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Sunday, April 11, 2010

"WEST BANK OCCUPATION" -- THE DIFFERENCE TODAY COMPARED TO 1967.

IT IS ALMOST 43 YEARS NOW SINCE THE "SIX DAY WAR", AND 1407 DAYS SINCE GILAD SHALIT WAS KIDNAPPED. HOW ARE THESE EVENTS RELATED OR UNRELATED?

In 1967 Israel "occupied" the "West Bank" [Judea-Samaria] as a result of the famous "SIX-DAY WAR". It was then that Israel also occupied the Golan Heights (well into Syria), Southern Lebanon, and the Sinai.

As of today, most of the Golan has already been returned to Syria in fruitless peace efforts; with the exception of the Sheva Farms, all of Southern Lebanon has been returned to Lebanon, again with no peace. Neither Syria nor Lebanon acknowledges Israel nor Israel's existential right. All of the Sinai has been retuned to Egypt as part of a peace agreement that is a very cold peace, "warmed up" perhaps by Egypt's "failure" to successfully patrol the Egypt-Gaza border or to identify and destroy smuggler tunnels large enough to bring automobiles into Gaza. Israel has a similar peace with Jordan.

Contemporary to Israel's achievement of statehood, Jordan overran and occupied Judea-Samaria, then the de facto homeland of Palestinian Arabs. Post 1967 it was Israel's expectation that Israel would aid the Palestinian Arabs in creating a Palestinian Arab State, just as the UN had hoped for in 1947. If Israel were to leave Judea-Samaria ensuing the 1967 military victory, then a political vacuum would have existed in that territory, allowing Jordan to re-occupy, and exposing Israel again to greater military vulnerability.

If the Palestinian Arabs had been amenable to recognizing Israel's right to exist, there would have been a Palestinian Arab State then and there in Judea-Samaria. It is not Israel's fault that terror organizations such as Black September and the PLO of Yassir Arafat would not dance, instead choosing to wage decades of war and terror on Israel with an eye to the total destruction of the Jewish State. The world has no excuse for failing to remember this, and neither does Israel.

By now Israel should have annexed Judea-Samaria.

By now Israel should have freed Gilad Shalit.