For the unenlightened, that is not an insult, it simply means those who have yet to be informed, yes, we try to inform the untold, that is part of our mission statement. Now, where were we? Oh yea, Judea and Samaria are Jewish lands from the ages starting with King David and King Solomon and were originally an integral part of what was declared the State of Israel on the morning of May 15, 1948 under a declaration by the United Nations despite the objections of the nations of the Arab League and their allies. But that did not deter them from attempting to make a small adjustment to the United Nations declaration and simply genocidally vanquish the nascent state of Israel murdering every last person they found. To this end they gathered forces from seven Arab nations, an untold number of militias, various military officers from various armies from World War II who fought for European nations and the Mufti of Jerusalem demanded that Arabs take refuge beyond the Jordan River, in Lebanon or behind the Egyptian military aligned in Israel’s southern border. The Arabs who remained within Israel fell into two groups, the first was Arabs who truly desired to remain in Israel and live in peace and be a constructive element in Israel’s future, and those who were interested in attacking the Jews fighting to retain their nation from behind. The Israelis had a good idea who were the friendly Arabs and when those whose loyalties were in doubt proved by the action of a large numbers of their population to be a fifth element, that was when the Israelis out of necessity drove many of the questionable Arabs out before their troops after being ambushed a number of times by some of these communities striking from behind. This was behind the initial refugee crisis where those who left their homes were forced into camps as were those pressed out for Israel due to their allying with the invading Arab armies. Further, in the wars which began on May 15, 1948 and ended in an armistice in 1949 resulted in Israel losing parts of Judea and Samaria to Jordan and the Gaza to Egypt. Jordan attempted to annex their gained lands so they changed the name to West Bank and the world, except for Britain and Pakistan, refused to recognize the annexation. It was after the 1967 Six Day War that Israel liberated these very same lands but the deceit had already started with the 1964 founding of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) demanding that an Arab state replace all of Israel. That demand is no different today; it just is demanding it from within Israel instead of in an occupied area.
So, let us frame the actual demands as they stand with added notes about the world at large. Israel has reached peace accords with two of her former invaders after a series of wars which though initiated by Arab powers that they either were unable to eliminate Israel but wrested control over some Israeli lands in the process of attempting to eradicate Israel and her non-Muslim populations, as in the 1948-9 war or have lost any advantage gained by attacking without provocation and then having the occupied areas returned to Israel control and even losing additional lands as in 1967 and again in 1973. Israel returned the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula for a cold peace with often cooperation on security matters which are to both parties’ favor with Egypt. Egypt agreed, nay, insisted on Israel retaining her lands which Egypt had occupied between 1948 and 1967, the area known as Gaza. Jordan subsequently made her peace with Israel surrendering back to rightful Israeli control of the areas of Judea and Samaria as well as Eastern Jerusalem making, once again, the Jordan River the boundary between the two nations as it had been on that fateful morning of May 15, 1948 when Jordanian, Iraqi and Saudi Arabian forces stormed across the Israeli border racing to reach the sea and take control of the port cities. These invading forces were aided by Arab militias under orders from Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the same Hajj Amin al-Husayni who spent the entirety of World War II in Nazi controlled lands raising all-Muslim forces which terrorized and plundered the areas Jewish and Serbian Christian populations with the blessings of the Nazis. Further, he was reputed with having advised at the Wannsee Conference where the ‘Final Solution’ was drafted and the Holocaust was placed in motion. Some reports claim that the Mufti demanded the Germans not simply exile the Jews onto the British Mandate lands in the Middle East thus taxing British and French forces in the area to take care of the refugees but instead exterminate European Jews and once in control of the Middle East and North Africa continue the extermination in those areas as well. These were the forces assailing the nascent state of Israel on her very first day of existence and before she had even gathered any formal military and where some Jews fought the invaders with stones having no arms other than slings. A swift Arab victory and the erasure of Israel appeared imminent but that was a short lived image of the situation.
Soon their efforts were blunted before they could reach their goals and finally fought to a standstill setting the Armistice Green Line as the new reality where Jordan remained in control until early June of 1967 when Jordan joined Egypt and Syria in the attack the Jordanians had been sold was going well by Egypt and Syria despite their losing on both fronts. That act despite Israeli warnings caused the loss of her occupied lands. On the Syrian front in 1967 Israel gained control of the Golan Heights, which the Syrians had used for snipers to randomly shoot Israelis walking to and from schools, tilling their lands, harvesting crops, driving on roads and other serious provocations known and the like. Israel had annexed the Golan Heights after gaining control of them from Syria during the Six Day War of June 1967. When considering the actions and the presence on occasions of terror groups aligned with al-Qaeda such as the al-Nusra and also forces attached to Islamic State with the occasional artillery or mortar round landing within the Israeli border to show for such volatile situations, Israel has adopted a policy of returning fire upon the offending source as computed by Iron Dome or similar tracking utilities. The Israeli decision to annex these vital hilltops has proven invaluable with the turmoil currently playing out on the border with Syria which is showing no sign of mitigation of the grievances and the introduction of Iranian, Russian and Hezballah forces backing Bashir al-Assad’s claim to the lands he ruled some five years ago when his intransigence on demands for rights and representative governance were refused and the largely peaceful protesters turned upon with regime forces which ignited this strife which has claimed upwards of five million lives with a large percentage being civilians and tens of millions of refugees made homeless who are now making their way across Turkey, Greece or even Italy and on into Europe. That pretty much encapsulates much of the actions over the past sixty-eight years.
So, the current situation is easily summed-up; Israel has made peace with three of the four nations bordering her and the fourth is in no shape currently to make any decisions about their mutual border. As discussed, Israel having annexed the Golan Heights is well within her rights according to all International Law as once Israel had returned any sections, let alone all; of the Sinai Peninsula she had fulfilled her obligations for returning lands, not all of the lands, nor the lands, nor any other absolute amount of lands. Israel was also to retain lands necessary for her continued security which was aimed at the time as the Golan Heights and the area of Judea and Samaria west of the Jordan River and many anticipated Israel retaining half of the Sinai Peninsula to the central mountains but Israel surrendered all of the Sinai. Once the peace treaties had been reached with Jordan and Egypt by which all the occupied Israeli lands of Gaza, Judea and Samaria had all claims vanquished it appeared that things in the Middle East between the Arabs and the Jews were settled. That was not to be the case as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) which was formed in 1964, a full three years before the Six Day War of June of 1967, for the expressed purpose of threatening all of Israel with a challenge claiming the Arabs residing in Israel were actually an ancient culture which had their lands stolen by the Jews in the 1948-9 War and that the Israelis were evil, despicable European invaders and were intent on colonizing the entirety of the Middle East and beyond forming a greater Israel and subjugating the Arab Peoples, the indigenous Arab peoples with a nine-thousand year history going back to the time before. The Arab Palestinians, with generous assistance from the KGB, established these claims against all of Israel between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea except for the area under Arab controlled by Jordan and Egypt as these, Gaza, and parts of Judea and Samaria (referred to by Jordan as the West Bank) leaving the Jewish controlled areas as their target to form a new twenty-second Arab state. After Jordan and Egypt had relinquished their claims to any Israeli lands the PLO simply included those areas as their lost homelands which had to be returned to them completely cleansed of the Jews. They would claim that the Europeans must allow their Jews to return home ignoring the known fact that the entirety of the Arab and Muslim worlds attempted to cleanse themselves of their Jews and a vast number of them settled in Israel. There had been no mention of these Jews being returned or accepted as originating from the Arab lands all despite passports being held by these former refugees. There was a reason for the difference between the Arab refugees who are still languishing in refugee camps not included but rather kept separate from their brothers and sisters, all too often literally, while the Jewish refugees were taken in, given immediate citizenship and allowed full rights and became productive members of Israeli society. Their inclusion has been so complete that today it is difficult to tell children from the two groups of Jewish refugees apart as the great number of marriages across the societal lines, an occurrence nearly impossible in Arab society as there has been a stigma put upon the Arab refugees such that no Arab nation desires to include them into their society at large. This insane mistreatment goes so far that it even has led to a large refugee camp attached to Gaza City, an area controlled by Hamas since the 2007 coup, with the refugees camps surrounded with Concertina Wire with that being largely the only apparent difference as the refugees are housed in apartments almost identical to the apartments where the Gazans reside including many of the members of the Hamas ruling terror groups as well as other terror groups permitted to operate from within Gaza such as Islamic Jihad (they are almost co-rulers in the area), al Qaeda and even Islamic State. Hamas permits these terror entities to operate within the area it controls even to the point of permitting refugees to leave the camps in order to carry out terrorist acts against Israel. There are additional refugee camps near Ramallah in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Mahmoud Abbas and again there is little to differentiate the refugee Arab Palestinians from the free Arab Palestinians and even their surnames sound disturbingly similar. One can only wonder what could drive a people so far as to literally imprison their brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles and friends into refugee camps and then refuse to permit them work or any gainful activities outside their camps. Further, the vast majority of these ‘refugees’ are under the age of forty years of age, many under eighteen and have resided within the camps their entire lives. The UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) has taken on the job of tracking any refugee who have gotten from the camps and made a life for themselves in elsewhere, some as far flung as Los Angeles. The truth is according to the United Nations and UNRWA, once a family is designated as Palestinian refugee, then their generations inherit that honor and even in cases of cross marriage, an Arab Palestinian refugee and any other Arab be they Iraqi, Egyptian, Saudi or any other nationality, their children additionally become refugees. There were refugee camps in Syria one of which, the Yarmouk Refugee Camp, was heavily shelled and bombed by Bashir al-Assad once it was learned that some of its refugees had escaped and joined with one of the Islamist groups fighting Assad which made the entire camp a legal target in their now five year old war. The Yarmouk Camp was thoroughly destroyed and many of its former residents now have the unique privilege of being double refugees; they are now Syrian war refugees and Arab Palestinian refugees.
The only solution which makes sense since the complete destruction of stable governance throughout much of the Arab lands with Egypt narrowly escaping a plunge into the darkness which is Islamist Theocratic dictatorial rule with the Sunni version of Shia Iran with Muslim Brotherhood Imams sitting with absolute power and the power resting with the Muslim Brotherhood supported by Al-Azhar University was return to military rule until a proper governance was established. There was a price to pay for this salvation and that was a return to the strongman backed by the military and chosen by the military with the present president being the former Chief of Staff General of the Army Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. President Sisi did win an election and the test of whether democratic rule has finally come to Egypt or if they have fallen back under military dictatorship will be realized when the next elections are held and if they have beyond just the trappings of fair democratic elections or are actually verifiably honest democratic elections. Currently it is far too early to tell. Jordan has remained above the fray quite possibly because of the actions of one of the leaders in causing the fighting in Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State. When the Islamic State downed a Jordanian fighter and captured the pilot, First Lieutenant Muadh al-Kasasbeh, they could have simply held him or ransomed him or amazed the world and returned him unharmed to Jordan. Instead they very publically for all to watch burned him alive and as he was fully engulfed in flames in a video posted by the Islamic State to the Internet as if it were an enlistment poster for the group. This barbaric act and the rage shared by the people of Jordan and their King may have served to deepen their trust in his honest leadership and saved Jordan from any crumbling before the anarchic forces swallowing the Middle East from Iraq to Monaco. This leaves Israel still facing a potential situation that should the Islamic State gain sufficient power they might decide that Jordan was ripe for the taking and as a result be right on Israel’s doorstep. Should there be either a Palestinian authority Fatah led government or a hybrid Hamas-Islamic Jihad government, either would necessarily fall before the Islamic State with Hamas likely simply merging while Fatah would likely flee into Israel seeking asylum as they would be no match against Islamic State and the leadership would fear facing a horrific death if captured by the Islamic State Islamist fanatics. It is exactly because of the turmoil, confusion, violence and instability of the entirety of the Middle East that Israel must establish the most defendable borders possible against ground attack such as from Islamic State or ground supported by air attack coming from Lebanon as the Syrian war may decide that involving Israel would actually alter the inevitable breakup of the former nation of Syria. That makes it imperative that Israel end the games and simply declare the Oslo Accords in all of its mutated and contorted forms dead from this day forth. Those not connected to violence or terrorism will be permitted to remain but the higher officials will need to find a new home most likely in Europe who appeared to love them and support their hatreds of Israel. Europe is in the state of taking in all the Islamic refugees they are capable, or almost as many as offered, so a few hundred more should not even be noticed except for the media swarm asking pointed questions such as are they planning on a return, will they take their complaints to the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, be assisting one of the various terrorist armies in order to gain favor when they face the Israelis without even a single aircraft, or the ever ubiquitous where are you going from here? I can picture Abbas as he responds to the media as pictured below, and wouldn’t it be the best answer he could ever give.
Any way one slices it, the Arabs have more than sufficient time, offers and Israeli concessions that if they have refused everything up until now, then it may as well be, “Hasta la vista, baby!” Oh, and whatever they say, “I’ll (we’ll) be back” would be the most unadvisable as such would be tantamount to a declaration of war.
Beyond the Cusp