly complicated, mostly dealing with the deep and long-lasting trauma of the war, which makes it so difficult to confront.
According to Aner Preminger, who teaches cinema studies at Hebrew University and is a well-known filmmaker, the Yom Kippur War is “the most traumatic war that Israel ever went through, for a number of reasons: its intensiveness; the number of deaths, wounded, and victims of shell shock during such a short period; the surprise; and the downfall after the euphoria of the Six Day War,” he says.
“In fact, we are still today in the post-traumatic period of this war,” Preminger says. “Dealing face-on with such a difficult wound of trauma is complex and complicated, psychologically speaking. It is more natural to hide from it and to deal with it only from afar.”
According to this view, the trauma of the surprise attack and the terrible losses on the battlefield of the Yom Kippur War remain very much with us, and therefore it is very difficult to portray it in fictional films.
Another reason that Israeli filmmakers have kept away from the difficult subject matter of this war has to do with the fact that this particular war was accepted – throughout Israeli society – as a war of defense, a war for which we had no choice, thereby making it difficult to look at it critically: cinematically, politically or militarily.
In contrast, the War in Lebanon from 1982-2000 lent itself to criticism from the very beginning. It was a war of choice, a war entered into recklessly and without forethought about the long-term implications, which provided excellent material that filmmakers could easily dig their teeth into.
Thursday, October 06, 2022
