‘Land for peace’ deal continues to reap bitter harvest

With Israel now on a war footing after Gaza-based terrorists rain down more rockets on the Jewish state, we can anticipate yet more bloodshed in the ongoing conflict.

It appears that patience in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has finally run out, with ferocious rioting on its southern border showing no sign of abating and a rocket destroying a home in the city of Beersheva. Now, residents from southern Israeli communities are taking to the streets to protest what they perceive as government failure to deal with the situation.¹

It is four years since the ‘Protective Edge’ engagement which severely blunted Hamas’ firepower. Now I hear that tanks are moving into position to launch a fresh attack on the terrorists, who have been firing rockets into Israel on a regular basis ever since the latter’s reluctant 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

That was when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon caved in to international pressure by agreeing to pull out as part of a ‘land for peace’ deal. And what peace did it bring? It only served to embolden Israel’s enemies all the more. They took advantage of what Arabs would generally perceive as weakness (i.e. negotiated compromise) by using the Palestinian-led enclave as a launch-pad for missiles to destroy Israel – or ‘wipe it off the map’, as their slogan goes.

Returning Refugees?

For several years following the 2014 war, the IDF kept a relatively low profile in a bid to contain the conflict while the Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted many rockets bound for Sderot and other southern Israeli towns. But back in spring this year, a new tactic was devised in the shape of the so-called ‘March of Return’, in which rioters have descended en masse on the border fence demanding ‘re-entry’ as refugees allegedly forced out of the country.

Their status as ‘refugees’, backed by the United Nations, is entirely bogus and based on the claim of descending from the 700,000 Arabs who were panicked into leaving Israel in 1948 by the surrounding Arab nations. Instead of Arabs and Jews living together and sharing the land as intended in the Balfour Declaration, these 700,000 left at the orders of Jordan, Egypt and Syria, who promised they would be able to return once the new-born Jewish state had been defeated – which they fully expected.

For several years following the 2014 war, the IDF kept a relatively low profile in a bid to contain the conflict – until spring of this year and the so-called ‘March of Return’.

Of course, that never happened. Since then, though Israel’s enemies could easily have absorbed these refugees into their combined vast territories, they have been cynically used as pawns in a sick political game designed to make Israel look like an uncaring bully. And yet a similar number of Jews, who had really been forced to leave Arab states at the same time, were quickly absorbed into the Jewish state with no fuss or bother.

Meanwhile generations of descendants of these unfortunate Arabs would subsequently claim not only to inherit refugee status – uniquely in the world – but also Palestinian nationality, though no such state or people existed in 1948. If anything, it was a case of stolen identity as it was the region’s Jews who were known as Palestinians at the time of the British Mandate.

The UN had in the meantime set up a body to look after the needs of these Arab ‘refugees’ (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency – UNRWA) at the cost of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in America and elsewhere. Thankfully, President Trump has the measure of this bogus body and has begun to cut US funding.

Terrorists Smell Blood

See Photo Credits.

Every Friday for the past seven months, when Jewish people are getting ready for their weekly Shabbat (Sabbath) day of rest, thousands of Gaza-based Palestinians have answered calls from terror group Hamas to put their lives on the line with violent protests. Tactics have included throwing Molotov cocktails, flying burning kites and balloons packed with explosives, and from time to time causing further mayhem by blasting holes in the fence and charging into Israeli territory uninvited.

Then they wonder why they get shot at by soldiers called to protect their citizens from waves of terror which have left many dead and caused considerable damage to crops and property. Hamas claims it as a ‘peaceful protest’ but this is yet another lie because the rioters are hired.

They smell blood – and the opportunity for ‘martyrdom’, or suicide. This is what has been drummed into them – through school education and the media – much as British children are brainwashed by LGBTQ+ propaganda. Israeli soldiers, by contrast, are taught to value life, based upon the Bible which teaches that life is sacred. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is among the Ten Commandments, the basic laws by which they live and conduct the nation’s affairs.

While Israeli soldiers have been taught to value life, Hamas’s ‘martyrs’ are brainwashed to value bloodshed and suicide.

Calling Evil Good

Brutality and dishonesty is a defining portrait of many of Israel’s enemies. Saudi Arabia, though currently an unofficial ally of the Jewish state due to their common enemy Iran, also fits this description, as you will no doubt have noticed from the shocking assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Though Khashoggi was himself ‘no angel’, being an Islamist sympathiser and fervently anti-Israel, the tangled web of deceit being weaved by the Saudi authorities desperately trying to cover their tracks is as farcical as it is tragic. Yet our political left-wingers would rather focus on the supposed injustices committed by tiny Israel while dissenters in neighbouring states face summary execution.

There are at least 30,000 political prisoners in Saudi, where torture chambers abound and where beheadings as well as crucifixions take place.² And yet we ingratiate ourselves with them. The Crown Prince, now under fire over the Khashoggi scandal was given the red carpet treatment in Britain earlier this year.

Mindful of all the injustices we are seeing, particularly in the Middle East, my wife and I were encouraged on our recent train journey to London to see Bible Society posters on the stations quoting the words of Isaiah: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (Isa 5:20).

References

1 World Israel News, 29 October 2018.

2 Daily Mail, 22 October 2018.