The Little Nation that Could

By: Steve Huston

By Chris Johnson

Last week, our president, Barack Obama, announced his position on the seemingly eternal controversy about the relationship of Israel and Palestine. The president shocked America’s greatest ally in the Middle East by calling for the little country to relinquish large portions of its land to the Palestinians by reverting to the nation’s boundaries from 1967.

There has been a lot of discussion and justified outrage from the Jewish people and their friends in the United States. The prime minister of Israel calls those lines “indefensible,” explaining that within those limits, Israel would in some places be only 8 miles wide. If Israel receded to her 1967 boundaries, hundreds of thousands of Jewish citizens would be left defenseless beyond the limits of their country.

While there has been plenty of discussion on what that would mean for Israel, there has been little explanation of exactly how Israel swelled beyond the 1967 boundaries in the first place – which should be a very important part of this discussion.

Israel formally became a nation state in 1948, with the United States being the first to recognize her as such. From that time on, Israel encountered extreme resistance and hostility from her Arab neighbors. At that point, however, Israel controlled neither the Gaze strip, nor the West Bank, including East Jerusalem – the two pieces of land known as the Palestinian Territories. In fact, no nation had official control of these lands. The region known as Palestine, from 1948 to 1967, was squabbled over by the Jordanians and the Egyptians.

In 1963, the Arab League – which then consisted of 13 countries – gave birth to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), a group dedicated to ridding the Palestinian region of Jews and creating a recognized Palestinian state, which had never before existed. Shortly after its creation, the PLO began to splinter into various factions, most notably Fatah and Hamas. All PLO factions had in common the goal of destroying the Israeli state.

At this time, Israel came under attack both by the PLO, which conducted guerilla attacks on Jewish civilians, and the Syrians, who had taken offense to a water pipeline which piped water from the Jordan River to supply Israel. Syria bombarded Jewish farms and villages from the “Golan Heights,” which rose 3,000 feet above Bethlehem.

As Israel absorbed vicious attacks from these sources, Egypt began to express violent aspirations as well.

Egypt’s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, said the following between 1965 and 1967:

“Our aim is the full restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people. In other words, we aim at the destruction of the State of Israel. The immediate aim: perfection of Arab military might. The national aim: the eradication of Israel.”

“Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight . . .”

“We will not accept any … coexistence with Israel. … Today the issue is not the establishment of peace between the Arab states and Israel …. The war with Israel is in effect since 1948.”

In May of 1967, Egypt’s Nasser began to escalate the tension between Israel and the Arab world.

Egyptian troops began to gather in Sinai near the border of Israel on May 15. The next day, Nasser asked UN Secretary General Thant to recall the United Nations Emergency Force which had served as a buffer between Israeli and Egyptian troops. Thant complied.

The Voice of the Arabs radio stationed consequently broadcast the following message.

“As of today, there no longer exists an international emergency force to protect Israel. We shall exercise patience no more. We shall not complain any more to the UN about Israel. The sole method we shall apply against Israel is total war, which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence.”

6 days later, on the 22nd, Egypt imposed a blockade on Israeli shipping through the Gulf of Aquaba. This cut off Israeli trade with India as well as the majority of its oil supply from Iran.

By June 4, Egypt’s hostile alliance against Israel consisted of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan. 465,000 troops, 2800 tanks, and 800 aircraft hedged sat ready for battle on the borders of Israel.

Nasser announced on May 30th, “The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel . . . . to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not declarations.”

It was in this context that Israel made the “gutsy” decision to launch a preemptive aerial attack. On June 5th, 200 fighters – essentially the entire Israeli Air Force – set out to bomb Egyptian airfields, then the Jordanians’, and finally the Syrians’. By the end of the day, Egypt and her allies’ air support consisted of only half the Syrian air force.

The subsequent ground battles between Israel and her enemies resulted in the capture, by Israel, of Gaza and the West Bank. These battles are described in brilliant detail at sixdaywar.org, and they really are the stories that legends are made of. Israel even built wooden tanks to divert the enemy.

The bottom line is that Israel did not come to control her lands through aggression, but through defense.

On November 22, 1967, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 242 the purpose of which was to establish a “peaceful and accepted settlement.”

This resolution has often been the bat with which Israel has been beaten over the head for their control of the West Bank and it requires “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”

According to the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise’s (AICE) jewishvirtuallibrary.org, the phrase “withdrawal of all Israeli armed forces etc.” is deliberately not used.

“The Security Council did not say Israel must withdraw from “all the” territories occupied after the Six-Day war. This was quite deliberate. The Soviet delegate wanted the inclusion of those words and said that their exclusion meant “that part of these territories can remain in Israeli hands.” The Arab states pushed for the word “all” to be included, but this was rejected. They nevertheless asserted that they would read the resolution as if it included the word “all.” The British Ambassador who drafted the approved resolution, Lord Caradon, declared after the vote: “It is only the resolution that will bind us, and we regard its wording as clear.”

In fact Lord Caradon and others spoke to the very issue of the 1967 lines which Barack Obama called for in his speech last week.

“This literal interpretation was repeatedly declared to be the correct one by those involved in drafting the resolution. On October 29, 1969, for example, the British Foreign Secretary told the House of Commons the withdrawal envisaged by the resolution would not be from ‘all the territories.’ When asked to explain the British position later, Lord Caradon said: ‘It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial.’

Similarly, Amb. Goldberg explained: ‘The notable omissions-which were not accidental-in regard to withdrawal are the words ‘the’ or ‘all’ and ‘the June 5, 1967 lines‘….the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal.’

The history of the 1967 lines is crucial. It shows the deadly threat which Israel faces. Israel’s enemies are gaining power or, in some cases, have gotten stronger. Hamas and Fatah – two groups founded on the idea that Israel has no right to exist -  now jointly govern the Palestinian people, who have simmered their whole lives in hatred of Israel. Egypt seems perilously close to falling into the control of the Muslim Brotherhood – a terrorist organization dedicated to removal of Israel. There are reports that the rebels in Libya are led by Al Quaeda – another terror organization with the same goals as the Muslim Brotherhood . Indeed, Islamists who hold considerable sway throughout the Middle East consider the destruction of Jews as an inherent tenant of Islam.

The fact is that the 1967 lines have already been proven to be indefensible for Israel. The only reason that Israel has expanded is that Israel was attacked. Were those not dangerous boundaries for the already tiny country, those boundaries would still be in place.

America actually has a close, though not perfect, parallel to Israel’s position in her own history. After the end of the French and Indian War, the American colonies, under the British flag and with the help of the British Army, had more than tripled the size of their territory.

Imagine if, after we have built cities and homes all across the country, the United Nations stepped in and insisted we pull back our borders to pre-1763 lines and give the Native Americans everything west of the Mississippi.

That is essentially what the president is telling Israel to do, though obviously on a much smaller scale.

Of course, there is also the fact that no nation doubts America’s right to exist, while many in the Muslim world have never recognized Israel’s right to exist.

In his speech, Barack Obama sought to be “the adult in the room” with two “children ” – Israel and Palestine. The problem is that rather than move towards peace, the president made both sides mad at him.

The Palestinians will not accept criticism from America. Anything less than our total support will be perceived as an affront. Here is a comment by a Hamas columnist on the guardian.co.uk website, a prominent British news source.

“In his address on US policy in the Middle East, President Obama called for democracy for the entire region except Palestine. Instead of welcoming our reconciliation agreement with Fatah, he pronounced America’s deep reservations and anxiety; in total disregard for the aspirations of the Palestinian people. Someone should remind him that Hamas gained the majority in the last fair democratic elections in Palestine. There can be no legitimate Palestinian representation without Hamas.”

He went on to say that Obama calling for the two sides to agree on changes to the 1967 lines was going too far.

“If President Obama’s speech on Middle East policy was bad, his address to the AIPAC conference three days later was appalling. He declared his peace plan meant to ‘negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967.'”

The two positions are so far apart that America must choose a side if we are going to be

involved. Past presidents have picked Israel’s side. Why are we asking her to commit suicide?

Israel is the lone bastion of republican government and civility in the middle east, and it is surrounded on all sides by a people who are told by their religion that Israel has no right to exist.

America must stand with Israel.

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