Annexation: hip, hip, hooray!

This is not rocket science but Einstein did explain the “two-state solution” very well. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Here it is 24 years since the Oslo accords were brought into the world and nothing has moved. What did we get out of it? A four-year reign of terror and three wars, two with Hamas and one with Hezbollah.

Who’s in favor of the one-state solution? The Palestinian Arabs are. For them it means that almost alone in the Arab world, they could be living in a democracy with human rights and not under tyranny where they can’t even open their mouths without getting their heads bashed in. Ask them in a referendum.

Who else? The Jewish majority. There has not been a vote for Oslo in this century.

What’s to be afraid of? Nothing.

Do we have to annex everything all at once? Of course not. One digestible piece at a time.

Demographics are not a problem. The Jewish birth-rate has pulled even with the Arab birth-rate. The Palestinian Arab statistics are phoney. Maximum we fall from 75 per cent of the population to 65 per cent. We can live with that. Meanwhile we can fill Judea and Samaria with new towns and villages.

Any Arab adult who commits to being a loyal citizen gets citizenship plus those born in the expanded state. Those who belong to terrorist groups such as Hamas can be expelled.

Leave Gaza out of it. We don’t have to go back. Let them have their Singapore.

Yoram Ettinger, a former diplomat, is the main spokesman for the American-Israel Demographic Research Group, a team of three American and six Israeli researchers. They beat the drum for the claim that there is no demographic problem.

Yoram Ettinger: “The July 11, 2016 Palestinian Authority report claiming that Jews are a minority west of the Jordan River is a classic case of ‘lies, damned lies and statistics.’ The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics often manipulates statistics to misrepresent reality and mislead observers in a way that is deliberate and systematic, despite a powerful Jewish demographic tailwind and a rapid westernization of Muslim demography west of the Jordan River, and throughout the Muslim world outside the sub-Saharan region.

“Deliberate Palestinian misuse of statistics has resulted in unwarranted demographic pessimism and fatalism both in Israel and among Israel’s supporters. The key aim of this demographic manipulation has been to convince Israeli policymakers to hand over Judea and Samaria under the false assumption that it would be the only way to ensure an Israeli majority in Israel.

“Despite the Palestinian statistics, and the display of gross negligence by the international establishment in accepting the data at face value without proper auditing, there is currently a solid, long-term, 66 per cent Jewish majority in the combined area of Judea, Samaria and pre-1967 Israel, benefitting from an unprecedented robust tailwind of Jewish fertility and immigration. Moreover, there is a gap of 1.15 million people between the number of Arabs the Palestinians claim are living in the West Bank (2.9 million) and the well-documented number of 1.75 million.”

There is no choice in the matter. There is no one to negotiate with on the other side. The PLO, the gangster organization founded by the KGB, insists on the 1948 armistice lines and that is never going to happen. Those would be indefensible borders. There will never be a Jewish majority agreeing to giving up half of Jerusalem and in any event the army is not big enough to expel the 200,000 Jews living there not to mention the 400,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria. You’d need to hire a million Chinese mercenaries to do it. What Israeli government is going to pay them to slaughter 600,000 Jews? We are not giving up the Jordan Valley especially as terrorist organizations proliferate in the region. What are we going to do, build a wall like the ancient Chinese did or Trump wants to do? The most you can offer is a demilitarized mini-state under tyranny. That will be a source of trouble in perpetuity.

Here are some opinions expressed by thinking Arabs there. They represent the silent majority and we can work with them.

Bassem Ayyad is a former investigator for the radical leftist NGO B’Tselem. He said this at a conference on the future of the territories at Ariel University.

Bassem Ayyad: “Since the PA was created in the 1993 Oslo Accords, Arabs living under it only know corruption. The PA hasn’t built a single kindergarten in Judea, Samaria or Gaza in its entire existence.

“If you were to secretly poll Palestinians, 99.9 per cent would ask to be under the Israeli authority rather than under the Palestinian Authority.’

“Arab citizens of Israel could have served as a bridge between Israelis and Palestinians, he said, but instead they incite against Israel and show hatred and therefore instead of bridging between the two sides they in fact do the opposite.

“I do not blame Israel for an ‘occupation,’ but rather for forming the PA. The true ‘nakba’ (‘catastrophe’ in Arabic) for Palestinians was the founding of the PA in 1994.” (The term nakba is used by Palestinians to describe the inability of Arab armies to destroy the nascent Jewish state in 1948.)

“‘If you ask a Palestinian today ‘what nakba do you suffer from more, 1948 or 1967?’ he would tell you the true nakba is the coming of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. There is great suffering today under the PA. This is an Arab dictatorship of Israeli invention.”

He has a valid point but once the monster was created, it was adopted by the US, the European Union, and Russia. There was not much Israel could do to get rid of it.

This is from Tareq Abbas, 48, son of the boss man.

Tareq Abbas: “If you don’t want to give me independence, at least give me civil rights. The one-state solution is an easier, peaceful way.

“I don’t want to throw anything, I don’t want to hate anybody, I don’t want to shoot anybody. I want to be under the law.”

Khalil Shikaki, 60, is the director of the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research. Here’s what he says.

Khalid Shikaki: “‘Just ask my son. He will tell you that my generation has failed and should exit the stage and take its mainstream paradigm, the two-state solution, along with it.”

There is a great opportunity for a meeting of minds and all we are saying, on both sides, is give peace a chance. Israel gains immediately by not having to tolerate the existence of terrorist organizations planning attacks just over the next hill. Those organizations will be outlawed and their members will be gone.

There is a wild card here which will be come into play as time goes on. The majority of Palestinian Arabs are descended from Jews. This could be 100 per cent of the Bedouin. Many of them know it. Ben-Gurion knew it and even sent Moshe Dayan once with a rabbi to introduce Bedouin to Judaism. It didn’t go anywhere but blood is thicker than water and it will start to tell over time.

You can figure this out by looking at the history of the country. When the Arabians came through, the majority of the population were Christians and the rest were Jews. The Arabians saw that there was no threat and simply passed on. Nothing changed for 400 years.

At that point a caliph in Egypt declared that everyone must convert to Islam. The Christians in the main left and never returned. Later the order was cancelled. Only 25 per cent of the Jews resumed their identity and you can’t blame the rest for remaining crypto-Jews. They avoided confiscatory taxes and for many it was a matter of survival.

There was no inquisition in the Muslim world so they were never persecuted and just went along living a double life. The Crusaders used to ask. How come the Arabs here speak Aramaic and not Arabic? Aramaic, the language of the Jews in Mesopotamia, was adopted by the Jews in Israel after the fall of the state.

When Judea and Samaria were annexed by the Jordanians they found no mosques.. They built the first ones there for many years.

That doesn’t mean there will be a wave of conversions any time soon after annexation. If you let the ultra-Orthodox get mixed up in it, there probably never will be any. But Ben-Gurion set an excellent precedent. Make it easy for those who know their family history to return the fold and in the very long run you have countered any demographic slippage.

Annexation can start with the communities around Jerusalem then go to Area C and see what happens. At least you are the road to a solution rather than spinning wheels in a quagmire, which has the effect of poisoning democracy in Israel since the “territories” always became the main issue in elections rather than the host of social problems that need to be addressed.