The Privilege of Being a NYT Guest Columnist

I have complained directly to the Op-ed editor as well as the Foreign News editor of the New York Times that while far left Israelis, and Jews and proponents of the Palestinian cause, including former terrorists, are able to publish their writings as a "guest columnist" in this august newspaper, not one "settler" (aka revenant Jewish resident) has been permitted the luxury of explaining his or her position - even though the NYT blasts us with consistent criticism.

Well, here's Kahlil Shikaki as today's Op-Ed Contributor, publishing Vote Fatah (or Hamas) datelined "Ramallah, West Bank". The opening:

THE performance of the Palestinian Authority during the past 17 months has been impressive. It has managed against the odds to restore order in the West Bank to a degree not seen in many years. And it has confronted and disarmed nationalist and Islamist groups. Corruption is also not as rampant as it was a few years ago...

His main point, though, is this:

Polls I have conducted indicate that while Hamas has lost about a quarter of its popular base since the last elections, in January 2006 — today it has the backing of only one-third of potential voters — Fatah’s support has remained stagnant, at a little over 40 percent. Clearly, those who abandoned Hamas have not shifted to Fatah. Most disturbing for Fatah is that its leader, President Abbas, could easily lose to Ismail Haniya, Hamas’s most popular leader.

A Hamas victory, many would argue, would derail the peace process. But to many Palestinians, this statement misses the point; if the Palestinians don’t speak with one voice, the peace process cannot go far.

which, of course is silly, stupid and misleading, not to mention quite dangerous for Jews and Israel. No, Khalil, if you want peace, get rid of Hamas. Not that I trust Fatah much more.

Funny, I had sent a submission last week.

I guess they didn't like it.

Here it is:

How Many A State Solution?

By YISRAEL MEDAD

The way the drums are beating in Washington in the lead-up to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit with President Barack Obama this week one could assume that it is as if for a ceremonial sacrificial occasion. And the message being sounded, from the top on down of the diplomatic hierarchy is: two-state solution. According to the solution’s premise Israel’s continued future existence and the security of its citizens are intrinsically bound up with the establishment of a Palestinian state. It stems from the formula ‘territories-for-peace’.

Many in Israel, and the electoral victory of the right-of-center parties, not to mention to almost complete elimination of the radical leftist camp, is proof, are confounded by this approach. In the first place, it has been tried many times since 1967. In fact, it was tried back in 1923, when the original area of the Mandate for Palestine was partitioned and a Saudi Arabian refugee, Abdallah bin al-Hussein, was invited by the British to become an Emir over the new creation of Transjordan. A second proposal of partition was raised in 1937 but was rejected by the Arabs.

A third time, on November 29, 1947, a two-state solution of one Jewish state and one Arab state to be formed on the territory west of the Jordan River, gone was the Gilad, was accepted by the Jews whereas the Arabs went to war to prevent that United Nations resolution. And they never stopped their hostilities in the form of terror activities of the fedayeen through to Fatah and on to Hamas including a 1967 war of aggression.

This historical litany is intended not as a lesson of what was but to highlight the reasons for what wasn’t: a Palestinian state. Is a state the goal of the Arabs residing in the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River? Or are their intentions solely negative: to seek ways and means to eliminate Israel? Does the current King Abdullah II have what to fear from a Palestinian state? Will any diplomatic progress along this route only bring Hamas closer to power and with that, a complete Islamic radicalization of the area leading to a breakdown in regional stability?

At the present, the only tangible result of Israel’s decision to disengage from Gaza in 2005, a previous ‘land for peace’ exercise in futility, was the surge to power of Hamas, increase in terror and the inevitable Israel military response in January. A similar Israeli withdrawal in Judea and Samaria will be much more dangerous given the topography of the land. All of Israel’s major population and industrial centers, from Hadera in the north to Gedera in the south, will be enticing targets for those who believe that Jews have no rights to live in their homes on either side of the former Green Line boundary. No fence can be built high enough to halt a Qassam or Grad missile.

The sub-text of the two-state solution is the expulsion of 300,000 Jews from their homes. Any reference to a similar fate for Israel’s Arabs, either a population exchange or the redrawing of the border so as to position major Arab towns in the future ‘Palestine’ is greeted with cries of racism. Jews, however, are excluded, it seems, from this moral debate. They are expendable. By exploiting semantic syllogism, - they live in “settlements”, not villages nor towns like Arabs do in Israel – they are stereotyped. Their presence, it is claimed, is “illegal” although they live in locations where Jews have always lived, except as a result of ethnic cleansing operations such as in Hebron in 1929 and Gush Etzion in 1948, and where they were promised by the League of Nations and the US Administration in 1924 to be able to live so as to reconstitute the Jewish national home.

At the present moment, “Palestine” has evolved over the past eight decades into four states. There is Israel and there is Jordan. Hamas controls Gaza and Fatah, for the time being, control Judea and Samaria. On January 27, 2009, Thomas Friedman suggested on this page that a five-state solution should be considered. Inflation is never a good idea. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that a two-state solution already exists. Jordan is the Islamic Arab fulfillment of local nationalist claims and Israel is the fulfillment of Jewish national claims. All that is left are arrangements of a political, cultural and economic character to assure the rights and expectation of both populations within that geographical delineation.

As the democratically elected leader of the republic of Israel, Mr. Netanyahu should expect no less a greeting, at least, than that President Obama extended to President Chavez and Fidel Castro. The tensions need not be so ominous.

What did you think of it?