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The Israeli analyst Neve Drori believes that Israel has been wrongly allowing many Palestinians to believe that the Jewish state is weak, and steadily getting weaker. In a recent public opinion poll, two-thirds of Palestinians said they believed Israel would disappear within 25 years. More on this misperception, and its causes, can be found: “Destroying the Myth of Israel’s Impermanence,” by Nave Dromi, JNS.org, June 25, 2023:
They [the Palestinians] see a Palestinian leader who says he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state, embraces and financially rewards mass murderers, and compares Israel to Nazis with no response from Israel apart from the odd press release.
This is unfair. Israel has indeed given an appropriate “response” to the PA’s practice of “financially rewarding mass murderers.” Right now the Jewish state is withholding more than $300 million from the import taxes it collected during the past year for the PA, an amount equal to that which Mahmoud Abbas spends on his “Pay-for-Slay” program. That seems to me to be a fitting and damaging response that goes way beyond “the odd press release.”
They see an Israel uninterested or unable to achieve victory in this long-standing conflict.
Israel has several different enemies it has to deal with, and must prioritize these various security threats. The Iranian threat is by far the most worrisome. Israel has been doing all it can, and then some, to “achieve victory” in the Iran theatre, by preventing the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons. From the Stuxnet cyberworm, in 2010, that caused centrifuges to speed up so fast they destroyed themselves, to the sabotage – twice – of the centrifuge plant at Natanz, to Mossad agents managing in 2018 to find, and take back to Israel, Iran’s entire nuclear archive, to the targeted assassinations of five of Iran’s most important nuclear scientists, Israel has done more to delay Iran’s nuclear project than all other countries put together. And that campaign to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons has to take precedence over crushing the Palestinian terror groups.
But it’s not as if Israel has neglected its other enemies. The IDF has performed spectacularly in dealing with the terror groups as well. It took out the top leadership of the PIJ during Operation Arrow and Shield, along with 17 command-and-control centers, dozens of weapons storehouses, rocket launchers, weapons manufacturing plants, and terror tunnels. Its Iron Beam anti-missile defense system intercepted 96% of the missiles the PIJ fired at southern Israel – a record that far surpasses that of any other anti-missile defense system in existence. Meanwhile, the IDF continues to conduct raids deep into the two main centers of terrorism in Judea and Samaria – Jenin and Nablus, and has managed to locate, and to either arrest, or kill, every terrorist who in recent years has murdered an Israeli.
Thus, the Palestinians believe the Jewish state will soon cease to exist. This provides the motivation and incentive for ongoing terrorism.
The Palestinians don’t need to believe that Israel will soon cease to exist in order to engage in terrorism. They have enough hatred for the Jews — inculcated in them by passages in the Qur’an and thousands of hadith – to prompt their terrorism, even if the desired result remains a distant prospect. For some terrorists a belief in Israel’s disappearance within a generation will be what prompts them to terrorism, but others, who have no such expectation, will be motivated by more immediate benefits offered to terrorists — the generous lifetime support for their families that the “Pay-For-Slay” program provides.
Every Palestinian terrorist who picks up a knife or a gun, or launches a rocket, believes that their actions are hastening the end of Israel. Our response, or lack thereof, merely confirms this belief.
I don’t understand the author’s complaint about a “lack thereof of [an Israeli] response” to terrorism. The IDF has been responding with devastating effectiveness to terror attacks, as it did in Jenin this past month, capturing or killing all of those responsible for the latest stream of terrorist attacks. No terrorist in recent years has escaped the long arm of IDF justice. And Israel does this even while it has to direct most of its security efforts to halting Iran’s nuclear project.
For Israel to stop the violence, it must show that it has the will to survive and achieve ultimate victory. It must show the Palestinian population in actions and deeds that Israel is strong, robust and enduring.
Israel is doing exactly that. It should make sure that the Palestinians find out that the Jewish state is now the seventh-largest exporter of weapons in the world. Even such militarily advanced states as Germany have started to buy arms from little Israel. Just now Germany has agreed to pay $4.3 billion for Israel’s Arrow-3 ballistic missile shield. Arab members of the Abraham Accords have also been buying Israeli weapons. Most tellingly, Morocco has bought, for $500 million, Israel’s Barak-MX air and missile defense system, and the deal is almost done for Morocco to.buy Israel’s Merkava tanks. Israel has also sold advanced weapons, including the Barak missile defense system, and drones, to the UAE. The Jewish state has agreed to sell unmanned aircraft and anti-drone systems to Bahrain. The spectacle of three Arab states clamoring to buy Israeli weapons should dishearten the Palestinians, who will rightly see these deals as evidence that “Israel is strong, robust, and enduring.”
Israel is the “Start-Up Nation,” with an economy that is booming. Israel has many leading companies in the fields of high tech, water management, solar energy, missile defense systems, UAVs, medical technology, and much more. The Economist ranked Israel as the 4th most successful economy among developed countries for 2022 .It is also among the “happiest.” Israel has been ranked as “the fourth happiest country in the world,” right behind the usual Scandinavian contingent of Finland, Denmark, and Iceland. Israel’s GDP is now more than $500 billion. That is greater than the GDP of Iran, or the UAE, or Pakistan, or indeed greater than any Muslim country save two – Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.
It [Israel] must convince the Palestinians that Israel is permanent and break their will to carry on fighting by forcing them to accept that they cannot achieve their war aims.
Israel has already secured its northern flank, by annexing the Golan Heights in 1981, from which Syrian artillery used to fire on Jewish farmers plowing their fields far below. Now Israel possesses the Golan, and it is the Syrian forces that are now down in the valley, vulnerable to the IDF positions on the heights far above. Israel is now well along in its plan to double the Jewish population on the Golan to 50,000 by 2026, that is, within three years. That demographic change will make abundantly clear to the Palestinians, and the Syrians, that the Israelis will not ever surrender the Golan.
Once the Palestinians have been disabused of their belief in Israel’s temporary nature, our leadership can take steps towards accommodation and peace, but not before.
Israel should continue to build settlements everywhere it can in Judea and Samaria, while at the same time razing the illegal settlements that the Palestinians have been building in Area C. In fact, Area C should be annexed by Israel forthwith, a clear sign to the Palestinians and to the Bidenites that Israel will not allow itself to be squeezed back within the1949 armistice lines.
The Israelis must never again make the kind of lopsided prisoner swap they made in 2011, when they traded 1.027 Palestinian prisoners for one Israeli soldier. From now on, any swaps should only be made on a one-for-one basis: one Palestinian prisoner will be released for every Israeli captive freed.
Israeli officials should not show too eager a desire to negotiate with the Palestinians, but instead only a studied willingness to talk; Jerusalem should stop encouraging speculation about a “two-state solution,” noting instead that such a “solution” is no longer possible, given the 700,000 Jews now living in Judea, Samaria, and east Jerusalem. Israel should instead start talking about another, more realistic outcome – a demilitarized “Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine” which would consist of Jordan, Gaza, and Area A in Judea and Samaria, with its capital in Amman.
Israel is determined to continue to withhold from the import taxes it collects for the PA, the precise amount that the PA spends on its “Pay-For-Slay” program. The Palestinians, so many of whom are impoverished, may finally decide that they would support ending the “Pay-For-Slay” program, so that Israel will release the sums it has been withholding. Unlike Mahmoud Abbas, who has acquired a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars, ordinary Palestinians need that money and are not given to the melodramatic gestures of Abbas, who has famously declared he would keep funding “Pay-For-Slay” no matter what, “even with my last cent.”
Israel should continue its relentless raids into Jenin and Nablus, to keep the terror groups Hamas and PIJ, and lone-wolf terrorists, too, constantly off-balance.
These measures will make clear to the Palestinians that though in the past, Israel has been willing to give up control of territory —Gaza, Area A in Judea and Samaria — for the sake of a promised “peace,” it has been chastened by that experience, and will do so no longer. It wants the Palestinians to understand that time does not favor them. On the Golan, the government is building enough apartments so that the number of Jewish settlers will have doubled to 50,00 by 2026. Existing Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria are being expanded by thousands of apartments. Another 7,000 apartments will be built this year alone, which will accommodate at least 35,000 more Jews. Meanwhile, both Israel’s economy and its military go from strength to strength. Its democracy has withstood the divisions over the judicial reform plan. As the old song puts it, “the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble,” but the Jewish state “is here to stay.”
“The Iranian threat is by far the most worrisome.” <<< Ugh the idiots of this world!
Hey… I don't know if you've noticed… but the satanic quran says "Kill the Jews"… so how does that make Iran the most worrisome?
I say… all of satanic islam is a threat to Israel!!!
Wake up! You might as well keep parroting the media… on how Ukraine is gaining and how Covid Vaccines are good for you!
Ugh… the stupidity nowadays…
Hey, instead of calling everyone else stupid, as a good narcissist will always do, how about reading the article again…
Pretty sure the ability to nuke is what makes Iran the top threat, AND it doesn’t appear that Israel’s IDF is ignoring anything. Prioritizing, yes. Ignoring… not what the article says.
Stupid indeed.
You’re “pretty sure”???
Not sure if you know… but the Palestinians are the ones shooting over rockets into Israel on a regular basis…
Also; during the Six Day War… there was 7 surrounding satanic islamic nations attacking Israel… and Iran was NOT one of them.
The propaganda of the media pushes the idea that Iran is the threat… which sadly… many parrot before thinking of the whole truth…
Why?
Because America and the islamic controlled media supports satanic Sunni islam… not satanic Shiite Iran. And… 95% of the satanic islamic world is Sunni… making their voices the loudest… and most heard.
Even Pakistan has nuclear capabilities… another satanic islamic nation. Wouldn’t that make Pakistan a bigger threat than Iran who doesn’t have nuclear possession yet?!?
Get this… Iran is no more a threat than ALL of satanic islam!!! But you go on ahead and be suckered into what the media says… protecting the satanic Sunni…
Your hysteria is a bit concerning. You seem unable to accept that we do in fact function on various levels to defend ourselves,. We are by no means as stupid as you seem to think we are. Read the article again. Save the insults. They are not helpful.
“Arab members of the Abraham Accords” <<< WHAT!?!?!?
They are satanic islamic states! Muslim states!
Call them for what they are! They are muslims…
Arabs can be Christians… duh!
FPM… get rid of this Hugh Fitzgerald! His weak position and sympathy for satanic islam sickens me!
The Abraham Accords countries are moving rapidly towards the western world way, I learned recently that they have now shifted their weekends from Friday/Saturday to Saturday/Sunday and as Friday is their sabbath that’s significant.
That said I still would not want to live there.
Yeah… well calling satanic worshiping muslims as “Arabs”… is the misnomer, sissy azz, wamby pamby way of coddling up to satanic islam…
It’s like calling the destructive, rioting terrorists in France… unruly children… a watered down way of covering up the Truth…
You may well be right, your argument that Sunni is the dominant islamic voice is strong.
I apologise for misnaming you in a pervious reply. I will not apologise for telling you to can the hatred and hysteria. Your vitriol adds nothing to,this discussion.
Israel will do whatever it has to do whenever and preferably without conditions or consulting the Arabists in this administration to defend itself to fight terror and prevent the development of an Iran with nuclear weapons
This brings to mind an old saying: when your enemy threatens you, believe him. (Paraphrase). We face numerous threats, the idea is to prioritize and deal with those threats accordingly. Iran is close to a nuclear bomb. The terrorists in Jenin have been dealt a severe blow. We have to be vigilant on all fronts, but we cannot under any circumstances permit Iran to be able to carry out their threat. An no, not all Arabs are the enemy. Sumsnet, get a grip.
“.. the Palestinians believe the Jewish state will soon cease to exist.” That’s the fantasy conceived by the mythic ‘Palestinians” and their muslim ‘brothers’ for the past 75 years. Let them dream.. It’s not the first, nor the last myth they have been chasing for the past 14 centuries.
Their fantasies of destroying Israel and perpetrating a Second Holocaust are kept alive by The New York Times, which has its latest pet Jew (Peter Beinert) write op ed pieces calling for Israell’s “dismantling” (it takes no imagination at all to figure out how many- or rather, how few, Israeli Jews would be alive if that ever happened). Also by Barack Hussein Obama and his puppet, Dementia Joe. If God Forbid, Israel were vaporized by Iranian nukes or overrun by Hamas and Fatah terrorists, the next thing to appear would be that smug smirk on Obama’s face.
If Israel was destroyed by Iran(it won’t be)………..Christians and Messianic Jews of the West would have a much bigger problem than Obama smirking.
All of Christian eschatology would be de-bunked. The Books of Ezekiel, Daniel and Revelation would be worthless drivel.
I made this point to Phil Haney(the founder of the Dept. of Homeland Security) at a convention,
The FBI killed him later that year and called it a “suicide”.
The delusion of those who plot evil will continue until the day of Judgment. It will be those who plot Israel;’s demise that will disappear. God is going to defend Israel and destroy her enemies. We may not all be here to see it, but the time will come. God’s chosen city is Jerusalem, this city plays a part in God’s plan to Make all things New. Revelation 21:5.
That statistic that two/thirds of the Arab/Muslims who call themselves the “Palestinians” that be lived that the Jewish States Israel to “disappear” within twenty –five years really means that 2/3 of them are deluded ,unrealistic and live in a world of an Islamic fantasy of a daydream.
The reason that this is so is because God is for Israel and will not let her ” disappear” or be destroyed no matter how hard those malice-filled Israel despising imams and other Muslims clerics and their President Raisi will strive against Israel , they are all greatly overruled by God.
For example, the Bible in Psalm 135:4 reads “For the Lord has chosen Jacob for Himself, Israel for His special treasure.” [N.K.J.V.]
Israel 🇮🇱 here to stay and forever
Israel is here to stay until the very end.
The Valley of Dry Bones prophesied by Ezekiel came true in May 1948……….. over 2000 years later.
And the Six Day War of 1967 was a continuation of the miracle.
unfortunately most jews are altruistic , believing as the jews did during hitlers rise to power that it wasn’t such a big deal until it was too late . the demonisation of jews will continue as is evident from the germans at the u.n. right up until the antichrist steps up to the plate and makes a peace deal with israel . then he will betray them and another holocaust will occur . jews once again will be slaughtered en masse . until the messiah intervenes to save a remnant before they are completely obliterated . the inhabitants left on the planet who are not saved and do not profess christ as saviour after the great tribulation and who survive the last 3and a half years of a world wide conflagration will be dispatched to hell . time for everyone to assess their eternal destiny while they can .
Satan is desperate to prove God a liar, which is why he has been trying to destroy Israel since God chose the Jewish people for Himself. Those who are in league with the devil are willing accomplices in his evil agenda…including Hamas and Hezbollah and the twisted rulers of Iran who fund them all.
God has promised that Israel will not be uprooted. Indeed, “He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep”. Psalm 121:4. We are commanded to pray for the Peace of Jerusalem. Know that the same God who has kept….and will keep…all His good promises to Israel will honor every promise made to you and me.