Yehonatan Pollard

Annexation of both Gaza and the Territories will provide us with a secure homeland from the river to the sea; the sooner we embrace this concept, the sooner our future, with G-D’s help, will be assured. Op-ed.

Ambassador David Friedman should be praised for his principled advocacy of Israeli sovereignty over the Territories. His courage to publicly defend our G-d given right to these Lands is truly a breath of diplomatic “fresh air.” However, as constructive as Ambassador Friedman’s idea seems to be, it simply won’t work. Why do I say this? Because the “genie” of Palestinian statehood from “the river to the sea” is out of the bottle and no amount of good faith negotiations or even unilateral moves on our part is going to put it back into the poison-filled bottle from which it emerged.

We all know that decades of Palestinian Authority (PA) brainwashing of their citizens has created an expectation of independence based on the destruction of Israel. And we’d be fooling ourselves to think that the so-called “Palestinians” can somehow be reasoned with to accept something less than full statehood, even if it involved a capital in East Jerusalem, the forced removal of 500,000 Israelis from the Territories and the return of millions of fake refugees to Israel proper.

This means that any deal arranged with the PA for something less than a sovereign state covering the entire Land of Israel, will simply be seen as just one more step on the road to Israel’s eventual disappearance. The bottom line, then, is that the Palestinians will not accept anything less than the total destruction of Israel. And this is not my conclusion. All the scientific polling of the Palestinians indicates that this is the case. So, even in the event that Ambassador Friedman’s idea were to be implemented, our war with the Palestinians will continue. And no amount of material improvements to their lives is going to change the minds of the Palestinians. They’ve tasted Jewish blood and they want more - much more.

Of course, part of their belligerency is the result of our own inexplicable refusal to take rightful possession of our sacred homeland. Indeed, the more time passes, the more the Palestinians and their international allies believe that the Land actually belongs exclusively to them and that WE are the illegal occupiers who must be expelled. Certainly, the disgraceful refusal of both our military and political leaders to decisively stamp out Arab violence in the Territories has only convinced them that terror is a winning card. I mean, we can’t even bring ourselves to hold the PA accountable for their “pay for slay” policy, which subsidizes the murder of Jews! How pathetic is that?

This is why I believe that nothing short of the wholesale transfer of the Palestinians to Jordan is going to provide us with a rational solution to the “Palestinian problem.” And contrary to what certain leftist pundits believe, population transfers have occurred many times in history. Recent examples of this include the expulsion of 11 million ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe at the end of World War 2, and the deportation of over 700,000 Jews from Arab lands in the wake of Israel’s successful War of Independence. And if you look at the alternatives that may have befallen these displaced peoples, their transfer to welcoming countries was actually the most humane outcome that could have occurred.

That the Hashemites, a foreign tribe imported by the British from Saudi Arabia, don’t want any more Palestinians, is perfectly clear. I fully appreciate that they see the Palestinians currently residing in Jordan, in particular, as a mortal threat, who must be ruthlessly contained. Indeed, the Hashemites remember all too well Black September, when, in 1970, King Hussein slaughtered 20,000 Palestinians who he associated with the PLO’s attempt to overthrow him. However, objectively speaking, Jordan is a corrupt, economic basket case that is only one bullet away from an Islamist takeover. That this is a certain eventuality is regarded as a given by most security analysts. But even if the Hashemites were to be overthrown and a radical Palestinian state were to arise in their place, it wouldn’t be such a disaster for us. From my perspective, we would actually be given the golden opportunity to correct the illegal division of the Mandate which the British carried out in 1920.

It is an indisputable fact that the British actually created what eventually became a Palestinian state in 1920 called “Trans Jordan,” involving over 70% of the Mandate. This area had been originally assigned by the international community to us and the British had absolutely no right to give it away to anyone else. It’s time, therefore, that we finally recognize the inexcusable crime committed by the British, and transfer the Palestinians to an area unilaterally set aside for someone other than Jews by the Colonial Office. And if the Palestinians do turn Jordan into a threat to our eastern front, which is likely, we will then be given the opportunity to finish our war with the them once and for all in a way that will permanently deposit them in the dustbin of history. In the meantime, annexation of both Gaza and the Territories will provide us with a secure homeland from the river to the sea. The sooner we embrace this concept, the sooner our future, with G-D’s help, will be assured.