Israel must forever be wed to the West Bank
Opinion: The Gaza disengagement showed us the reality of Palestinian statehood - terror tunnels and rockets - so why would anyone believe the left-wing claim that handing over more land will lead to a utopian peace?
The images of a home destroyed by a rocket in Mishmeret horrified all of us. The normally distant Gaza Strip took another step toward central Israel, again giving lie to the five-decade-long claim by the left-wing that forcing Jews in the West Bank out of their homes in order to establish another Muslim state would bring us peace. It would be exactly like Switzerland in the Middle East.
The lessons of the past and the present led us to the conclusion that such a formula will inevitably lead to war and terror, so now the left has come up with a new solution: no longer is peace our main goal in life, rather disengagement.
They warn that demographics will triumph if we stay here in the West Bank. They say we will have to give the Palestinians Israeli ID cards and the right to vote in the Knesset elections. They say this will turn Israel into a binational state where Hanin Zoabi will be defense minister in a government headed by Ahmad Tibi. Scary times indeed.
But we are all too experienced by now. Threats of a diplomatic tsunami against Israel never came true, nor did the left's promises of a bright future. The ads of 2005 made by retired IDF commanders saying tha the "disengagement is good for us" have turned into a sad joke at our expense.
The claims of the left seem reasonable at first glance. We cannot continue ruling over a population without letting them vote in our elections. But anyone who knows the region well also knows the Palestinians have had such a right for 25 years.
Under the terms of the OIso Accords, they run their own civilian administrations by voting for their representatives to the Palestinian parliament in Ramallah and municipalities in areas A and B. The Palestinians living in those areas have their own government, governmental services, police and judicial system.
Granted, the security control is in Israeli hands and it must remain so in order to prevent an extreme Islamic takeover over the region. The Palestinians will continue to vote for whoever is to run their lives while we will continue to vote for our representatives to the Knesset. We do not need to give them further voting rights.
True, it is not an ideal reality for us or for them but what else can we do after years of failed peace attempts and Arab refusal to accept any proposals.
Withdrawing from the West Bank will only make the demographic situation worse. Around six million people in the Middle East call themselves Palestinian refugees, and the Arab countries that currently host them refuse to give them civil rights in order to keep them as such. If God forbid a Palestinian state were established on the West Bank, those countries would flood the region with refugees. In a short time they would be climbing the fences into Israel, en route to the homes they left behind in Jaffa, Ashkelon, Haifa and Safed. The demographic situation would explode on our borders - just a few minutes' drive from Tel Aviv. The demonstrations, explosions at the fence and airborne firebombs would draw closer and closer to the center.
Like with any bad divorce, our children would be the ones to suffer from a divorce from the Palestinians. For the geographic situation is even more perilous than the demographic one. Israeli citizens would face the threat of a terrorist state in the West Bank, on whose borders would sit every city and town, from Afula in the north to Beer Sheba in the south, not to mention central Israel.
The next challenge for residents of Kfar Saba would be terror tunnels - just like they are for the residents of Metula on the Lebanese border and Kibbutz Nahal Oz on the Gaza border. And just like in Gaza, we would get to have a war every now and then.
Yigal Dilmoni is the director general of the Yesha Council of Settlements
