Reverberations from my previous two posts continue. They have attracted passionate support and opposition from across the political spectrum. One reader who disagrees has set out some particularly cogent arguments, which I reproduce here:

‘As for your substantive arguments, particularly the ones you've advanced in this latest post, it's true that you've consistently argued over the years for Israel to leave the territories because it should not be in the position of ruling over another (hostile) people. However, you've just as consistently argued, especially since the start of the 2002 intifada, for the firmest possible opposition to terrorism, against rewarding, trusting and doing deals with terror-supporting political parties, and, most importantly, for democracy, and against legitimizing terrorist groups like Hamas through the ballot box. You've argued powerfully that if the Palestinian people vote for terror groups, than that makes them supporters of a terrorist entity, not of a potential legitimate state.

‘Yet now, you're saying that because you think the Palestinians and their Arab allies will never change their position, Israel should cut its losses in order to "regroup, consolidate and repair itself". In doing this, you ignore the issue of handing Hamas exactly the sort of victory that Israel handed Hezbollah by their rapid exit from South Lebanon, the action that probably more than any other fuelled the Palestinians in taking to the 2002 intifada. Hamas are at this time already organizing the victory parades they are going to hold in Gaza after the disengagement. Can you doubt the huge surge in their recruitment that will follow?

‘I think in saying that the Arab states will never accept Israel, you are resorting to exactly the same trope as when the left and other useful idiots say that the Arab states are never going to be democracies. While there appears to be little short term prospect of it, the moves in Iraq and especially Lebanon were the first tiny steps. By weakening and giving up on the project of bring democracy to the Middle East, you hand victories not just to Hamas and Syria, but to the paymasters of Hamas, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Come to that, if this is the argument driving you, you might as well say that radical Islamists established in London are never going to accept a
non-Islamic state, so we might as well back off into consolidating ourselves in the white suburbs and highlands, and cede Newham and Tower Hamlets to them right now.

‘Sharansky resigned from the Sharon government over precisely the issue of giving up Gaza in return for nothing. Abbas has manifestly failed to deliver on the road map, the absolutely crucial element of which was the move towards democracy by the disarming of terror gangs-- those of Fatah as well as those of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. That's not paving the path to peace. Without democracy, there will be no peace. Ceding any territory to the terrorists just makes it easy for them to recruit and sustain their murderers better. Oh, and by the way, the settlers in Gaza in fact settled no man's land. It wasn't anybody else's land.’

To which I would say this. Because of the dire existential threat Israel faces, and the campaign of demonisation and delegitimisation which has been going on in the west in order finally to turn that existential threat into reality, my views about disengagement have taken second place to the defence of Israel against prejudice, hatred and lies — including the lie that the occupation is illegal. Nevertheless, I have thought from the start that settling the territories was wrong, both morally and militarily, and have also supported disengagement from the start (see my Prospect article). And yes, I also happen to take the hardest of hard lines against appeasing terrorism. But I believe that there is no inconsistency in my position. Here’s why.

The argument that leaving Gaza is to appease Arab terror is a fundamental misunderstanding. This is because it rests on the premise that the Palestinians want the Israelis to leave Gaza and the West Bank because what they want is a state of their own in these territories.

To accept this is to accept the false premise behind Israeli peaceniks, muddled people of goodwill and the many enemies of Israel alike, that this conflict is all about a Palestinian state. If this were so then I probably would not support disengagement because one should never give terrorists what they want.

But it is not what they want. They want to destroy Israel. They do not want a state of Palestine to sit peacefully alongside Israel. We know this because they have been offered it many times, only to reject it. And they have said so, over and over again, that nothing less than the destruction of the Jewish state will do. As far as their own national aspirations are concerned, the state upon which Palestinian terrorism originally had its eyes was Jordan — hardly surprising, since Jordan comprises most of what was originally known as Palestine at the time of the British Mandate. It was only after Jordan wiped the floor with the Palestinians in Black September that their demand shifted to the West Bank and Gaza. And why was that? Because they saw what Israel failed to see — that Israel had walked straight into a trap.

Israel believed — for both good and bad reasons — that it should settle those territories, gained in a war of self-defence and legitimately retained because that war never ended. The Palestinians understood that this gave them their greatest weapon. Since they could not win a conventional war against Israel, they would wage a different type of war through terrorism. Thus they would squeeze Israel in a pincer movement comprising not just terrorising its population but demoralising it by forcing it to take actions which they knew would tear the morally scrupulous Jews apart — and in the process posing as victims in order to delegitimise Israel in the eyes of the gullible and morally compromised west by painting it as a colonial oppressor. Israel was thus caught in a trap. Yes, the territories are no man’s land, and the occupation and the settlements are not illegal. But no man’s land still contains millions of Arabs. Yes, many of them are only there because the Arab states have kept them there as artificial ‘refugees’. But so what? To swallow them is to change and destroy Israel — demographically, morally and psychically. To drive them out is unthinkable.

Disengagement is Israel’s first step towards breaking out of this trap. It is not appeasement because it is not giving the Palestinians what they want. On the contrary, it is giving them what they do not want. They do not want freedom from ‘occupation’ to rule themselves in the territories, not least because that would destroy the platform from which they have recruited terrorists and bamboozled the world with their wholly artificial cause. So what they don’t want they must have. Whatever celebrations the Arabs plan in Gaza when the Israelis leave, however much they dress it up as a retreat under fire — and they are already doing their damnedest in that direction, and no doubt there will be more — they will then have to get on with running themselves in Gaza. No more excuses.

But opponents say the Arabs will be rejoicing at Israel’s exit from Gaza because then they will be able to realise their aim of using this territory to redouble their attacks. Disengagement will create 'Hamastan', with even more rocket attacks on Israel. This is certainly a fearsome possibility. But this would probably have happened anyway. The truth about the ‘occupation’ is that Gaza has been allowed to spiral out of control for years. If, however, after disengagement it does attack Israel, then Israel will fight it — but this time without having the constraint of Israeli civilians playing the role of hostages, and this time from the moral high ground of being attacked without any provocative ‘occupation’.

There is also the intriguing issue of Egypt. As we know, Egypt’s peace with Israel has been ambiguous, to say the least. Nevertheless, the one thing it surely does not want is Hamastan or al Qaeda on its doorstep. It may well be therefore that it is finally forced to cooperate with Israel in stopping the supply of arms — particularly since Israel will be removing the fig-leaf of its presence inside the territory.

It is said that disengagement will send the same disastrous signals of flight and weakness as Israel’s retreat from Lebanon, which was a major cause of the ensuing terror. Well, maybe that was so — although I rather think the perceived weakness that fuelled the terror emanated from the appeasement of that terror under Oslo. But in any event, as we can see from jihadi terror across the world, anything and everything is used to recruit for the death cult, including any actions the free world takes to defend itself. Thus the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the liberation of East Timor, every single thing Israel does to protect itself such as the security barrier, the road blocks or the strikes against terrorist leaders, all are said to be recruiting sergeants for terror. Does that mean all these actions are wrong? Of course not. They may well be right and necessary but nevertheless in the short term exacerbate the security problem because they are used to ramp up the murderous grievances still further. That is precisely the fiendish calculation of terror, to force victims into a choice between doing what is necessary, which hardens the grievance that recruits more to the terrorist cause, or not doing what is necessary, which in the longer term means defeat.

Hamas has gained popularity not because of the disengagement but because of the corruption of the Palestinian Authority. This is why Sharansky’s basic argument, that the key is to force the PA to construct the institutions of a free society, is fundamentally sound. The problem is when he applies that argument to oppose disengagement. In his book The Case for Democracy, he writes:

‘I was opposed to Sharon’s disengagement plan because I did not accept the premise that there was no Palestinian partner and no hope for peace’.

But there is no Palestinian partner for peace for the forseeable future, and will not be until and unless there is pressure on them from the international community, particularly the US and the EU which along with Israel continue to subsidise the Palestinian police state. To this end, Sharansky is right to say that aid and recognition should be made conditional on Palestinian democratic reform. But he wants that process to happen before there is any question of withdrawal from the territories. Yet even in the unlikely event that the free world adopted the Sharansky strategy, democratisation — if it were to happen at all — would take a very long time. If it is right to get out of Gaza, it is right to do so on Israel's own terms and not dangle it as a carrot to encourage the Palestinians to institute free elections, a free press and the rule of law.

What Sharon is saying instead to the Arabs is this. You want a state? Fine. So do we want this for you. We’ve tried to negotiate its boundaries with you and got only war in return. You’ve had innumerable chances over the past 50 years, and now enough is enough. You won’t negotiate its boundaries? We’ll make them for you. You insist on murdering us? Very well, if you make it impossible for us to live together than we must separate ourselves from you. If ever you change your minds and decide to live with us rather than try to exterminate us, you’ll find us ready to extend a hand of friendship. Until then, we will remove our people from harm’s way, build our security barrier and turn our backs on you. And if you then hit us, we will hit you as hard as we would hit any other people who wage war upon us — but this time we will not be labouring under our current constraints.

In other words, disengagement is the very opposite of appeasement. It is an end to the manipulation, to the pretence that has fooled the world that the Arabs of the territories are now or for the forseeable future capable of acting in good faith as interlocutors for a just and peaceful settlement. It is a pulling up of the drawbridge — no less terrible and perilous for Israel for that, but a necessary move in dire circumstances in which every option is a rotten one.

Given this strategy of separation and the iron logic that has driven Likud — Likud! — to take such a step, the incendiary charge that this is akin to the Nazi/Arab policy of making the land Judenfrei is not only obscene but stupid. The charge that this is akin to giving in to the demands of Islamic fundamentalists in Britain doesn’t hold water either, because their agenda is totally non-negotiable. Between Israel and the Palestinians there is something to negotiate about, as there has been since the Peel Commission first recommended partition of the land in 1937 — ie, a two-state solution. The fact that the Palestinians refuse to do so but make war instead does not alter that fact. With the Islamists, it is not that there is no-one yet to negotiate with but that there will never be anything to negotiate.

There is a similarity between what is going on in Israel and our appeasement society, but it is a very different one. Those who have turned Jerusalem orange to stop disengagement are performing the same function for Israel at a time of great national danger as those in Britain and the US who have turned on their governments over the war in Iraq.

The point about disengagement is that it is not being done for the benefit of the Arabs. It is being done for the benefit of the Jews. Between the rock and the hard place, it is the rock. The orange protesters should get real.

Posted by melanie at July 28, 2005