lurid.org

"All British officials tend to become pro-Arab, or, perhaps, more accurately
anti-Jew," wrote Sir John Hope-Simpson in the 1920s wrapping up a stint in
the British Mandate of Palestine. "Personally, I can quite well understand
this trait. The helplessness of the fellah appeals to the British official.
The offensive assertion of the Jewish immigrant is, on the other hand,
repellent." Progressive humanitarianism, as much as old-school colonialism,
prefers its clientele "helpless," and, despite Iranian weaponry and Iraqi
money and the human sacrifice of its schoolchildren, the Palestinians have
been masters at selling their "helplessness" to the West.

Odd, isn't it? The Americans are routinely accused of being (in Pat
Buchanan's phrase) Israel's amen corner. But Washington is at least prepared
to offer the odd, qualified criticism of Sharon. The rest of the world, by
contrast, is happy to parrot Yasser's talking points without modifying a
single semi-colon. In the last month, I've found as many Jew-haters on the
Continent as in the Middle East, but the difference is that the Arabs are
fierce in their hatred, no matter how contorted their arguments, while the
Europeans are lazy, off- hand Jew-haters -- they don't need arguments,
they're happy to let the Arabs supply the script. Thus, the extraordinary
resolution this week by the UN Human Rights Commission which accuses Israel
of many and varied human rights violations, makes no mention of suicide
bombers, and endorses the movement for a Palestinian state by "all available
means, including armed struggle" -- i.e., terrorism. The resolution could
have been drafted by the Arab League or the PLO. Forty of the 53 nations on
the Commission approved it, including six EU members: Austria, Belgium,
France, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. Only five countries could summon the
will to vote against: Britain, Canada, Germany, the Czech Republic and
Guatemala. (The U.S. is not a member of the HRC, having been kicked off by a
coalition of Euro-Arab schemers.)

This is only the most extreme example of how the less sense the Arabs make
the more the debate is framed in their terms. For all the tedious bleating
of the Euroninnies, what Israel is doing is perfectly legal. Even if you
sincerely believe that "Chairman" Arafat is entirely blameless when it comes
to the suicide bombers, when a neighbouring jurisdiction is the base for
hostile incursions, a sovereign state has the right of hot pursuit. Britain
has certainly availed herself of this internationally recognized principle:
In the 19th century, when the Fenians launched raids on Canada from upstate
New York, the British thought nothing of infringing American sovereignty to
hit back -- and Washington accepted they were entitled to do so. But the
rights every other sovereign state takes for granted are denied to Israel.
"The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are
forbidden to the Jews," wrote America's great longshoreman philosopher Eric
Hoffer after the 1967 war. "Other nations drive out thousands, even millions
of people and there is no refugee problem ... But everyone insists that
Israel must take back every single Arab ... Other nations when victorious on
the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must
sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in
this world." Thus, the massive population displacements in Europe at the end
of the Second World War are forever, but those in Palestine a mere three
years later must be corrected and reversed. On the Continent, losing wars
comes with a territorial price: The Germans aren't going to be back in
Danzig any time soon. But, in the Middle East, no matter how often the Arabs
attack Israel and lose, their claims to their lost territory manage to be
both inviolable but endlessly transferable.

So even the so-called "two-state solution" subscribes to an Arafatist view
of the situation. Creating yet another fetid Arab dictatorship in the West
Bank would be, technically, a "three-state solution" and, indeed, a second
Palestinian state, Jordan, whose population has always been majority
Palestinian. It was created in the original "two-state settlement" 80 years
ago, when the British partitioned their new Mandate of Palestine, carving
off the western three-quarters into a territory called "Transjordan" and
keeping the surviving eastern quarter under the name "Palestine." They did
this for two reasons: First, they needed to stop one of the Hashemite boys,
Abdullah, from marching on Syria and the best they could come up with was to
halt him in Amman and suggest he serve as interim governor; but secondly,
Churchill, as Colonial Secretary, thought the fairest way to fulfill
Britain's pledges to both Arabs and Jews during the Great War was by
confining Zionists to a Jewish National Home west of the Jordan and creating
a separate Arab entity in Palestine east of the Jordan. The only thing he
got wrong was the names: If instead of inventing the designation
"Transjordan," he'd just called the eastern territory "Palestine" and the
west "Israel" (or "Judah"), the Arafatist claim would be a much tougher
sell.

The Zionists have been trading "land for peace" ever since the Great War,
and the result is they've got hardly any land and less peace than ever
before. As early as 1921, Chaim Weizmann wrote to Churchill protesting the
ever shrinking borders of the potential Jewish homeland. To the north,
Britain had surrendered traditionally Palestinian land to France in fixing
the Mandate's border with Lebanon and Syria and, by giving the eastern
three-quarters to Abdullah, had removed the rich fields of Gilead, Moab and
Edom. The 1947 UN Partition took more land -- a partition of the previous
partition -- but the Zionists accepted it. In 1993, Oslo was the biggest
gamble yet, the creation of a mini-fiefdom for their bloodiest enemy. The
"Palestinian Authority" was an unlikely bet for a state but, from Arafat's
point of view, it would make an ideal launch-point from which to kill Jews
in the very heart of their tiny sliver of territory.

Other than that, what's the point? I'm sure the Middle East can always use
another squalid corrupt dictatorship, but at the very least it ought to be a
viable squalid corrupt dictatorship. An Arafatist squat on the West Bank and
Gaza would be insufficient. If Israel is, to the French, a "shitty little
country," this would be littler and shittier. Therefore, Arafat would seek
to augment it with territory from either west or east, Israel or Jordan. The
likelihood is that he'd be able to destabilize Jordan far more quickly than
he could destroy Israel. If it's a choice between an Arafat sewer straddling
the Jordan River or the Hashemites, I know which I'd prefer.

Israel should take what it needs of the West Bank for a buffer, round up
every terrorist it can, and announce that the Jordanians are welcome to
what's left. If King Abdullah doesn't want it and chooses to call in the UN
blue helmets in perpetuity, so be it. But the last eight years should have
taught Israel that it cannot live within its 1967 borders next to a thug
statelet whose sole purpose is to liquidate it. The Arabs have succeeded in
luring the West into their bizarro alternative universe, where land lost by
a foolish king is mysteriously transformed into the personal property of a
terrorist organization, where the "armed struggle" of wired schoolgirls is
UN- approved, and where the "right to exist" is something to be negotiated.
Fantasy land is fun, but we've encouraged the Arabs in their peculiar
dementias for too long. It's time to get real.