If Israel withdraws from the area, the PA will be able to establish a sovereign state. It will become much, much harder for Israel to prevent the continual smuggling of weapons from Egypt to Gaza or the arrival of boatloads of weapons via the Mediterranean Sea.
When the Oslo accords collapsed three years ago with the Palestinian Arabs\’ launching of mass violence against Israel, numerous American Jewish leaders publicly admitted that they had been wrong all along about Oslo — wrong to believe the Palestinian Arabs wanted peace, wrong to ignore Palestinian Arab violations of the accords, such as anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incitement, and wrong to sit by silently as the U.S. pressured Israel to make more one-sided concessions.
While the Bush administration has put an end to the Iraqi terrorist state, its \”road map\” will create a Palestinian Arab terrorist state — a mini-Iraq. This will endanger Israel and undermine America\’s war against terrorism.
Terrorism cannot be fought on one front and ignored on another. To defeat terrorism worldwide, America needs to be consistent and uncompromising. Kabul and Baghdad should be just the first steps.
Nine years have passed since the signing of the Oslo accords on the White House lawn. Is Israel better off or worse off as a result of Oslo?
Arab spokesmen regularly complain about what they call \”the Israeli occupation\” of the Judea-Samaria-Gaza territories. But the truth is that there is no such \”Israeli occupation.\” To begin with, nearly all Palestinian Arabs currently live under Yasser Arafat\’s rule, not Israel\’s. Following the signing of the Oslo accords, the Israelis withdrew from nearly half of the territories, including the cities where 98.5 percent of Palestinian Arabs reside. The notion that the Palestinian Arabs are living under Israeli occupation is false. The areas from which Israel has not withdrawn are virtually uninhabited, except for the two percent where Israelis reside.
Should Israel\’s goal be to defeat the Palestinian Arab terrorists who are waging war against it? Or should Israelis be striving merely for a few days or weeks of quiet?
Arafat\’s media, schools and summer camps are teaching Palestinian Arabs, young and old alike, to hate.
Our July 16 cover story, \”Tense Relations,\” detailed the friction among local Jewish and Arab groups.
Gene Lichtenstein\’s July 2 editorial misrepresented the positions and activities of the Zionist Organization of America.
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