Growing ‘Fifth Column’ Danger Among Israeli Arabs Reinforces Arguments for Deferring Creation of a Palestinian ‘State’

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(Washington, D.C.): As she traveled to Syria yesterday to pay unwarranted respects on
behalf of
the U.S. government to the late dictator, Hafez Assad, Secretary of State Madeline Albright
insisted that there was a rapidly closing “window of opportunity” for a comprehensive Middle
East peace. Given the geopolitical conditions that now exist in the region, it seems more
accurate to say that the Clinton-Gore Administration is determined to throw Israel out of
the
window
before it closes.

However much the U.S. government may wish to ignore, discount and/or misrepresent these
conditions, they argue persuasively against further territorial concessions by Israel at this
juncture. For one thing, the transition in Syria is more likely than not to produce, at least in the
short-run, a renewed despotism in Damascus than a reliable democratic “partner for peace” with
Israel.

For another, it is very unclear how much longer Yasser Arafat will remain in control among
the
Palestinians. No one can say for sure either who will succeed him or what will be that
individual’s attitude toward peace with Israel. Then, there is the natty problem that Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Barak seems to have lost the governing majority he clearly requires if his reckless
concession-mongering is to go forward at this week’s negotiations in Washington and beyond.

These realities take on an even more ominous cast when one factors in the sort of analysis
provided in an op.ed. article in yesterday’s New York Times by Yoram Hazony, the
author of the
acclaimed new book, The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul,
who is the President of
the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. Mr. Hazony warns persuasively of an impending crisis for
Israel as Hezbollah, the Arab majority population of the Galilee and Arab members of the Israeli
Knesset become increasingly explicit about their determination next to “liberate” parts of Israel
within the Jewish State’s pre-1967 or “Green line” boundaries.

New York Times, 13 June 2000

Israel’s Northern Exposure

By Yoram Hazony

In the weeks since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, Hezbollah’s attention has turned to
other
territories it says are Lebanese, including seven abandoned villages in Galilee, which has been
part of Israel since the war of independence of 1948-49. “As long as Israel refuses to withdraw,”
the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah pronounced, “there is reason to continue this struggle.”

Is this just posturing, or does Israel really have to fear for its long-term position in Galilee?
Recent developments suggest that the Jewish state’s staying power there may not be what it once
was.

First, there is the changed strategic environment. Galilee, the northernmost part of Israel, is a
strip of land about 40 miles wide sandwiched between southern Lebanon, now controlled by
Hezbollah, and the northern West Bank, now controlled by Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.
In the east it borders on the Golan Heights. The population in large sections of the Galilee is
predominantly Arab, making it a natural target for irredentist incitement.

Mr. Arafat has accelerated his agitation for recognition of the United Nations’ original 1947
partition plan, which would have assigned much of Galilee to a Palestinian state. If Israel makes
a deal with the new regime in post-Assad Syria that gives Syria back the Golan Heights, Galilee
could be under political siege on three sides.

Another factor is the shift in the political mood of Israeli Arabs themselves, who make up
roughly half of the Galilee’s population. Over the past year, the Arab bloc in the Knesset has
embarked on a course that appears intended to demonstrate hostility toward continued political
coexistence with Jewish Israel. With leaders like Ahmed Tibi, a longtime Arafat adviser, Arab
parliamentarians have called for establishing a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, ceding rights in
part of the Sea of Galilee to Syria and demanding the “dejudaization” of the Israeli state,
including changes in the Israeli flag and national anthem, the abolition of the quasi-governmental
Jewish Agency (which promotes Jewish immigration and settlement) and the repeal of the Law
of Return.

Nor is this purely a parliamentary trend. Polling data from the Givat Haviva Institute for
Peace
Research suggest that fully 71 percent of Israel’s 1.1 million Arab citizens now identify
themselves primarily as “Palestinians,” as opposed to 38 percent only four years ago. Israel’s
Independence Day has become a day of public grief in much of the Arab sector. This year, at an
Independence Day celebration in the Galilee village of Shfaram, Interior Minister Natan
Sharansky was met by hundreds of stone-throwing demonstrators waving Palestinian Authority
flags and chanting, “With our spirit and blood shall Palestine be redeemed.” Elsewhere, Israeli
flags were burned, and there were calls for Hezbollah to carry its war into Galilee.

These changes have provoked bitter reactions in Israel, with the liberal daily Haaretz
warning,
“We cannot accept Arab citizens’ transformation into a nationalist group with separatist
inclinations, which identifies completely with the Palestinian Authority being established on the
other side of the border.”

Yet even as Israelis begin to experience fear over developments in Galilee, it is unclear
whether
the Jewish state has the wherewithal to resist them. In an unprecedented decision in March, the
Israeli Supreme Court effectively ruled illegal the government’s decades-old practice of
establishing Jewish communities on high ground and in border areas in Galilee and other
predominantly Arab parts of Israel. The purpose of Israeli law, Chief Justice Aharon Barak ruled,
is “to guarantee equality among human beings without discrimination regarding religion or
national identity.” The government’s policy of setting aside land for Jewish border settlements
was thus a violation of the rights of Israeli Arabs to equality.

We have to let our eyes grow accustomed to this new picture, in which the ties that bind
Arabs in
northern Israel to their state are progressively weakened, even as the Jewish majority wrestles
with the question of whether it has the right to do anything in response. For the first time since
1948, the fate of Galilee may hang in the balance.

Yoram Hazony is the president of the Shalem Center, a public policy institute in
Jerusalem, and
the author of “The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul.”

Center for Security Policy

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