Early in September, 2008, I was invited to take part in a press conference in Oslo, the capitol of Norway. I had the honor of sitting with the Israeli Ambassador to Norway, distinguished representatives of the Norwegian media, and members of the Norwegian Parliament. I was there as the head of the Sderot Media Center. The title of the press conference was: " Iran at Sderot's Backdoor'
That afternoon in Oslo, for the first time in their lives, the Norwegian people learned about the rockets and "the rocket way of life" in Sderot. Sderot is the only town in the world, and the western Negev desert is the only region in the world, whose inhabitants have learned to live with the fact that Palestinian terrorist militias fire rockets at them and their homes every day. These people live with the fact that somebody is trying to kill them, and to kill their children, and to kill everyone they know.
The raw material for these weapons comes indirectly from Iran. Syria and Egypt facilitate its delivery to Gaza, where skilled engineers transform it into rockets and other weapons, and where terrorist squads fire these rockets at small Israeli towns. Thus did Hamas become a branch of the Iranian Islamic revolution in Gaza, just as Hezbollah had already become in Lebanon.
While some Norwegian Parliament members did show sympathy and said that they more clearly understood Sderot and Gaza, other members of the Norwegian parliament rationalized the Gaza rocket reality with the commonly held illusion that If Israel did not occupy the West Bank, and if the Palestinians had an independent state in the West bank and Gaza, there would be peace and security for all, and the Arabs would no longer have to fire rockets at Israel.
In other words- firing lethal missiles at Israeli civilians is justified because the Palestinians have no state, because Israel continues to occupy the West Bank.
The subtext: promoting the "two state solution" provides an excuse to justify on-going rocket fire at Israeli civilians, because people who think that way view the continuous rocket fire as a struggle for national liberation, and therefore for peace with Israel - after that liberation has been achieved.
The notion that the rockets' purpose is to force an Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory, followed by a peaceful settlement, gives countries around the world an excuse to send aid to the Palestinian Authority - which already receives the largest amount of per capita financial assistance in human history.
Indeed, the Norwegian government gave one hundred million dollars to the PA last year, continuing to send this money even after it was demonstrated that much of it went to Hamas, an openly terrorist organization that rejects any thought of peace with, or recognition of, Israel. Money given to Hamas is money to create terror.
People who think they represent Israel and who claim that Israel must support the two-state solution thus legitimize Hamas and the whole Palestinian terror network by saying, in effect, that the Palestinians have a RIGHT to a sovereign state, and that they are merely fighting for that right when they kill Israeli civilians. If even Israel concedes that the Palestinians deserve a state, then Israel also concedes that the Palestinians have the right to fight to get it. The people of Sderot, the surrounding communities, and Israeli society in general pay for that interpretation of the two-state solution.
In fact, the 'two state solution' is mistakenly used by Israel 's advocates to justify Israel 's approach for peace - even under fire or as a political solution.-
When Israel's advocates supporting a two state solution while Sderot and the Western Negev remain under constant missile threat - especially after Israel pulled out all Jewish communities and Israeli army bases from Gaza strip, on August 2005 - they simply ignore the fact that 7,000 missiles have been fired towards Israel from the de facto Palestinian state that has been spawned in Gaza over the past three years...
That is what a two-state solution really means - it means giving Israel 's enemies a convenient base from which to terrorize Israel 's civilian population. Sderot and the surrounding area have been part of Israel since 1948; Israel did not take Sderot during the Six Day War of 1967, in contrast to the West Bank and Gaza. If the Arabs really wanted a two state solution, and if they would then be satisfied with their part of the old Palestine Mandate, then they have no reason to attack Sderot, because Sderot is not and has never been part of the area that would become part of Palestine. That the Palestinians treat Sderot as occupied territory for them to "liberate" indicates that they do not want a two state solution as part of a final and peaceful settlement with Israel. They want a two state solution as a temporary phase until they can take the whole of Israel.
Let Hamas speak for itself. On 26 November, 2006, the day before the ceasefire before this one began - a ceasefire that lasted six months and saw more than three hundred rockets fired at Israel - Hamas issued this press statement: "We will not stop firing at the Zionist settlement Sderot, until the last citizen of Sderot leaves."
The map of " Palestine " on sale at any PA office replaces Sderot with the name Najd, Ashkelon with al-Majdal, and Ashdod with Isdud. Compare that map with the "peace loving PA" by opening the PA's web-site- http://www.palestineremembered.com/Gaza/Najd
" Najd- (Sderot)- Ethnically cleansed 24,649 days ago."
Are those the words of people who want to recognize Israel and live in peace with a Jewish state?
When the Arabs speak of the right of the return, they are not referring to a desire to go back to the West Bank and Gaza, but rather to the Israel of 1948 - the Israel that existed before the Six Day War. Palestine Authority schoolbooks show no rights for Jews living in the land of Israel, and they make no mention of the history of Jews in land of Israel..
We must address these basic issues of the conflict. We must raise some new questions. These issues must be discussed, first for Israeli society itself, and then for the foreign press, foreign politicians, government officials from abroad, and world opinion itself.
People must know:
By what right was the State of Israel established?
What were the historical and legal rights of the Jewish people to the land of Israel ?
And why has the Palestinian refugee problem persisted in a way that no other refugee problem in the world has continued?
It is the responsibility of anyone who speaks for Israel to emphasize that during the late 1940's more than forty million refugees around the world were resettled. Only one group continues to define itself as refugee - wallowing sixty years later in fifty-nine UNRWA refugee camps, financed by four hundred million dollars contributed by nations of the world to kid the Arabs into thinking they will one day return to Arab neighborhoods and Arab villages that have no existed for a couple of generations.
This Palestinian propaganda line of their "inalienable" right of return remains unexamined, even though most countries in the world accord it some form of recognition and blindly vote for annual UN resolutions that support this specious notion.
While millions of dollars are spent to find the best way to 'entertain' people with the Arab-Israeli conflict, the basic assumptions underlying the most commonly offered solution to that conflict are not being questioned. People are being fooled.
No nation in the world would tolerate even one rocket being fired at its people. But Israel is expected to accept not one rocket, but rockets as part of its daily life. We are even supposed to feel sorry for those who try to kill us, if the origin of their hate for us is that the Palestinian people have no state of their own.
The current "cease fire" with the Palestinian state regime in Gaza is scheduled to end on December 19. of this year. After that, everyone expects the Palestinians to resume their attacks on little Sderot - to "liberate" Palestine, they will tell us.
From Monkey in the Middle:
Again and again we hear from the Moonbats on the left that there aught to be a 2-state solution. The problem with that is the fact that neither Hamas or the PA want a 2-state solution. They want 1 state. A nation in which they control everything and all Jews in the nation are:
1. Dead
2. Displaced
3. Under the Dhimmitude.
This cannot be allowed to happen. Oslo is dead. The Bush initiative is dead. The idea of a 2-state solution is dead. And pretty soon, if things do not change, the Western Negev's population will be again under daily attack.
You can help. Click on the logo below and donate to the Sderot Media Center. Your donation helps the people of Sderot and the Western Negev with counselling, food, clothing and just sometimes a shoulder to cry on.
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