Countdown to Disengagement

We are now two months in advance of the implementation of the pullout from Gaza, designed by Ariel Sharon and his ministers. So, before the beginning of the summer of disengagement, here is my analysis of the goals and consequences of the plan, that I strongly and sadly support.

The Sharon plan is no more than a revival of Barak´s post-intifada long-term strategy: the maximum-Jews/minimum-Arabs framework, based on total isolation from the big Palestinian population centers and the building of a wall between proper Israel and the territories, including inside the heavily populated settlement blocs in the West Bank and leaving outside no Jewish population at all. The military occupation will be kept before the final status agreement but the settlement project will be frozen inside the Wall and will advance outside. After the Arafat-driven collapse of Camp David II peace negotiations, Barak´s political capital was exactly zero, so his long term strategy fell into oblivion, up to the point when Sharon decided to come back into the only realistic short term approach to the management (not resolution) of the Israel-Arab conflict.

The first misunderstanding about disengagement is related to its ends. The disengagement is not a part of the peace process, nor a part of the failed Quartet’s Road Map. Disengagement is a military move, related to a more general military-demographic strategy, so it shouldn’t be understood in political terms. It can lead to politics, but its success doesn’t depend on Palestinian partnership. The time for politics has been over since 2000 revival of genocidal Islamo-fascism. Mazen is no more than a weakened Arafat.

On political terms, the disengagement will have costs. After its perceived victory over Israel, the Palestinian fascists will try to go further in their terrorist strategy, and Hamas will be strengthened by the total control of the Gaza Strip. Mazen knows that Hamas is no longer the military puppet of Fatath, and he has patriotically (no irony here) accepted his role as the diplomatic branch of Hamas.

But the Lebanon experience has taught the Israelis that borders can be defended against terrorism. Don’t make a mistake here: walls are a classic development in all conflicts between civilization and barbarism: the Chinese, the Romans, the French in 1940 and over all, the Byzantines have fought for years against an fanatic or powerful barbarian raising walls and, as you can check in the latter examples, the result has been always total defeat. Walls don’t win wars. But Israel is not building a military wall and IDF is still a mobile army. This wall is built to prevent infiltration, both for terror and immigration.

As a general rule, coexistence of a modern Muslim majority with a civilized people is not sustainable. In Western Europe, the Muslims have expanded their population massively, creating a ghetto culture, in such a way that there are several hundred Muslim enclaves on France where sharia rules de facto. Of course there are encouraging signs of Muslim youths becoming clearly westernized, but at the moment the ability of Muslims to go for a secular and individualist lifestyle remains an open issue. Being a minority, we cannot say Muslims are a problem, but we should recognize that they are a risk.

Being a majority, the idea that Arabs and Jews can share the land is utopical and self-defective. As long as Israel is part of the Western civilization, as long as the work-and-personal-freedom ethics is the moral basis of the Jewish people, the Israelis will be unable to share a territory with the barbarism of modern Islam. There is no possibility that the abyss of repression, misogyny and hierarchical hysteria that modern Islam means, can live side by side with a free and rich society; daily abuse, social disorder and political extremism are the only possible result of the mix. As a result, pushing step by step in form of mafias and using their increasing political power, the Arabs will be able to move the Jewish population in the same way as the Muslim Lebanese have been able to get rid of the Christians. Perhaps the ultra-orthodox are the only ones that can stand against the Muslims in this daily nightmare that Israel would became under the binational state. Places as Ashkelon are good pieces of evidence to proof the impossibility of multiculturalism when barbarians are a majority. The spillovers of modern Islam are, at the moment, unaffordable. The organic violence of a modern Islamic society can only be deterred by borders. These two peoples, in the current state of their development should be separated. Nobody wants Arab neighbors. Specially if they are a ruling majority.
In Gaza, Judea and Samaria, the Arab and Jewish communities are living side by side, in a territorial mixture, with no borders and no option for clear and lasting separation. If Israel includes Hebron, it will have to include Ramallah; if it includes Gush Katif, Gaza will be included too. And Gaza and Ramallah are inhabited lands, with inhabitants YOU DON´T WANNA LIVE WITH, and you can’t get rid of.

So, there is not choice for Israel; in the long run, the Great Israel project will became an apartheid society or an Arab state. The few thousand Jews living among a few millions of Arabs are a link to the Arab population. So they are a threat for Jewish (or even civilized) life in Israel. Israel is disengaging not from Gaza, but from the Arabs. Do you know any way to disengage from the Arabs without disengaging from Gaza?

After disengagement, life in Gaza will become even worse than it is now; a Hamastan with strict and revolutionary Islamism will be the outcome of the civil war that will develop after the end of occupation. The Islamist will try to use their new operational basis to fight against Israel. They will try, but once there is not Netzarim or Gush Katif, their available targets will be significantly reduced. The plan will increase their willingness to keep on terror, but it will reduce their ability to carry out the attacks. And with a clear and territorial enemy, retaliation becomes more acceptable. More marketable. If they keep the war after withdrawal, then reprisals are no longer part of occupation, but part of war. Hezbollah stays in control of Southern Lebanon, but now they have not easy targets, but difficult borders, and they rule a country where they have territorial interests, which makes deterrence possible.

In this game between organic barbarism and civilization, borders are the optimal strategy of civilized peoples. The superior Israeli technology and the ability for targeted retaliation and conventional war give the Israelis advantage in any conflict where territory is clear. Infiltration, organic violence, perversion of democracy, and raw massive reproduction are the weapons of the enemy. So keep them away and they became a hopeless crowd of hungry fanatics. Let them approach, and you will become a dhimmini or an exiled in one generation.
Gaza plan cannot be the end. The wall should be finished as soon as possible. Some land swaps should be enforced in the borders of the West Bank. Some mutual Arab and Jewish transfers should be implemented. The big blocs will remain on Israel. The rest should be left. And, of course, occupation shouldn’t finish without a final treaty. It is a military buffer and a bargaining chip. With clear borders, and no settlements beyond, the Israelis and Palestinians can go for negotiations. No interest will remain on Israel to keep the West Bank and no hope will be left to Palestinians once terror becomes impossible. So incentives for faithful negotiations will be finally established.

Peace is never built on good intentions but on solid interests. So the real peace process should begin before the nominal one, creating the necessary conditions and incentives. This is the historical job of Ariel Sharon, and so far, he is performing admirably.

PD.- He escrito este post pensando en la blogesfera anglo-parlante judía, así que espero que me disculpeis este cambio de idioma, que en todo caso es transitorio.