End Arafat's Occupation

By Michael Freund
The Jerusalem Post
May 29, 2002

It is time for Israel and its supporters to finally muster up the 
courage to acknowledge the cold, hard truth - the West Bank and 
Gaza are "occupied territories".

These areas are administered by a cruel and heartless regime, 
one that has no mercy on its perceived foes, targeting them with 
derision, humiliation and even military force. 

Little concern is shown for the lives of the innocent, as ruthless
measures are employed with the aim of driving the residents from 
their homes, making them so miserable that they will have no choice 
but to leave.     

This occupation is a menace to the entire region, destabilizing it 
and undermining any chances for a lasting peace between Arabs and 
Jews. There is no choice but to bring about an end to this 
colonialist enterprise, and to dismantle the occupation once and for
all. 

Or, to put it more simply: Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian 
Authority have got to go.

For, if there is anyone who should be considered an "occupier" in 
the territories, it is Arafat and his dictatorial regime. 

Over the past nine years, they have transformed large swaths of 
Judea, Samaria and Gaza into hothouses for terrorism and violence. 
They have targeted Jews living in these areas, seeking to compel 
them to leave by shooting at them, firing mortar rounds at their 
communities, detonating explosive devices as their cars pass by 
and invading their homes. The PA has set new standards of corruption, 
misusing foreign donor money for unsavory purposes and cultivating 
a culture of death and suicide among their own people. They have 
thwarted all efforts to end the century-old Arab-Israeli conflict, 
preferring instead to resort to the rifle. 

Under the PA's rule, the Palestinian-occupied territories have 
become an irritant to the entire Middle East, threatening to plunge 
it into another round of bloodshed and violence.

Much of the world turns a blind eye to this reality, chalking it all 
up to that amorphous and highly unpopular phenomenon known as 
"politics". 

But there is a far deeper, and more compelling reason, why the PA 
should be considered an "occupying power": they have taken control 
of land that does not belong to them.

Regardless of what the United Nations or others might say, Judea, 
Samaria and Gaza are the patrimony of the Jewish people. History, 
quite simply, is on our side.

Hundreds of years before the advent of Islam, the territories were 
home to vibrant Jewish communities. David, king of Israel, was born 
and raised in Bethlehem, while the prophet Amos foretold the future 
in the hills near Tekoa, southeast of Jerusalem.

Ancient synagogues and burial sites dot the landscape, all serving 
as physical testimony to the Jewish presence in these areas. Politicians 
may lie, but 2000-year old stones do not. 

Visit Shilo, capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, in Samaria. 
Take a look at the ruins of King Herod's palace at Herodion, in Judea. 
Stop by the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and you will see with 
your own eyes that these areas were Jewish long before the sword of 
Islam was ever unsheathed. 

To suggest that Israel has no right to this land, or that it has 
taken someone else's territory, is simply an affront to truth and 
to history. If you do not accept the Bible as proof, then look to 
the archaeologists, who will gladly point out the evidence to you.

Even after the Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and the 
people of Israel sent in to exile, Jews continued to live in these 
areas, albeit in smaller numbers. Hebron was home to a continuous 
Jewish presence up until 1929. Only once their neighbors massacred 
them were they forced to flee.

Gaza - yes, Gaza - also has a long and rich Jewish history. 
The Hasmonean king, Yochanan, brother of Judah the Maccabee, took 
Gaza in 145 BCE, and his brother Shimon sent Jews to settle there. 
In the fourth century of the common era, Gaza served as the primary 
port of commerce for the Jews of the Holy Land. 

Nearly forty years ago, on the outskirts of Gaza city near the sea,
Egyptian archaeologists discovered a mosaic floor from an ancient
synagogue.  According to the inscription, it had been built in the 
sixth century, or 1400 years before the establishment of the PLO. 

These are hard facts. They can not be denied or argued away. So, 
when Jews now seek again to live in these areas, they are doing 
so not as foreign occupiers, but as indigenous residents returning 
home. They are merely continuing in the paths of their ancestors, 
walking where they walked so very long ago.

The land is big enough and bountiful enough for Arabs and Jews to 
live together under Israeli rule. There is no reason why anyone 
needs to be forced from his home. But there is every reason for 
Arafat to be sent packing. 

So to all those who say "End the Occupation" - I couldn't agree 
with you more. Let us remove Yasser Arafat and his regime, and 
return the land to the Jewish people, its original owners, once 
and for all.

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The writer served as Deputy Director of Communications & Policy 
Planning in the Prime Minister's Office from 1996 to 1999.