An Open Message for Barak Before Camp David

In This Article:
1. The Forgotten Facts
2. Judea & Samaria - A Springboard for Terror Attacks
3. What Did The Arabs Want Then?

THE FORGOTTEN FACTS
It is time that all those who believe in the Land for Peace ideal, faced reality and reflected on the situation prior to 1967. During the period between 1948 and 1967, the tortuous and elongated border between Israel and its neighbours was annually the scene of hundreds of Arab raids across the line. Israeli men, women and children, were killed indiscriminately, villages were attacked, houses blown up and civilians kidnapped in unending Arab guerrilla warfare.

It is possible, of course, that the members of the Land for Peace movement and Prime Minister Barak have either forgotten or possibly were not even born when these civil incidents took place, and feel that by giving land for peace, the situation which occurred in the nineteen odd years from 1948 will not repeat itself.

JUDEA & SAMARIA - A SPRINGBOARD FOR
TERROR ATTACKS
Some statistics would help to remind those who have forgotten. Between May 1950 when the armistice lines were guaranteed (by the great powers) and October 1953, 421 Israelis were killed or wounded, there were 128 acts of sabotage involving explosives and 866 armed attacks. Or perhaps we should refer to 1955 as a typical year in which there were 257 Israeli casualties along the so called cease fire lines, including 75 dead, 179 wounded and 3 taken prisoner. One can ask where did these terrorists come from? Egypt and Gaza were the source of 53%, Jordan, including the West Bank were 23%, Syria 22%, and Lebanon 2%. All of this was before the 'occupation' where there were no alien Israeli force imposing its will (and in its tyranny) on the Arab population.

On October 13th 1953 a mother and her two children were murdered in their sleep on Moshav Yahud, just south of Petah Tikvah.Tracks led across the nearby border to the West Bank village of Rantis. In December of that year a member of Kibbutz Ein Shemer was shot by infiltrators while walking near Karkur in central Israel. In March 1954 Arab gunmen ambushed and attacked an Israeli bus at Malei Akrabim, south of Beer Sheva, murdering 11 including women and children.

If that is not sufficient, consider June 1954, Jerusalem suddenly became a target with Jordanian machine guns, rifles, grenades and two inch mortars, open fire

from the Old City walls. This continued for hours and was repeated several days later. Casualties, four dead, twenty seven wounded. Of course events like these don't tell the whole story for there were hundreds of instances like these where the Israeli Defence Forces succeeded in foiling such attacks.

And so it went on day by day, for years. On other occasions the Fedayin crossed the nearby borders to carry out their deadly missions. Freight trains blown up, farmers murdered in their fields, soldiers ambushed and killed, children attacked by snipers, mines laid as gangs came across to burn, kill steal and destroy. How easy it was in those days. One has to reflect that the width of Israel was in some places less than 15 miles from the cease fire line between Israel and occupied West Bank and the whole of the central Coastal Plain was exposed to these people.

WHAT DID THE ARABS WANT THEN?
What did the Arabs want in those days, when the West Bank was already in their hands under Jordanian rule? The Land for Peace movement and those who subscribe to its views including Prime Minister Barak say that the solution is a return to the "good old days" of 1967. It is time to state that Israel was not then an "occupying power," but still this did not deter the Arabs.

It is the same story - those who carried out the mass pogroms in Hebron in 1929, who carried out bloody swath in the 1936-9 period, and who collaborated with Hitler and tried to destroy the infant state before its birth in 1948 are still active. Does the Land for Peace movement recollect that every Israeli was within firing distance of hostile Arabs either in the West Bank or Gaza, never mind the Golan Heights? There are families today in Israel who mourn victims of that period who were killed whilecarrying out their peaceful occupations.
The list is tragically long.

Now is the time to turn to Prime Minister Barak, his government, his worldwide associates and the members of Land for Peace movement. Perhaps they should reconsider their simplistic solution, just withdrawal and give away the land to the PLO. Any withdrawal cannot be at the expense of a secure Israel firmly established in the Land of Israel. We must stand firm, without weak hearts and we must convince the world. In order to achieve this we must root out doubts and the spirits of defeatism and appeasement in our own midst.

Source: Arutz 7