HEY NPR...THERE'S A THIRD ALTERNATIVE

HEY NPR...THERE'S A THIRD ALTERNATIVE

By Gerald A. Honigman
October 22, 2003

I was driving home from work on October 20th when I was treated to some more National Public Radio wisdom. Keep in mind, the American taxpayer funds much of this programming.

The show was about the Arab-Israeli conflict and reflected NPR's usual anti-Israel slant. This time the topic was about growing frustration on the Arab side regarding the improbability of another viable Arab state in Palestine arising any time soon. Of course, no mention was given to why that second state would not likely emerge: the rejectionist mentality of the Arab side for a viable Jewish neighbor.

So the issue of an alternative solution became the focus of the program. Since Arabs could not get everything that they want in this proposed second Arab state (compromise is evidently not in the Arab vocabulary), the focus of the show turned to a discussion of the creation of one binational state for Jews and Arabs instead. At no time did the fact that Arabs had rejected a solution a few years earlier which would have given them almost everything they claim they wanted short of Israel agreeing to slit its own throat come out in the program.

The discussion went like this: Since the sole miniscule state of the Jews (my own description) won't consent to giving up on its own minimal security needs (most nations demand far more) so that a 23rd Arab nation can be born, the soaring Arab birth rate would insure that the Jews would be overwhelmed in any democratic binational endeavor. Jews were then interviewed about their own feelings regarding this proposed alternative, and Israel, of course, was the "heavy" for not consenting to allowing Arabs to have all that they want in the disputed territories.

Now what I'm about to say next is really nothing new. Indeed, not much "new" has been written about this conflict for decades...just rehashed old arguments and positions.

What was missing from NPR's program, to no real surprise, was the obvious third alternative. The producers at NPR are not dummies, so the omission was deliberate....and so far worse.

After the Paris Peace Conference closing World War I, Great Britain was awarded its share of the spoils of the former Ottoman Turkish Empire. The Turks had ruled the Middle East and North Africa for some four centuries. The Brits' share largely consisted of Mandates for Palestine and Mesopotamia. The borders of Palestine Britain received on April 25, 1920 included lands which are now Israel, Jordan, and all unapportioned territories in between as well.

But these were complex times of multiple promises to competing national groups. Britain's chief allies in the area were the Hashemites of Arabia, Sheriff Hussein and his sons, Emirs Abdullah and Feisal (remember the movie Lawrence of Arabia?). The Hashemites were in the process of getting their own derrieres booted out of the Arabian Peninsula by the rival clan of Ibn Saud...hence, Saudi Arabia today.

The French were also grabbing their share of the spoils. Their moves into Syria and Lebanon cut into the Hashemites' "Greater Syria" schemes. So now, to appease the Hashemites, the British backed off of promises to the Kurds in oil rich Mesopotamia--Hashemite Arab Iraq being created instead--and, in 1922, handed over some 80% of Mandatory Palestine to another Hashemite prince, creating the purely Arab Emirate of Transjordan and making it totally off limits to Jews.

While mention is often made to the largely "Palestinian" Arab population of Jordan, the hows and whys of this fact seldom seem to register with journalists and others involved in such discussions.

And so, the third alternative...

It's obvious that in the small area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, there's not a heck of a lot of room. The Jordan River was the obvious natural boundary of the Jewish State if Palestine was to be divided between Jewish and Arab nationalisms and Arabs had already received the lion's share of the original 1920 borders...all the land east of the River. When arriving at other such compromise solutions, such as that which created Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, population exchanges were frequently part of the package...not a "perfect" solution by any means, but one which allowed each party an honorable outcome. For every Arab who eventually became a refugee because of the Arabs' own total rejection of a Jewish state regardless of size, there was a Jewish refugee who fled Arab lands...but without the choice of some two dozen other potential states to choose from.

So, for Israel to remain viable in the face of a totally rejectionist enemy whose idea of "peace," in the Arabs' own words, is only a temporary "Trojan Horse" truce designed to further a "destruction in stages" agenda, Israel cannot cave in to all the demands Arabs make regarding the disputed territories. Those lands were not lands apportioned solely to Arabs by the Mandate...so a compromise solution must be found whereby Israel gains a bit more essential strategic high ground depth while not ruling over millions of Arabs. It will never return to its former 9-mile wide, armistice/Auschwitz line existence.

Thus, the proposed 23rd Arab state and second Arab one in Palestine will have to be very small. It's desires cannot displace the needs of the sole state of the Jews it seeks to replace, not live side by side with.

The real solution, once popular but now never mentioned, lies with Jordan, since the latter encompasses 80% of the original land to begin with, and the majority population is already "Palestinian" (however you define it...many Arabs entered the Mandate from other surrounding states). So, if a compromise with Israel was to occur regarding the West Bank/Judea and Samaria with Jordan, the latter emergent Jordanian-Palestinian State would still be a much larger entity while granting Israel the minimal security adjustments it needs in the area as well.

This, of course, is never brought up these days--certainly not on NPR-- for fear of destabilizing the Hashemite rulers, who have indeed proven to be reasonable neighbors of late to Israel. It's worth recalling that it was Israel who saved Jordan from a joint Syrian-PLO attempt at the overthrow of the Hashemites in 1970.

But isn't it interesting (no, sickening) that NPR would pursue the binational alternative in its program regarding Arabs and Jews, but totally ignore the far more sensible creation of a binational Arab-Arab state in Jordan/Palestine. It's thus "legitimate" to discuss undermining the sole state of a millennially-persecuted people who finally lived to see the resurrection of their nation, but not so to discuss a solution which would merely bring together different elements within the same Arab family. Israel's Jews also come from many different lands, but that didn't mean that they expected the creation of dozens of individual Jewish states...and at the expense of everyone else.

NPR...know who not to send your money to.

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