Regardless of who emerges victorious in the coming elections (if they actually take place), it is absolutely certain that the Palestinian leadership will be comprised of terrorists, terror sympathizers and terrorist organizations - because these are the only people and parties who are running. The Palestinians themselves explain that in everything relating to the desire to destroy Israel (or what the media and the international diplomatic corps refer to as the parties' "diplomatic platforms"), they see no difference between Hamas and Fatah. For Palestinian voters, the principal difference between the two movements is that Fatah is viewed as corrupt and Hamas is viewed as honest. This stark distinction has prompted even Christians to support Hamas.
And so we arrive at the main fact that we have refused to acknowledge since the Palestinian Authority was established. We already know what a Palestinian state is because we have been living next to it for 11 years.
For Israel, that state has four significant attributes. First, the Palestinian state is a failed state comparable to Somalia and will remain a failed state comparable to Somalia. The Palestinian state will never be ruled by law. It will forever be ruled by gangs that thrive on chaos. It will never fight terror, but rather will always enable terror. It will never build the physical, economic or ideological foundations upon which a healthy economy can grow but rather will continue to divert its funds to financing terrorism and will continue to indoctrinate its people in the culture of jihad. The transformation of the former Israeli communities in Gaza into terror training camps is just one example that illustrates this general principle.
Secondly, the Palestinian leadership, whether it comes from Fatah or Hamas, will always speak in two voices. When dealing with Arab and other Third World states, its members will present themselves as the leaders of the sovereign state of "Palestine" and sign accords as the leaders of that state. In their interactions with the West and in the UN, the Palestinians will claim that they cannot accept the status of an independent state because, they will claim, they are still living under "Israeli occupation." Just as on the eve of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip the PA's leaders redefined Gaza's boundaries to include the pre-1967 community of Netiv Ha'asara in order to argue that the "occupation" hadn't ended, so too if Israel were to withdraw from 90 percent of Judea and Samaria the Palestinians would argue that they remain under occupation. Were Israel to vacate east Jerusalem, the Palestinians would turn to the 1947 UN partition plan and claim that the Negev and the Galilee remain "occupied." That is, the Palestinians will claim to live under Israeli occupation for as long as Israel exists in any borders.
Thirdly, as happened in Gaza over the past few months, and as happened after Israel withdrew from the Palestinian population centers in Judea and Samaria in the 1990s, the Palestinians will continue to use all lands that Israel vacates as operational bases for the augmentation of their terror capabilities. This week, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Director Yuval Diskin testified in the Knesset that since Israel vacated Gaza, weapons smuggling into Gaza from Egypt has increased by 300 percent. Diskin also noted that from October to December, terror attacks and attempted terror attacks increased nearly sixfold.
In the international arena, the national interests of EU member states - securing the flow of oil imports from Persian Gulf states, placating their increasingly irredentist Muslim minority populations and continuing to challenge US power on convenient diplomatic battlefields - dictate that further Israeli withdrawals will in no way impact their position on Israel or the Palestinians. The Europeans will continue to support the "national rights" of the Palestinians regardless of their actions or Israeli attempts at appeasement. In the absence of a concerted and consistent Israeli diplomatic offensive, the Americans too will continue their current policy of pressuring Israel for further territorial concessions to the Palestinians to buy diplomatic support from the Arabs and the Europeans.
ALL OF this leads to one simple conclusion. Israel's desire for a border cannot be translated into an effective policy. The fact of the matter is that no Israeli security interest is advanced by transferring territory to the Palestinians or by continuing to support the establishment of a Palestinian state that in point of fact already exists and in point of fact will never acknowledge its own existence.
The question then is what is Israel to do? The answer lies in recalling Sharon's actions as premier before his leftist metamorphosis. In March 2002, when Sharon ordered the IDF to carry out Operation Defensive Shield in Judea and Samaria, he proved one thing. When our leaders uphold Israel's right to defend itself, the Israeli people rally behind them.
Since the Palestinians are not going to cure themselves of their national pathologies any time soon, Israel's national policies must be built not on the dream of a border that will never be recognized, but on the necessity of guaranteeing its security. Happily, Israel has the ability to defend itself.
But in order to realize our abilities, our national leaders have to make the majority of the public recognize the reality in which we live is a reality from which we cannot disengage. The ethos of the border is a false ethos. The only national ethos that we can reasonably unite behind and prosper from for the long haul is the ethos of national security.
