How to Deal with the Arab Violence

By Moshe Feiglin, JEWISH LEADERSHIP BLOG

The new Arab murderer was born after the handshakes between Rabin, Netanyahu – and Yassir Arafat, the head of the Organization to Liberate the Land of Israel from the Jews. For his entire life, the new Arab murderer has heard from Israel that this is his Land and that we are nothing more than occupiers who will soon be moving on.

The new Arab murderer does not need an organization to ignite him. Israel has been igniting him from the day he was born.

To really fight the new wave of Arab murderousness in Israel, we must understand its source.

1. The Problem:

It is easy to fall into the trap of a doctor who proposes a superficial, quick fix. But when the situation consistently goes from bad to worse, it is best to listen to the doctor who diagnosed a more complex issue and recommended deep treatment to solve the problem.

Twenty years ago, when Rabin and then Netanyahu shook Arafat’s hand, we were smitten with a national autoimmune disease. When you recognize the rights of your enemy to the heartland of your country, you turn yourself into a foreign occupier in your own Land. You lose the foundation of justice for your sovereign existence and you lose the national resilience that is at the foundation of national security.

This is an immune system failure, something like a national form of AIDS. As strong as they may be, the muscles and all the other organs that are supposed to protect us cannot defend us from the viruses and bacteria that we used to be able to overcome with ease.

In 1967, during the Six Day War of miracles, it took the IDF a day and a half to capture the entire Gaza Strip from the Egyptian army. In the summer of 2014, Gaza terrorized Israel, including Tel Aviv – for almost two months. All that Israel’s much more powerful army managed to do was to achieve a fragile cease fire with a small, motley organization of terrorists.

Menachem Begin destroyed the nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981with no speech in the UN and with no advance warning. Netanyahu addressed Iran’s threats to destroy Israel by making speeches. He has managed to make Iran’s aspirations practically legitimate, buttressed with a sly wink of the eye by international accords.

Israel’s immune system failure has been brought about by lack of confidence in the justice of our cause. Confidence in the justice of one’s cause is the most important weapon that exists. It is impossible to fight the enemy who murders us without restoring the confidence that we lost in Oslo.

I assume that Netanyahu would be happy to adopt all the ideas being thrown out now in order to douse the Arab violence with one swift move. But when the foundation of justice is missing, when the entire world sees Israel as the ‘bad guy’ and when Netanyahu is constantly struggling to retain the few crumbs of international legitimacy that Israel still claims – he simply cannot implement those proposals. When he shook Arafat’s hand and accepted in principle that Israel’s heartland belongs to the Arabs, Netanyahu turned himself (and all of us) into colonialists in a foreign land – to occupiers of a land that belongs to others.

If somebody sets up camp in your living room and claims to be the owner of your home, you can call the police, you can scream and shout or you can try to push him out the door. You can do all kinds of things. But one thing is for sure: If instead of opposing him, you offer him just a part of your house, the neighbors will understand that in truth, the entire house has always belonged to him.

With that one cursed handshake, Netanyahu gave the head of the Organization to Liberate the Land of Israel from the Jews – all the Land from all the Jews – the most important weapon of all. He gave him the weapon of justice. Now Israel is armed from head to toe with the most advanced and sophisticated weapons. But the immunological flaw does not allow us to defend ourselves.

We will be seeing more and more soldiers, more and more roadblocks, more and more severe punishments – more and more carpets being thrown over the glowing embers. As in the past, we may even think for a moment that we have managed to hide the fire. But it will always re-ignite. This time, it seems that it cannot be controlled with more soldiers and roadblocks. This time the fire has started without a terror organization that ignited it. It has come straight from the heart of the post-Oslo Arabs.

Think about the despicable murderer who was born after Oslo. He gets up in the morning to a life that is much better than the lives of most of his Arab brothers throughout the world. He should have been thanking the Jews at every opportunity. Instead, he decides to take his life into his hands, to equip himself with a knife or screwdriver and to murder Jews. What is the source of this hatred?

The answer is: the Occupation. The young Arab was born into and lives his entire life with Occupation mentality. And who convinced him? Rabin and Netanyahu – in the name of almost all of us – Right and Left together; in the name of all those who still speak the Oslo lingo, all those who still speak about a “Palestinian nation”. A new generation of Arabs has been born: Intelligent, proud, and armed with the justice that we afforded them.

If it does not dissipate on its own, I do not see how the present government can deal with the wave of Arab murderousness that we are now experiencing. They can clamp a closure on Judea and Samaria, but imposing a curfew on the Arab villages and towns inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders does not seem probable. And even if the government will be forced to impose such a curfew, what will it do about the Arab violence in the mixed cities?

Israel’s impotence will draw international pressure and involvement into the conflict. If the violence does dissipate, Netanyahu will quickly join up with Israel’s Left at any price and go forward with a process of total retreat – which will of course just increase demands on Israel and intensify the pressure to destroy us.

2. The Solution

• Restore Israel’s confidence in the justice of its cause. Quickly end the ‘occupation’ and return to the Land of Israel as rightful owners.
• Immediate nullify the Oslo Accords and eliminate foreign groups that entertain any notion to control the area, just as we did in Operation Protective Shield.
• Restore Israeli control over the all parts of the Land in our hands and declare full sovereignty in all of Judea and Samaria – as we did in the Golan Heights.
• The Arabs living in Judea and Samaria will have three options, as I have discussed in detail countless times. All the options are better and more ethical than their current situation:
• Allocate the entire Land to its owners, the Nation of Israel – particularly all citizens who serve in the army. Allow accelerated construction throughout the Land.
• Any nationalist violence will be considered an act of war and the permanent resident status of its perpetrators and those close to them will be revoked.

The time has come for leadership that understands the source of the problem and is capable of dealing with the challenge. The time has come for Zehut.