The Four State Solution
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has made clear that the upcoming Annapolis summit will be a step on the road to a two state solution to the conflict in the Middle East. The absurdity of this becomes clear when one considers that there are already four de-facto Palestinian States. They are the State of Jordan, the Palestinian Authority controlled state of Palestine in Judea and Samaria, the Hamas ruled Palestinian state of Gaza and Israel.
"Your newspaper frequently uses the term "Palestinian" to describe a section of the Middle East population which is Arab, to differentiate it from Israeli Jews. As the holder of a Palestinian Identity Card and a Certificate of Discharge from a Palestinian Unit of the British army, I find this practice annoying and certainly untrue..."The myth of a Palestinian identity separate from that of the Jews was created for tactical reasons. Zuheir Mohsein, then a member of the Supreme Council of the PLO told an interviewer of the Dutch Daily Trouw in 1977 that:"Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity is there only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new expedient to continue the fight against Zionism and for Arab unity."
The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan."
"Jordan is linked to Palestine by a national relationship and a national unity forged by history and culture from earliest times. The creation of one political entity in East Jordan and another in Palestine would have no basis either in legality or as to the elements universally accepted as fundamental to a political entity."
"This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."
[A]s statesmen and activists worldwide loudly proclaim their commitment to establishing the sovereign State of Palestine, they miss the fact that Palestine exists. And it is a nightmare. .. Children are woken up in the middle of the night and murdered in front of their parents. Worshipers in mosques are gunned down by terrorists who attend competing mosques... women are stripped naked and forced to march in the streets to humiliate their husbands. Ambulances are stopped on the way to hospitals and wounded are shot in cold blood. Terrorists enter operating rooms in hospitals and unplug patients from life-support machines... Christians are persecuted, robbed and beaten in what can only be viewed as a systematic campaign to end the Christian presence in places like Bethlehem.
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice gave a speech in which she said:
The belief that such a state is vital for American interests stems from the belief that Arab anger at the United States is rooted in the lack of such a state, an absurd belief when one considers how many Palestinian and other states they already have."...the United States sees the establishment of a Palestinian state, a two-state solution, as absolutely essential to the future of not just Palestinians and Israelis but also to the Middle East and, indeed, to American interests."
Arab anger is proportional to the Arab perception that anger will get them what they want. Forcing Israel to make concessions in response to Arab demands will simply increase their demands.
Making Israel indefensible will not dissipate Arab anger; on the contrary, the scent of victory will enrage the Arabs the way it did in 1967 and 1948. The Bush Administration needs to remember the words of Ronald Reagan, "Peace through strength". The path to war in the Middle East is through weakness, the path to peace in the Middle East is through strength.