A Comprehensive change of Strategy

Submitted by Ron Thompson (United States), Nov 28, 2012 at 16:57

An idea I hadn't thought of nor heard before, I strongly agree with Dr Pipes suggestion that the Philadelphia Corridor be taken back. It's one of those ideas 'in plain sight' which somehow gets ignored.

Besides being announced beforehand as something that will be done the next time Hamas resumes its rocket attacks on Israeli citizens, and on Israel's national sovereignty I think it ought to be combined with the broader policy of opening up the sea blockade, as long as Hamas agrees to all incoming goods being inspected and cleared by Israeli authorities.

An even broader change of policy would, in my view, be to expressly drop the very idea of a Palestinian State. Too many people, including many Israelis, have so entangled themselves in the abstract idea of a people's Right to Self-determination, that they end up intellectually and philosophically helpless, or blind, when they come upon a people (the Palestinians) whose definition of their right to self-determination is that another people and their right, not only to self-determination but even to existence, must be politically or physically annihilated.

Since that has been the explicit or implicit meaning of the Palestinian demand for a State for the whole of their brief existence as a separate Arab grouping, it is folly to continue supporting a goal incompatible with any kind of legitimate self-determination.

It is a goal that becomes absurd when compared with the international non-recognition of the Kurdish desire for self-determination, a goal which does not contemplate the takeover of another people, or another people's land, but the recognition of political autonomy or statehood where they live. If this were all the Palestinians were seeking, and which they achieved in Gaza seven years ago (before voting Hamas into office), then the situation would be entirely different, and no one would be talking of taking back the corridor through which Hamas is getting most of its weapons.

So, with the next round of Hamas-initiated violence, take back the corridor, offer to drop the blockade in favor of inspected trade, and begin the discussion of what to do if there is never going to be a Palestinian State. (and one way to begin this discussion with minds otherwise befuddled and befogged would be to ask every member of the Knesset and of the US Congress, "if we are absolutely forced to choose between supporting the right of the Palestinians to a State, and supporting the State of the Israel, belatedly recognizing that we can no longer do both, which do you choose to support?")

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