By Victor Sharpe
I remember once seeing a picture of a Native American chief looking wistfully towards the distant horizon where once his ancestral homeland lay. He was speaking to a stranger about the peace treaties he made that were all dishonored by American officials. The caption read: “Let me tell you about land for peace.”
With this in mind, and with the painful knowledge of Israel’s past “land for peace” fiascos, I penned an article called “First Two-State Solution is 104 Years Old”. I felt it necessary to remind the world how, in 1921/22, the British Colonial Office had arbitrarily abrogated the promises made by Britain under the 1917 Balfour Declaration – of assisting the creation in Mandatory Palestine of a Jewish National Home.
The British government broke its promise by tearing away all of the Mandate territory east of the River Jordan and giving it to the Arab Hashemite tribe. No Jews were allowed thereafter to live within the new Arab territory, which is now known as the Kingdom of Jordan. It became, and remains, apartheid, Arab style.
Now the modern Jewish state – ever obliged through international pressure to take risks by agreeing to “land for peace”, but never, ever receiving peace – is faced with the relentless continuation of the plan to divide again and again what remains of Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, by now tearing away its Biblical and ancestral homeland. This is the very Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria known throughout the world by its infamous Jordanian Arab name, the West Bank. Land for peace and the two-state solution thus have relentlessly combined in a deathly embrace to force Israel into agreeing to permit within its borders the creation of an Arab terror state to be called Palestine: the 23rd Arab state.
In my work as a freelance writer and author, I am constantly forced to battle both Israel-bashers in the media as well as those Jews who are sadly willing to abandon their people’s spiritual and physical patrimony – the same foolish ones who do so in the deluded belief that by giving away their land, a full and lasting peace with the Muslim Arabs will descend upon embattled Israel like manna from heaven. But a reading of the Koran and the Hadith is all that is necessary to understand that Islam will never accept a non-Muslim state in land previously conquered in the name of Allah. Such Peace is thus nothing but a mirage in the desert.
It is necessary to retell the story of the redemption in June 1967, when Divine providence and Jewish patriotism combined to free Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan Heights from alien Arab occupation. But why must it be required to reiterate again and again that Israel did not capture land from another people? It always was the Jewish people’s very own God given land; and it finally returned to its native people.
How long must the patriots and lovers of Zion endure Israeli governments, which for too long have turned a blind eye to the creation of new Arab facts springing up on Judean and Samarian soil in the form of an Arab settlement here and an Arab villa there? How long must they wait before a nationalist and patriotic Israeli government emerges that withstands such foreign pressures.
Will Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu yet withstand such foreign pressure or the shameful leftist and Arab members of the Israeli parliament (the Knesset) who fear such foreign pressure but have still not learned the terrible lesson of the fraudulent Oslo Peace Accords, which predictably morphed into the Oslo War with its thousands of dead and maimed Jewish civilians. Will he have yet learned from his earlier abandonment of Hebron to the Muslim Arabs; the very city of Judaism’s patriarchs and matriarchs?
Unless a miraculous change of heart occurs, I fear his self-imposed freeze on Jewish home building in holy Judea and Samaria will remain in force as it did with earlier Israeli leaders under the vicious pressure from Presidents Barack Hussein Obama and Joe Biden, while Arab housing continued feverishly concreting over the hills and valleys of the Biblical Jewish heartland and destroying. And in the recent past, President Trump himself who is surely the greatest friend Israel has had in the Whitehouse stated that. “I will not allow Israel to annex Judea and Samaria” Truly devastating Trumpian words to Bibi.
Nationalist and patriotic Israelis, along with Jewish and Christian supporters in the Diaspora, may therefore be forced to see a future government, continue the lamentable policy of “land for peace”; whereby, Israel gives away its land but never receives peace; followed inevitably with the direst of all tragedies – a second “two-state solution.”
How long before the majority of politicians in the Knesset finally accept that Jews have returned permanently to their very own ancestral and Biblical land, a tiny land which presently stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River – a distance of less than 50 miles. How long before they realize that Israel must not be the only nation in the world perpetually forced to concede its homeland – the very special land given in an eternal and divine Covenant by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Creator of the Universe – invisible and indivisible. How long before the cry is taken up: Not one more inch!
Please see my own four volumes of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state on Amazon.com, which deal in great detail about the history.
Despite Israel no longer administering Gaza and allowing for the fact that over 98% of the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians are now living under the control of the terrorist Hamas, the denizens of ‘lower learning’ throughout academia still falsely describe the Palestinian Arabs as living under Israeli occupation. Intellectual pursuits clearly do not confer intelligence.
The manner in which Israel may yet prevail is for it, therefore, to resist Arab and Islamist aggression from a position of relative territorial strength. Hebron had already been lost to those Arabs who call themselves Palestinians (save for a tiny and ever threatened Jewish enclave in the holy city). The Arabs have no interest in Israel’s survival; rather, the opposite. In return for a reduction in American support, Israel would be wise to keep restore and rebuild Judea and Samaria. Keep the Golan and restore to itself the Gaza Strip.
The physical and spiritual homeland is its strength. Judaism, Zionism, Jerusalem – all are one and the same. My friend, Israeli ambassador (Ret.), Yoram Ettinger, has often issued demographic facts showing that the Jewish population is growing far faster in the territories than is the Arab population and that between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan the Arab population is vastly overstated by some two million inhabitants.
So, will the Jewish state remain true to the Holy Covenant? Will Prime Minister Netanyahu no longer concede one centimeter of covenanted land? Will that resolve extend to Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem? Will there be a firm and unyielding rejection of yet another two-state solution? Will the people finally say no to those elites who betrayed their trust by giving away the precious homeland in return for what was the infamous Oslo Peace deal. The questions remain, but if Israel continues to hark unto the siren calls of a fraudulent peace, it may yet usher in another Final Solution for the remnant of the Jewish people and for the reconstituted Jewish state.
Remember, it is always infinitely preferable to fight from a position of territorial strength, buoyed by spiritual certitude and not forced to battle for survival after yet more of the homeland has been given away in return for nothing.
Remember the words of that Native American.
“Let me tell you about land for peace.”
Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author of seven published books including the four volumes of Politicide – The attempted murder of the Jewish state.
Share this:
Excellent article. I see Amazon carries all of his books.