The Arab-Israeli conflict: Arab leaders must choose development over destruction

The conflict between the Mideast’s only democratic nation and terrorists committed to its destruction merits a discussion based on historical realities and moral values. The framing of the Gaza violence as a cyclical issue between two belligerent parties, or as a conflict between a powerful Israel and underdog Hamas, reflects intellectual dishonesty and prejudice.

In 1948, creation of Arab and Jewish states in British Palestine was rejected by the Arab League (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen) which, along with local Palestinian militants, invaded Israel in a failed attempt to annihilate the fledgling state. After their defeat, many Arabs fled toward Gaza, a narrow (25 miles long and 5 miles wide) strip of land controlled by Egypt. Immigration and assimilation into Egypt, unfortunately, never occurred.

Since 1948, only these Arabs and their descendants, in comparison to all other international refugees, have received continuous financial support from the United Nations Relief Agency, and now the United States and European Union. This aid has never been provided to the nearly 800,000 Jews who fled persecution in the Arab countries they had inhabited since biblical times. The creation of this welfare system and concomitant widespread corruption have stymied economic development in Palestinian Arab communities.

In 1967, Egypt, Jordan and Syria attacked Israel on multiple fronts, lost that war, as well as Gaza, Jerusalem/West Bank, and Golan Heights, respectively. During the 1960s, the Palestine Liberation Organization was created by Arab states. It was headed by Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat with a charter of eradicating the Jewish state through various acts of terrorism.

In 2005, Israel unilaterally gave up control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority and forcibly moved citizens out of the area. All abandoned farms, homes, greenhouses and businesses were destroyed. This failed “land for peace” arrangement yielded a “governance” of perpetual anti-Israeli hostility characterized by suicide bombing, riots, kidnappings, airplane hijackings, indiscriminate missile and mortar firings.

In 2007, Arafat’s corrupt PLO faction (Fatah) was replaced by the terrorist Hamas group in an “election” and bloody civil war causing over 700 deaths. Fatah relocated (with Israeli assistance!) to the West Bank, and currently seeks reunification with Hamas, much to the consternation of the U.S. and Israel. The initial love fest between Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt (assassins of Sadat in 1981, and replacements for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011) has evaporated following the military takeover in 2013, which led to a southern blockade of Gaza and destruction of tunnels into Egypt.

The connection between Hamas and other Islamic terrorist organizations in the Sinai has been an issue for Egypt, Israel and Western intelligence agencies. Hamas is a proxy for Iran’s international terrorism scheme, while Hezbollah in Lebanon is its northern counterpart. Recent evidence revealing North Korean missiles in the Hamas arsenal has further widened fears of a pan-global terrorist network based in Gaza.

For Israel, it is a bitter irony that this small nation surrounded by enemies would be the only country to give up land (Gaza) to Arabs in the hopeful exchange for peace, only to be “rewarded” by continuous hostilities. A military blockade of arms has failed to prevent the smuggling of rockets. Humanitarian aid has failed to reduce the rabid hatred, drilled into the populace, of Israel and, to a lesser extent, the U.S.

What was most immoral and appalling in Gaza was the use of human shields, civilian homes, mosques, hospitals, U.N. compounds, and schools as covers for militants and their weaponry, and the silence of the world community and media. More than 200 Hamas missiles fell back into Gaza and injured or killed civilians, but this has escaped the media’s coverage. The deaths of children used as laborers for the terror tunnels also has been under-reported.

The blinded comments on Israeli use of “disproportionate force” fail to recognize the high standards of Israeli soldiers, pre-emptive warnings given to Gazans, the barbarism of Syria, North Korea, Russia or China.

Operation Protective Edge was an effort to demilitarize Gaza for the sake of humanity. Hamas is a cancerous lesion. Arab leaders need to promote social, economic and political reforms instead of focusing on destroying the Jews of Palestine. Peace will come to the region when the Arabs of the Mideast will be known for their Nobel Prize-winning cultural and scientific achievements and not their use of the dynamite invented by Alfred Nobel.