Rice and "Bantustan"... Bantustan Nights

Bantustan Nights

By Gerald A. Honigman

I've spent too many nights thinking about this stuff. But these are indeed troubling times...

At press conferences and other public presentations, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other State Department spokesmen increasingly emphasize the need for the emergence of a viable, contiguous Palestinian State. They do this with full knowledge that in order to accomplish this, the security of the sole, tiny state of the Jews must indeed be seriously compromised. And they do this also knowing full well that U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, passed in the aftermath of the June '67 War, promised that Israel's rump state status would at long last be addressed with the creation of secure and recognized borders to replace its vulnerable 1949 armistice lines.

Most of the settlements Israel established on the disputed--not purely Arab--lands (where Jews have thousands of years of history and owned property until they were massacred by Arabs in the 1920s and '30s) were set up in the very areas Israel would need to create the buffers envisioned by 242...the very same buffers now deliberately being ignored by Rice and her crew.

I earlier had thought that the good doctor knew better and had what it took to resist the traditional anti-Israel bias of most of her Foggy colleagues. Unfortunately, it looks like I was wrong. It was reported by even the left wing press (Ha'aretz) that her recent visit to the Sharon ranch was a nightmare.

Condy evidently abruptly made one demand after the other (including insisting that Israel continue to arm the P.A. as it had done before), totally whitewashed Abbas, and expects that Israel will simply tolerate being continuously victimized by Arabs with minimal-to-no response. And it looks like her boss has flipflopped here as well...undoubtedly, since she couldn't proceed on her own on such matters.

Dubya seems to be singing quite a different tune than before his last re-election campaign. Think about his April 2004, well-publicized statement, for example, about Israel not having to return to its 1949 armistice line existence...his own words, not mine. Now contrast that with his statement a year later in which he claimed that Israel must get permission from Arabs for any deviation from those lines. The latter don't accept a 9-mile wide Israel, let alone anything bigger.

Yet, both President Bush and former Secretary of State Powell stressed these same issues at earlier roadmap summits: the emerging 22nd Arab state--second, not first, Arab one to be created within the borders of mandatory Palestine as Britain received it on April 25, 1920--was to be no bantustan. The Brits created the first one, (Trans)Jordan, on the lion's share (some 80% of the total area) in 1922. So much for the Arab claim that the Jews got all of Palestine.

Many have repeated these same points in voicing concerns that Israel's security fence, for example (being built to keep Arabs from deliberately blowing up Jewish innocents), does not exactly follow the "green line" which demarcated Israel's pre-'67, 9-mile wide armistice line existence. The original "Bantustan" was a disconnected entity created for blacks under the apartheid regime in South Africa and no substitute for a real state.

Before we proceed any further, it would be most useful to first find a regional map of the Middle East and North Africa. Next, try to find Israel without the aid of a magnifying glass. If you only have access to a map of the world, better switch to a microscope...Get the picture?

While all people should be able to live in dignity, this applies to Jews also. This, unfortunately, proved often to be impossible both in the Christian West, where Jews were considered to be the deicide people (and treated accordingly), as well as in the Muslim East, where they were considered to be kilab yahud--"Jew dog"--killers of prophets. Hence the necessity of the rebirth of Israel on less than one half of one percent of the territory of the Middle East and North Africa.

In creating those "Arab" states on over six million square miles of territory, millions of non-Arabs--Berbers, Copts, Kurds, Black Africans, Jews, and others as well--were conquered and forcibly Arabized, often having their own native cultures and languages outlawed, suppressed, and so forth.

Indeed, it's instructive (in a sickening way) to see how Rice and Co. have treated another people's quest for justice in the region...some 30 million truly stateless, non-Arab Kurds.

The one best chance this people had at independence was sacrificed on the altar of British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism after World War I. A promised Kurdistan was aborted in Mesopotamia so not to anger Arab nationalism. Arab Iraq emerged instead, and the Kurds have been perennially victimized and massacred ever since. Yet, the moralists at Foggy Bottom and elsewhere--while forcing the issue of a rejectionist Palestinian Arab State in Israel's very backyard--will hear nothing of a roadmap for Kurdistan.

As National Security Advisor, Dr. Rice spoke at the U.S. Institute of Peace on August 19, 2004. Some of what she said was morally indefensible...real politik at its worst.

While she was delivering words of wisdom regarding the necessity of creating that 22nd state for Arabs at the Institute of Peace, she totally shot down questions relating to Kurdish fears, anxieties, and aspirations in Iraq. Things have gotten even worse since then, and Arabs of any stripe--be they Shi'a or Sunni--have no long term intention of granting Kurds (or any other non-Arabs) the equality and security they seek. Here's some of what Rice had to say, however, about Arab aspirations:

The President believes that the Palestinian people deserve not merely their own state, but a just and democratic state that serves their interests and fulfills their decent aspirations.
Despite the non-stop bloodshed and turmoil in the Arab areas of Iraq; despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Kurds have been killed by Iraqi and other Arabs over the decades; despite the fact that the Kurds have been marked as traitors because of their close ties to America; despite the fact that the most stable and democratic areas in Iraq are undoubtedly in the Kurdish areas...indeed, despite all of this and more, Rice simply brushed off a question regarding a Kurdish referendum on independence (which showed that at least 80% of the Kurds wanted this) with the following disdain:

...It's the role of leadership to convince people that they really ought to stay in the same body.
A sickening disgrace. America can and should do better than this. Did she council a post-Tito Yugoslavia to remain as one?

Keep this "justice for Arabs only" mentality in mind as we return to the issue of bantustan and the creation of yet another state for Arabs.

Are their local differences between Arabs which warrant all of this attention and real estate?

Sure...like there are differences between North Carolinians and New Yorkers.

But just as Jews didn't ask for dozens of different states because their people came from dozens of different countries (including Jews whose families never left the land of Israel since the Roman wars and one half of Israel's Jews who were refugees from so-called "Arab" lands), justice does not demand dozens of states for Arabs at the expense of one for Jews, Kurds, Berbers, Black African Sudanese, or others as well. Yet that is precisely what Arabs expect. Indeed, that sums up the Arab-Israeli conflict in a nutshell.

Keep in mind that after already receiving some 80% of Palestine in 1922, Arabs next rejected the 1947 partition plan which would have divided the 20% of the Mandate left roughly in half...so the Jews would have wound up with about 10% of the original area.

Then, as now, for most Arabs, it's not how big Israel is that's at the crux of the issue...it's that Israel is that poses the problem. And it still does, even with the emergence of the so-called "moderate," Mahmoud Abbas. The new Palestinian Arab leader ran on a platform of Israel's destruction...but by "other" means.

So, Mr. Bush and his two Secretaries of State's comments have been largely misdirected.

It's not Jews who rejected fair and honorable solutions over the decades. And similar compromise partitions and such between competing national movements elsewhere have not been uncommon, involving population exchanges, and the like. The one which created Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan at the same time Arabs rejected the 1947 partition plan for Palestine especially comes to mind.

Israelis have no desire to rule over several million Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. But they also don't want a good cop/bad cop, Arafatian/Hamas state set up in their backyards which only temporarily allows quiet to further its still retained "destruction in stages" goals. The so-called Arab moderates Israel has been forced to deal with by its "friends" openly call any dealings with the Jews a "Trojan Horse." Would Condy accept such "peace partners" for America?

Abbas and the P.A. offer a temporary ceasefire--a hudna--not peace--to their Jewish neighbors, designed merely to strengthen their own position. That ceasefire has been broken by the Arabs numerous times. And as soon as the Jews don't cave in to all that they demand, they threaten to unleash even more terror.

Both Abbas and the other Abu--Ahmed Qurei'--now running the show are on record refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish State. Their openly admitted intent is to insist on Israel being swamped by millions of "returning" real or fudged Arab refugees. Again, half of Israel's Jews were refugees from "Arab"/Muslim lands...but without some two dozen other states to call their own.

Now, let's face some obvious, if politically incorrect, facts.

There really is no room in that miniscule space between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River for another state. Again, please look at the map. But if the world insists that yet another Arab state indeed pop up there--in addition to the one Arabs already have east of the Jordan River on some 80% of the original Palestinian Mandate, Jordan--then its birth must cause Israel the least amount of risk as possible. And there will still be, undoubtedly, plenty of risk, regardless.

More than lip service is required to grant an extremely vulnerable Israel the security any other nation would demand. Yet Condy & Co. seem intent on not allowing the Jewish State anything more. Day after day there are only more and more statements about what the next unilateral Israeli concessions must be after the retreat from Gaza.

Think about this a bit...What other nation would permit the emergence of a state openly committed to its destruction to be set up a stone's throw away from its kids...in Israel's case, those very same kids Arabs repeatedly deliberately target?

So, this means that Arabs should not be able to get all that they demand in the disputed territories. That's what's meant by "compromise." And that compromise must have a territorial component to it...whether Rice and the rest of the world's hypocrites and practitioners of the double standard like it or not.

America toppled Noriega in Panama thousands of miles away from home in the name of its national security interests. Likewise, the British fought the Falklands War off the coast of Argentina...etc, etc., and so forth. For Israel's minimal security needs to be addressed, this means that the additional Arab state that the world insists upon--while telling those thirty million truly stateless, endangered, used, and abused Kurds that they are still undeserving of one--cannot be very large and will have to have some restrictions placed upon it.

The contiguity, conveniences, and such of that 22nd Arab state must not come at the expense of the security of the sole, miniscule state of the Jews. And that's the missing half of all of those statements about viability and bantustan that those of us who care about the long-term health of Israel worry about.

While a reasonable territorial compromise a la Resolution 242 is in order, a unilateral retreat forced upon Israel to the '49 Auschwitz/armistice lines by its friends a la Munich 1938 is not.

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