These territories belong to us, and in order to ensure our continued existence in these territories for the distant future, Jewish settlements should be established on the ruins of the Arab villages there.
Yaakov Sokol for Israel National News
From a bird’s eye view, the events beyond Israel’s borders in recent weeks look like a spectacular celebration of fireworks.
In Syria, fire is consuming military bases and flames are rising above tanks and planes. Huge explosions are lifting entire Hezbollah infrastructure complexes into the sky, and the ruins the Gaza Strip are also covered in thick clouds of smoke.
It seems that the immediate threats to the State of Israel are being neutralized one after another, literally. As I walked around Tel Aviv free of worry, everywhere I looked there was a celebration.
In the heat of the moment, it is even possible to make the mistake of becoming infected with euphoria – the IDF’s capabilities are more impressive than ever, our enemies are collapsing one after another like a row of dominoes, and the Iranian axis of evil is collapsing like a house of cards.
But here we must stop, return to reality and analyze things in a controlled manner. Destroying the enemy’s fighting ability is extremely important, but does not change reality as much as it affects only the timetable. Bases can be re-built, tanks can be manufactured, and planes can be bought.
The rapid collapse of the Assad regime opened a door, and the surprising courage shown by the political echelon, together with the spectacular performance of the IDF, led to the destruction of the military capabilities of our enemies, creating a situation in which the strategic reality on the northern border is completely open to change and can be reshaped according to our needs and desires.
A tactical and political window of time has now been created in which major changes can be made on the ground in the face of weak to zero resistance from the enemy, and in the face of the surprising silence of Western countries, stunned by the speed with which the reality they knew completely collapsed and who now are yearning for the creation of a new equilibrium, preferably one that does not include the arrival of advanced weapons to the ideological descendants of the barbarian tribes that conquered the Roman Empire and caused the collapse of civilization.
But we must remember that destroying the enemy’s military capabilities is only temporary in terms of damaging his ability to prevent us from making changes on the ground. In the absence of real change on the ground, his capabilities will be restored and we may find ourselves in the same situation again in a few years, except for the name of the dictator in charge or, at best, facing a newer and less experienced organization than Hezbollah.
Therefore, we must not rest on our laurels. We must not be tempted by the sweet and addictive silence that awaits us in the near future by avoiding necessary actions, even though the temptation to do so is very great. We must take a series of steps on the ground and in regional politics, rooted in destroying the artificial perception of those arbitrary borders set by the colonial powers and the ‘states’ that respect these borders.
The concept of the state as understood in the West is irrelevant to the diverse and tribal population that characterizes the inhabitants of the Middle East. The two ‘states’ that border us to the north are clear examples of this. In both Syria and Lebanon, very different and hostile minorities are forced to live under the same governmental framework because of meaningless borders that were arbitrarily set by the powers at the beginning of the last century.
In Syria, the glue that has held Sunnis, Shiites, Druze and Alawites together is a brutal dictatorship and ongoing oppression. In Lebanon, there is no such glue and the country has been in an ongoing civil war for five decades, and especially in southern Lebanon, where the ‘Lebanese government’ has no sovereignty on the ground and is controlled by Hezbollah with the support of money and weapons from Iran.
Therefore, the perception on the ground and the mental perception of all of this must be changed.
The current borders must be erased and Israel’s borders redrawn so that they are natural borders that stem from the geography of the area. Under the protection of these borders, we must create simple defense lines based on natural obstacles such as one of the largest rivers in Lebanon and hold the key strategic points such as the high peaks of Mount Hermon. Beyond the border, we must strive to establish smaller and more homogeneous political entities in terms of population, such as the initiative for the establishment of a Druze state or autonomy on the eastern side of the current Israel-Syria border.
Such entities will have a complex web of interests, and the land bridge that brings the head of the Iranian snake to our doorstep will be much more precarious.
It is worth adding another layer to all of this. The territories in question are part of the Land of Israel and thus we have every right to own these territories and annex them to the State of Israel – no less than our right to live in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. This is not about taking over the land of another people, but rather about taking over a territory that originally belonged to us in response to the aggression of those who inhabited it while we were forcibly absent from the region.
To remind everyone, and first of all ourselves, of the truth that these are our territories by right, and to ensure our continued existence in these territories for the distant future, a Jewish settlement should be established on the ruins of the Arab villages there.
We have a rare window of opportunity to create a better reality for our children, and that window could close as quickly as it opened. We have a long history of missing such opportunities. But in the meantime – ‘Everything is open, and it’s not too late.’
The writer is a member of the ‘Uri Tzafon’ movement – the movement for the Jewish settlement of southern Lebanon.
Does anyone get the feeling that Israel is walking into a trap that even THEY, the “masters” of spying and intrigue, don’t see. The only question is if that “trap” will bring down the whole international community. A mouse goes for the cheese in the trap quickly, getting smashed in the process.
Any other nation would be rightly accused of criminal activity with plans such as these. But not Israel. Why is that, precisely? What will it take to break the spell?
Hank: I hope and pray that your right and these pricks will fall into a ‘trap’ of their own making. I’m with Henry Ford … he was right about the deceit of these people, they have no respect for their fellow human beings and now I can understand why so many different societies have got to the point where they concluded that it was best to kick-them-out of so many countries.