#98: “Palestinians” and Israeli Settlements

September 27, 2011

The recent imbroglio at the UN caused by the “Palestinians” request to be recognized as a state by that body without actually being one made me reflect once again on what is going on in the Middle East.

I.

You will notice that I put “Palestinians” in quotes, and I do that for two reasons: 1) that the whole point of the two-state solution supposedly being the target of negotiations is that the populations in the West Bank and Gaza are NOT currently a state, which means that one should be careful about applying a state-like name to them, and 2) that the populations in those two encampments are a grab-bag of people from Arab countries who will not acknowledge them as citizens. The people in those two places have origins in most of the Arab countries in the region, the largest number of them originating in Jordan. Jordan, of course, famously booted them out in September of 1970, commemorated by the “Palestinians” as “Black September.”

While Black September is a real holiday commemorating a real event, “Palestine” is only a fictional country at this time. Is there anything more pathetic than a bunch of randomly assorted people inventing a pretend-nation to fight for and return to? This ranks right up there with the American Black holiday “kwanzaa,” which is also a fiction created out of whole cloth. The absurdity of these acts, though not their pathos, was exploited in the brilliant Seinfeld “Festivus” episode in which the characters invented their own Christmas competitor. If we can invent our national past at will, we might as well legitimize inventing our own personal genealogies. Perhaps this is what Liberals mean when they speak approvingly of “re-inventing” oneself.

II.

Abbas and his fellow “Palestinians,” not to mention American and European Liberals, complain bitterly about Israeli settlement expansion. See

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Israel-settlements-1-100/2011/09/27/id/412448

Many of these use the settlements as a pretext for venting their anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, but there are some who, I think, simply don’t understand the Israeli way of dealing with “Palestinian” terrorism. Let me begin by stating what seems to me a self-evident axiom of guerrilla warfare:

When harassing an enemy it is important to take something from them that they care about.

For example, the “Palestinians” try to murder Israelis and to capture them for hostage purposes. They do this in the belief that the Israelis value the lives of their citizens, and they are right in this. Now, the Israelis do attack in reprisal for such terrorist efforts, but their more fundamental counter is simply to take more land. This has the obvious benefit of increasing the size of Israel, a very small nation, but it also has a more subtle and important purpose.

The Israelis understand that the Arabs do not value human life in the same way that they do, so killing a lot of them will have little deterrent impact. In addition, killing Arabs, as opposed to killing Jews, is frowned upon seriously by European Liberals. So the Israelis ask themselves: If the “Palestinians” don’t care about human life, what do they really care about? And the Israeli answer is: land. Thus, as long as the Arabs practice human-life terrorism, the Israelis practice land-terrorism.

III.

On the whole, seen from this perspective, the Arabs have been getting the worse of this exchange. The Arabs occasionally manage to kill a few Israelis, but the truth is that people replenish, but the land the Arabs lose is taken from a finite heap and their acreage grows smaller with every attack. It would seem that they could have ended the erosion of the contested land many, many times in the past. In Abba Eban’s famous words: “The ‘Palestinians’ have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Losing land steadily would seem at first blush to be a real motivator to engage in negotiations seriously with the Israelis, and yet they do not. Why?

I think the reason is that the Arab leadership sees it in its interest to keep the conflict going. A group like the “Palestinians” is essentially a welfare population on the international level, and where there is welfare, there is corruption. Billions of dollars have flowed into the sinkhole of the poor “Palestinians,” but they still don’t have the amenities of civilized life: good roads, good water, electric power, school, hospitals, and all the other goodies we take for granted.  Where is the money? It sure looks like it was Switzerland where Arafat squirreled his away, so that looks like a good place to start.

Of course, not all of the money goes into secret accounts. Some of it has to go to “educating” the masses into anti-American and anti-Zionist screaming, eye-bulging, spittle-flecked monkey rage. And some of it has to go towards paying the party apparatchiks. So the terrorism business does have an overhead to manage, but in the end, the bosses do really well for themselves.

IV.

The sad upshot of this is that as long as the money keeps flowing in, the Arabs will not negotiate and will keep stoking the fires of human-life terrorism. And as long as the Arabs keep lobbing rockets, the Israelis will keep taking land.

The difference between the two guerrilla tactics is this: When the Israelis take more land, Israel as a whole benefits; but when the international welfare money comes pouring in, it’s only the bosses and the apparatchiks who win.

There are only two ways in which this toxic dance can be made to stop:

1)                      The Arab street suddenly understands how it is being played by its leadership, which will not happen; and

2)                     The world at large cuts off the flow of welfare money to the “Palestinian” bosses.

Unfortunately, it is much easier to create a resentful, failed, welfare population than it is to un-make it, so option 1) is not a realistic one. But, sadly, there are also many oil-rich interests in the world who find it in their interest to fuel the “Palestinian” homeland delusions, so option 2) is also a non-starter.

Don’t expect this mess to resolve soon, especially not under the current regime.