Israel, declare your final borders

Is this not the right moment for Israel to finally declare its final borders? As anyone who is half-conscious understands the Palestinians have no intention whatsoever of coming to a negotiated end of hostilities with the Jewish state. The Arabs have turned down every single offer for statehood, in peace next to the Jewish one, since the Peel Commission of 1937.

Does that not tell us something? I think it does.

Forget about negotiations. Time and again negotiations with the Palestinians have shown themselves to be worthless and the reason for that is because the Palestinians want eventual victory, total victory, which they believe that they can get if they keep the pressure up on all fronts. They will continue to shoot rockets at you from the Gaza strip. They will continue to demonize you in true Nazi fashion throughout the world. They will continue to demand everything from you, including full “right of return” for all Arab refugees, and in return they will offer you nothing and make no concessions whatsoever.

They will, furthermore, blame you for their hatred of you and for their own refusal to accept a state in peace next to the Jewish one. They will blame you for their relative poverty. They will blame you when their own rockets hit their own people. They will even castigate you as racist for your disinclination to rape their women. They will blame you for everything and take responsibility for exactly nothing.

And, let us not forget, most of the rest of the world will agree with them no matter what the accusation is. The European governments (with, perhaps, the lone, sole exception of the Czech Republic, G-d love it) will agree almost entirely with the Palestinians, as will the international left. It doesn’t much matter what you guys do, or don’t do, because the Arab peoples, the European governments, the United Nations, and the international Left is going to spit hatred at you anyway.

The Palestinians will never agree to peace and you will always get the blame.

What I say is define your borders. You do not need to annex the entirety of Judea and Samaria, just annex what makes sense from a national security standpoint. Annex the major settlement blocs near the green line. Annex the entirety of Jerusalem and leave whatever’s left in the so-called “west bank” for a Palestinian state. The Palestinians, after all, have earned Ramallah as their capital. Let them have it.

But the point is that you guys, you Israeli Jews, need to take matters into your own hands. You can count on no one but yourselves. You can’t even count, I am sad to say, on many diaspora Jews.  There are any number of us who point the trembling finger of blame at you because, infused with Arab and Soviet propaganda, they believe that Israel is a racist, colonialist, imperialist, apartheid, racist state… and racist, to boot.

So end this charade of a “peace process,” which is anything but, and tell the world, and the Palestinians, exactly what your borders are and remove the IDF to behind those borders. Let Jews who remain in Palestinian areas of Judea and Samaria know that you will assist them in their evacuation and let the Palestinians know, in no uncertain terms, that Israel will retaliate against violence toward those Jews.

And if you want to annex all of Judea and Samaria, which I do not recommend, then do that. But let’s wrap this up, shall we? The Arab world, and the international community, is holding you hostage. You need to free yourselves and in order to do that you must declare your final borders.

Oslo is over and that you gives you the opportunity to take matters into your own hands.  Given the long history of Arab-Muslim persecution of the Jews in the Middle East you have every right to decide your own fate.

I hope you do.

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Mike Lumish is the proprietor of the pro-Israel blog, Israel Thrives.