Palestinian statehood: A reward for terror By Gary Bauer and Morton A. Klein Jerusalem Post December 13, 2002 Two weeks ago, Muslim terrorists fired two shoulder-launched Strella missiles at an Israeli civilian aircraft as it took off from an airport in Kenya, in an attempt to murder its 260 passengers. If a Palestinian state is created, its western border will be just a few miles from Ben-Gurion Airport, and terrorists carrying shoulder-launched missiles will be able to aim at every plane taking off from or landing there. Despite such grave dangers, US President George Bush, who has said there must be an end to terrorist states, is now laying the groundwork for the creation of what will be a terrorist state. The Middle East "Road Map" that the Bush administration is promoting proposes to create a "provisional" Palestinian state next year. This plan sends a wrong and dangerous message to the terrorists who are murdering innocent Israelis in buses and cafes. It tells them that their massacres will reap political dividends - that the more Jews they kill, the more fully the United States will seek to meet their demands. Can the administration really believe that giving the Palestinians a sovereign state will create a civilized democracy? Sovereignty does not necessarily put an end to terrorism. In fact, it only strengthens the existing pro-terrorist culture. Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria are sovereign states; yet sovereignty has not transformed them into civilized democracies. A recent poll commissioned by the Zionist Organization of America and carried out by the Hanoch Smith Institute found 68% of Israeli Jews believe that "regardless of the size or strength of a Palestinian state, if one is established it will constitute a threat to the State of Israel." Only 9% believe that creating a Palestinian state would reduce the Arab states' threat. Let's look at the Palestinian record. During the past 25 months, they have carried out thousands of terrorist attacks against Israelis, murdering nearly 700 and maiming many more. Most of the attacks - including many of the recent suicide bombings - have been executed by forces under Yasser Arafat's control: Fatah, Force 17, and the Palestinian Authority's own police and security officers. Israel has revealed numerous documents proving that the PA orders and pays for the murder of Jews. Furthermore, the PA has not disarmed or outlawed terrorist groups. It has not seized their tens of thousands of illegal weapons or shut their bomb factories; nor has it honored any of Israel's 45 requests for the extradition of terrorists. It has not closed the terrorists' training camps. It has rewarded terrorists with jobs in the PA police force. In short, the PA has actively collaborated with and sheltered the terrorists. It has also created an entire culture of anti-Jewish hatred in its official media, schools, summer camps, sermons by PA-appointed clergy, and speeches by PA representatives. A Palestinian state would be a mini-Iraq, sharing a long border with Israel, flanking the areas that contain 70% of Israel's population, including Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa - plenty of tempting targets. The attackers could then slip back into "Palestine," where they would find refuge behind the protective border of a sovereign state. A Palestinian state would have its own airports and seaports, and share borders with Egypt and Jordan, making it relatively easy to import heavy weapons. The PA already has the nucleus of an army; statehood would give it the freedom to establish a full-fledged military force. The same kind of Iranian "volunteers" who have been sent to aid the Hizbullah in southern Lebanon would no doubt be dispatched to "Palestine." A Palestinian state would virtually force Israel back to the pre-1967 borders, stripping it of the protective Judea-Samaria mountain ranges and leaving it just nine miles wide at its mid-section. US Lieutenant-General Thomas Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, said this would leave Israel indefensible: "I look out from those heights and look onto the West Bank and say to myself, 'If I'm the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, I cannot defend this land without that terrain.'" Advocates of Palestinian statehood claim such a state would be demilitarized. But there is no way to ensure that it would be. The Versailles agreement after World War I required Germany to be demilitarized, yet Germany built the most powerful army in Europe. A Palestinian state would also endanger Jewish religious rights. The PA has already destroyed one key Jewish religious site, the Tomb of Joseph, turning it into a mosque and barring Jews from the area. PA officials have called for banning Jewish prayer from Jerusalem's Western Wall and Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, and PA police officers regularly carry out shooting attacks on Rachel's Tomb, near Bethlehem. A Palestinian state would also endanger Israel's water sources, a significant portion of which originates in Judea and Samaria. If the PA had sovereignty, it could shut off the flow of that water. There would also be the danger of Palestinian Arab terrorists sabotaging the Israeli water supply. The last thing the world needs now is yet another totalitarian, anti-American terrorist state. Yet that is exactly what a Palestinian state would be, to judge by the behavior of the PA during the eight years since it was created. The PA is a brutal Muslim dictatorship which tortures dissidents, silences newspapers that deviate from Arafat's line, and persecutes Christians. The official PA media actively incite hatred against America, and the PA maintains warm relations with the most anti-American regimes in the world, including Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, North Korea, and Cuba. The only way to advance the chance for peace is, first, by defeating the terrorist regime. The training camps must be shut down; the weapons must be seized; the terrorists must be apprehended and brought to trial; and the PA-controlled areas must be completely demilitarized. These actions must be followed by a lengthy period in which the PA's culture of hatred is stamped out, comparable to the de-Nazification process that the Allies imposed on Germany after World War II and the de-Saddamization plan that has been proposed for Iraq after Saddam Hussein's regime is ousted. The only long-term hope for Middle East peace lies in permanently weaning the Palestinians off their diet of hatred. Terrorists, whether led by bin Laden or Arafat, should be fought and defeated, not appeased with offers of statehood. Sending a message that terrorism pays is the worst possible move at a time when terrorists are threatening America, Israel, and the entire free world. ---------- Gary Bauer is president of American Values; Morton Klein is national president of the Zionist Organization of America.