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May 10, 2002/Iyar 28, 5762, Vol. 54, No. 34
Hopes that Rabin's peace plan will prevail
DR. MOHAMED K. JASSER
Special to Jewish News
As news from the Middle East has continued to go from bad to worse with a rising death toll, throwing everyone into despair, there have been a few events worthy of hope and optimism that have gone unnoticed.
Not only did 20 Arab countries, for the first time in 55 years, declare their intention to recognize Israel and guarantee its security upon military withdrawal of Israeli forces to the pre-1967 borders, but even more astonishing, a decisive majority of the Israeli public appears to favor such a development.
Although this was reported, it seemed to be ignored against a backdrop of killings and more killings. The radicals have become so entrenched in an unprecedented degree of polarization that some of them on both sides managed to drown beyond audibility the most encouraging and hopeful occurrences in years. The brainwashed killer zombies continued their shameful indiscriminate and grotesque attacks on innocent Israelis, including men, women and children, who did nothing more serious than shopping or having dinner. These acts should have been condemned and denounced by all Arabs and Muslims as acts of wantonness and depravity that unquestionably violate the tenets of Islam.
On the other side, Ariel Sharon, the bellicose prime minister, responded with a lot of killing of his own, while in the process, managing to make a hero out of Yasser Arafat by keeping him in the dark, without water, and unable to leave his compound. And for months in a concentrated campaign, Sharon demolished all Palestinian police stations, security buildings, and prisons, behaving as though he was trying to give Arafat the best excuses he can use to be able to say there was nothing he could do to stop the violence. This not only made Arafat a hero, but also increased Sharon's popularity in the polls from 40 percent to over 60 percent.
In effect, Arafat and Sharon were helping each other while innocent people were dying on both sides.
Such misguided catastrophic events have been occurring against a backdrop of myths and fantasies adopted for years by some Arabs and some Jews and distributed for consumption to the world as facts. For example, many Arabs claim that America is responsible for Israeli actions because America is Israel's main arms supplier. This is an historical fallacy. The Arab countries lost three major wars in 1948, 1956 and 1967 to Israel having little or no American weapons. They used French warplanes and German tanks. Three U.S. presidents - Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy - maintained a strict embargo on shipments of weapons to both sides, until the concept was violated by President Lyndon Johnson. Blaming America is nothing short of ludicrous ignorance.
Secondly, some right-wing fanatical Israelis claim that there was never a Palestine. The point is not even worth arguing about, because historically the land of Palestine for at least 1,500 years was always inhabited by an absolute majority of a Muslim, Arab-speaking population. Also recently, right-wing Israelis decided they did not like the term "occupied territories," and decided on the term "disputed territories." It may be interesting to understand who is disputing them and for what, but from the logical standpoint the exercise would not even justify the effort spent on it.
Following recent killings in Israel, a woman who appeared to be in her 60s was stopped by a CNN reporter and asked how she felt. She stated, "Obviously very sad and distressed, but that does not mean we should stop working for peace." Her reply was admirable. Sharon needs to heed the late Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin's statement, who a few weeks before his assassination, appeared on Evans & Novak and responded to a question about what changed his old hawkish attitudes. The most prominent general in the history of the Israel Defense Force responded, "I changed when I became convinced that there was no military solution to the problem."
Sharon should understand that peace and security cannot come from the barrel of a gun. In effect, as Israel's military might and the frequency with which it is used increased, Israel's security has declined. As the compassion of Nahum Goldman, the wisdom of Moshe Sharett, the steady enlightened diplomacy of Abba Eban, and the personal and political courage of Rabin became replaced by contributions from Begin, Shamir and Sharon, no discernable benefits to Israel's security and stability have ensued.
Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims who express their exasperation with and animosity toward Israel, citing the killing of 1,500 Palestinians since the beginning of the Sharon reign, need to remind themselves that they played a vital role in bringing Sharon to power by rejecting a very generous offer made by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and then by the start of the detestable zombie suicide-style violence under his watch.
The Palestinians are actually more responsible for Sharon's ascension to power than the Israelis who voted for him. Furthermore, a double standard is used by Arabs and Palestinians when they criticize Israel for killing Palestinians while remaining silent when the Syrian regime killed 30,000 Syrian civilians in the city of Hamah within a few weeks, in February of 1982. That double standard in words and deeds is the moral equivalent of the Arabs telling the Israelis, "you are better than us, and thus we will hold you to higher standards than we hold our fellow Arabs."
In effect, everyone in the United States does hold Israel to higher standards because Israel is a democracy like ours, while their neighbors are not.
Israel has no alternative but to withdraw from the West Bank, including the settlements, because it is in the interest of Israel to do so. If Israel were to annex the West Bank, Israel will have to do one of two things: either accept all Palestinians as citizens, and then she will cease to exist as a Jewish State or attempt to drive most of them out, then ceasing to exist as a respected democracy and earning disapproval and condemnation of the entire world, while remaining an embattled military camp in the midst of a hostile and very insecure world. The world and apparently a majority of Israelis hope that Rabin and his vision will eventually prevail.
Dr. Mohamed K. Jasser is a practicing physician in Phoenix, specializing in cardiology and nuclear medicine. He immigrated from Syria as a political refugee in 1967. He has done extensive work in classical Arabic and Koranic studies.
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