Letter to the NY Times
From David Meir-Levi to the editors of the New York Times:
Sam Bahour’s “We Can’t Go Home Again” (NY Times, 10/7/06) is a masterful attempt at de-contextualization. His successful investment in the Palestinian economy is most highly to be praised. But when he critiques Israel for keeping close watch on its borders, he fails to mention (but cannot not know) that the tragic situation which he describes is not the result of Israel’s denying him or other Arabs their rights.
Rather it is the result of Israel’s need to defend itself against a ruthless, relentless, endless Arab terror war. Absent the war, all of the rights currently denied to him and to other Palestinians could re-appear.
The borders could be open. The fence could be dismantled. Trade could flow freely. But what country in the world would keep its borders open when, on an almost daily basis, some of those entering have twenty pounds of TNT strapped to their underwear?
The input from B’Tzelem sounds damning, at first glance: “…it has been official Israeli policy since 1983 to ‘reduce, as much as possible, the approval of requests for family unification.’” But let’s recall three undeniable facts:
a) B’Tzelem has for decades been regurgitating, almost verbatim, Arab
anti-Israel propaganda in the guise of ‘honest criticism’ of Israel’s putative (and usually fictitious) human rights violations.
b) From 1949 until 2004, Israel maintained a very generous family
unification program, allowing hundreds of thousands of Arabs to enter Israel in family unification actions, or as a result of arranged marriages between Arab Israeli citizens and Arabs from other Arab states, including those states officially at war with Israel. These in-migrating Arabs became Israeli citizens.
c) In 2004, when the IDF discovered that some of these new arrivals used
their new identity cards as a way to sneak terrorists and arms through checkpoints, and to in other ways facilitate and aid and abet terrorism against Israel, the government decided to end the family unification program.
The end of this program does indeed affect adversely the businesses and the lives of some innocent and honest and well-meaning people like Mr. Bahour.
But to maintain that program would mean more Israelis blown up, burnt alive, shot, stabbed, kidnapped. Mr. Bahour’s dilemma is not the result of any Israeli program to control demographics. It is the result of Israel’s need to defend its population against the endless, relentless barbaric brutal Arab terror war being waged against it. Absent that war, Mr. Bahour’s problem would disappear.
Contrary to Mr. Bahour’s assertion, “the real threat” does not come not from Israel. It comes from the Arab terrorists’ genocidal war. Israel establishes controls on “…an entire population, breaking families apart and placing obstacles in the path of economic development” only as part of its defensive measures against that heinous terror war.
Mr. Bahor may not know it, but from June, 1967 to January 1994, Israel effected its “Mini-Marshall plan” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. During those 27 years, under direct Israeli sovereignty, the Arab economy grew by leaps and bounds, employment was almost 100%, as up to 300,000 West Bank and Gaza Strip Arabs worked in the Israeli economy for wages higher than those of their counterparts in other Arab countries. The Arab population more than tripled in those years, as infant mortality plummeted (thanks to Israeli medical services), longevity increased (thanks to Israeli health services and education), and hundreds of thousands of ex-patriot Palestinians returned to their homes and families. Tourism skyrocketed.
Seven universities grew up on the West Bank and Gaza Strip where only three teacher-training junior colleges had been before. The bridges to Jordan were open, and West Bank Arabs used their Jordanian passports to exit to venues all over the world. Jews shopped in Ramallah, and Arabs shopped in Tel Aviv.
But all of this came to a grinding halt, and suffered a tragic and rapid reversal, when Arafat came to power in the wake of the Oslo Accords, in 1994. By 2004, the GDP of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was only 10% of what it had been in 1993…as a result of Israel’s purely defensive responses to Arafat’s terror war, which has now been going on for 13 years.
The history of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and their economy, before Arafat’s terror war, makes it clear that, far from placing obstacles in the path of Palestinian economic development, Israel invested hundreds of millions of dollars (and in those days, that was money) to jump-start that development. Israel believed then that living with what we then called “the peace dividend” would encourage the Palestinian leadership to see that real peace, peaceful co-existence and the end to the decades of hostility and hatred, offered a far better way of life for both Israelis and Arabs.
Israel was wrong.
It is stridently obvious that if the Arab terrorists were to put down their weapons there would be no more violence, and no more road blocks, and no more curfews, and no more lock-downs, and no more targeted assassinations, and no revenue withheld, and the defensive barriers could be dismantled, and trade and tourism and business endeavors such as Mr. Bahour’s could flourish… just as was the case in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from 1967 to 1993, before Arafat’s terror war, when roads were open and tourists were everywhere and Arabs shopped in Tel Aviv and Jews shopped in Ramallah and the economy was robust and growing.
But if Israel put down its weapons, there would be no more Israel.
David Meir-Levi
