I would begin this piece by condemning
"both sides" in the Arab-Israeli conflict, but that accusation would create a moral equivalence that does not exist. There are two sides in the conflict, but the two operate from very different sets of moral, political and military constraints. Thus while the Palestinians murder Israeli citizens in their homes, on the way to school and work, in restaurants or in religious services, the Israelis respond by killing those deemed responsible -- as is evidenced by the targeted assassinations, demolition of sniper refuges (commonly referred to as collective punishment) and mass round-ups of suspects. However, my solution is not wholly a military one. The suppression and exploitation of the non-Israelis by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, enhanced by the economic backwardness and depravity of the territories and refugee camps, calls for nothing less than a demilitarization of Palestine and the occupation of the territories by a Turkish-Anglo-American force to guide the land toward a peaceful relation with its neighbor.
Palestine must be demilitarized to ensure Israel's peaceful transition to democracy. Whereas other groups fighting for liberation have used violence against civilians in the past to acquire independence, this behavior is no longer acceptable for national self-determination. If we were to extend the historical precedent argument to Israel, they, too, should be able to execute the indigenous inhabitants or deport them to other places as the United States did to the natives living here. Furthermore, using that argument, Israel, like every other nation in the world, should be able to enlarge its territories by war. Such atrocities are now unthinkable because times have changed. So, too, guerilla warfare has become an illegitimate tactic.
For whatever human-rights standards Israel is violating, the world has a moral mandate to ensure the security and preservation of an existing state. Since Oslo, we have entrusted the security of the territories to the Palestinian Authority and Yasser Arafat. However, the Palestinian sovereignty and the Palestinian Authority as saving institutions have become sacred cows, which means that they are beyond question and negotiation as a part of the elusive future of a Palestinian state; it may be time to remove sacred cows in search of peace and security.
This may involve removing Arafat permanently. Nevertheless, we are afraid of killing him for his crimes because it will expose the Oslo accords as a failure. Since the governmental organization of Palestine has the mentality of a gang, Arafat is the only gangster internationally recognized as able to hold the Palestinian nation together. Were Palestine able to govern itself, like Israel or the United States, if one leader were to die then another would be elected. However, if there ever was a state apparatus with a legitimate monopoly of force, it has been destroyed because of its ineffectiveness or unwillingness to combat the militancy that was damaging Israel.
By conferring this status to the idea of a Palestinian state, its "leader" and its institutions, the U.S. government and world community have ignored that Palestine has never had the ability to govern itself. Palestine, with mobs in T-shirts and jeans, running amok holding kalashnikovs. Even with no monopoly of force within its territory and a seat at the United Nations., no one would dream of calling Palestine a non-state or a territory in need of mandatory assistance.
Because the world has not examined the true source of Palestine's failure during the Oslo period, it cannot be expressed too often that weak foundations build weak institutions. Accordingly, we can no longer hide behind such buzz phrases as: Israeli intransigence, lack of viability or Israeli occupation as excuses for the lack of a working Palestinian state now or in 2000 at Camp David, or the "occupation" as a justification for ravenous homicidal mania.
Israel's security would be not the only concern of a Turkish-Anglo-American force. The settlements must be uprooted and dismantled if the current inhabitants wish to have the protection of Israel. If they wish to live in the hills of Judea-Samaria because of religious convictions, then God must protect them because they will be incorporated into the Palestinian state.
With an occupying force in place, its first goal will be to suppress the fits of violent rage that are consuming other frenzied Arab demonstrators across the Middle East and that is causing European mobs to massacre Jews and burn synagogues when they think of Jews in Israel defending themselves. Organizations that call for the destruction of Israel like Hamas and Islamic Jihad must be tried for war crimes; organizations whose idea of a two-state solution either place one state under the sea or view one state as a Trojan horse must be eradicated.
After accomplishing the deterrence of the security threats, Israel and the Arab world need to negotiate final borders, which should not return Israel to the Green Line of 1967 -- a line 12 miles wide that is often called the "borders of Auschwitz." Leadership for the nation must be found while the structure for the state must be built. The force should also include State Department officials to request Congressional committees for U.S. monies to: raise Israel out of the recession, allow it to conclude the arms sale to China and build the infrastructure necessary for a state to function and to build the new Arab embassies in Jerusalem to conclude the normalization of relations.
In conclusion, we can no longer be confused about the Palestinian problem nor can we impute dehumanizing descriptions to the murders of Palestine. They are human beings and need a nation-state to curb their violent human inclinations. We need to realize that for now Palestinian nationalism and its homicidal manifestations, like Bin Laden's Islam or Arafat's military costume and diplomatic doublespeak, is an excuse for Arab leaders to divert discontent with their regimes onto the ongoing Arab-Israeli dispute. As such, the West has a moral obligation to rescue two populations in Israel and Palestine that are trapped.
