What can we do about Gaza? The peace process tales are all very fine, but realistically there could be no peace there. The most benevolent Jewish policies would make 99% of Gazans content with Israel; still, fifteen thousand discontent radicals can carry out suicide operations in Israel ad nauseum.

Near absence of terrorist infiltrations from Judea suggests that Israeli police can rein in the guerrillas. Pervasive networks of police informants do the job. Checkpoints may help, but likely most interceptions there are tipped-off. Given the lax control of the passing Arab crowds at the checkpoints, bomb-carrying terrorists are mostly intercepted after the informants tipped off Israeli police. Arresting the bombers during routine checks is a convenient way to exonerate the informers.

Delivering a suicide bomber into a central Israeli town is a relatively complicated operation. Suicide bombers rarely ride buses; they need transportation, often a hiding place. Suicide operations depend on complicated logistics. Suicide bombers are usually street folks, and they pound several doors before finding proper terrorists willing to recruit them. Intercepting suicide bombers is an extremely hard job, but it is doable.

Rocket and RPG attacks are much simpler than suicide bombing, and less detectable. They are truly “fire-and-forget” operations. Rockets are being made in the safe, approving environment of Islamic fighters where Israeli infiltration is moderate at best. Rockets are launched from friendly territory; logistics is very basic and therefore interception is exceedingly hard. Doable, yes, but not always.

Then, Arabs have many other options for terrorist war, such as stabbing Jews and killing us with handguns. Those modes are not very popular now because the more efficient modes are available. Should the IDF end the Qassam rocket fire, Arab guerrillas would switch to other types of attacks.

One option is to leave the Arab-settled territories alone administratively and economically, but retain free hand there for police operations. That didn’t work for the British and won’t work for Israel. Sharon, as the military governor of Gaza, managed to rein in the terrorists by the immense police buildup. He continuously had huge police presence in Gaza. Such presence requires full administrative control over the territory. The IDF now keeps the West Bank relatively quiet because the guerrillas find Gaza more convenient for their operations. Should the order prevail in Gaza, the guerrillas can just as well step up their activity in the crowded slums and camps in the West Bank.

Hit-and-run or hit-and-retreat tactics never works for defenders. Israel cannot defend herself by occasional raids into the Arab territories.

Won’t the situation settle in, perhaps, a century or two? Israel can continue defending herself with limited raids in the Arab-populated territories, and wait for the things to eventually calm down. Many states lived in hostility until they eventually settled. It is not certain, however, that any border disputes are settled forever. Alsace and Lorraine are the famous example of recurring dispute. Still less are the chances of settlement when the entire country is disputed, and the fifth column (of Israeli Arabs) props the dispute. Border issues hold a chance of being settled when the cost of fighting them is unreasonable. Limited raids, on the contrary, limit the cost of fighting. The West Bank Arabs feel the IDF presence only at the checkpoints, and targeted raids leave the locals unaffected. Sending suicide bombers into Israel creates no inconvenience for the mainstream Arab population. Israeli-Palestinian situation is most reminiscent of the Mexican gangs’ attacks on the United States, which were only ended when the US annexed the lawless parts of Mexico.

It is important to realize that no peace process or even economic development would end the Arab terrorist attacks on Israel. It is unrealistic to imagine several successive Palestinian governments conducting Ataturk-like propaganda to make a generation of Palestinian Arabs accept Jewish state on the land they consider theirs, and even Ataturk’s reforms eventually failed, as can be seen in the Islamization of modern Turkey. The returning Palestinian refugees are so heavily indoctrinated than no amount of the contrary propaganda would make them forfeit their grievances against Jews. Unless Israel crashes any hope of return to the pre-1948 situation, Palestinians would hope to return to it.

What suffers a faster attrition: Palestinian hopes or Jewish patience? The passing time diminishes Palestinian hopes of reclaiming their entire land, but it also wears down the patience of Jews who expect terrorist attacks daily. Arabs are in the way better position: hope can be sparked while patience cannot. Any signs of Israeli weakness, whether military, ideological, or political encourage the Arabs. And a democratic country has no shortage of political swings which encourage her enemies.
This analysis bears out historically. Thirty years ago, even the left Jews rejected Palestinian statehood, but now many conservatives accept it. Polls indicate that the support for Palestinian state among the Jews increases after major terrorist acts. Palestinian Arabs, submissive in 1970s, now overwhelmingly demand statehood – and achieved it de facto.

Israel cannot bear the political attrition. Modern Jews, unlike ancient Romans, don’t accept war as a permanent state of affairs. Rome fought our Carthaginian relatives for centuries, but Jews today are unwilling to fight for our core lands for decades.
Crushing military response is not an option. No elected Israeli government would bomb the real terrorist nests: the refugee camps. Sending Jewish soldiers there without artillery cover, as in Lebanon, to control the Arab civilian death toll at the expense of Jewish corpses, is an option too immoral to advocate for even indirectly. Egypt wisely abandoned Gaza to Israel; arm every person in Harlem with automatic rifle, and you would still get a Switzerland there compared to Gaza.

Palestinian guerrillas need to take a single step to turn the tables: develop Qassam rockets with reliable ten-mile range. They already had successful launches of that type. Such technological advance would allow them to launch rockets at Ashkelon from Jabaliya refugee camps. Though Israel conducts routine raids into Jabaliya, she won’t be able politically to massively retaliate for continued attacks from the camp. Likewise, Israel cannot occupy Jabaliya because of the sniper fire. Cleansing the place of terrorists and leaving is also impossible because new terrorists are easily recruited from the jobless Arabs.

Employing all the Arabs in Gaza is impossible. The place is overcrowded, lacks resources, and Arabs are anyway unsuitable for productive activities. Four generations lived in Gaza on the UNRWA handouts. The place is a hopeless slum without a hope of rebound.

It is possible that Gaza’s population would grow hostile to the guerrillas. Such outcome, however, requires continuous Israeli retaliation against Gaza’s population centers and the hope of considerable improvement should they drive the guerrillas out. Neither proposition is true. Moreover, guerrillas are deeply entrenched in Gaza. They buy loyalty with Iranian-funded charities and threaten the population into loyalty by exemplary punishments of non-complying civilians. Though the popular mood in Gaza can change, no preconditions for it are observed.

The only way to end the Gaza’s problem is to end Gaza. Israel punishes Gazans by restricting emigration. On the contrary, let them go. The young Gazans won’t return home after attending universities in Egypt. Ban any Gazans from entering Israel, except possible in transit to the West Bank; Jews need not give jobs to Gazans. Retaliate for the terrorist attacks against civil infrastructure, preventing Gaza from developing any industries – which it is unlikely to develop, anyway – and to show the Gazans sheer hopelessness of building anything. In thirty years, Gaza could be reduced to the network of dying villages. In a generation, Gaza would be empty.

And safe for Jews.

Leftists concentrate their efforts on the Avodah party, but conservatives are dispersed among many parties. That situation reflects differences in mindset. Leftists are oriented toward immediate goals, while right-wingers look to high-flown ideals. Leftists join party lists and government coalitions based on the common current agenda; fringe conservatives refuse to join those with slightly different religious ideas. Thus, Israel sports several ultra-conservative religious parties.

Feiglin wrongly decided to subvert Likud instead of forming his own party. Feiglin’s choice was circumstantial: he needed to quickly join a party list in order to gain immunity from politically motivated prosecution. Likud offered only a dead end to Feiglin. Most of Likud voters are anti-Labor rather than right; few subscribe to Feiglin’s policy of holding on to Judea and Samaria. Likud also moderated Feiglin, particularly on the issue of transferring Israeli Arabs to Jordan; such moderation cost Feiglin a great number of right-wing votes. Feiglin has little chance to rise through Likud’s hierarchy. There are many ways to shut him up. For example, the proposed merger with Israel Beitenu pushes Feiglin’s candidates to the bottom of Likud’s list. Even if Feiglin surprisingly rises to Likud’s leadership and makes the party right-wing, he would only see Likud’s electorate switching to other centrist parties. Party’s brand is a great asset in huge mature democracies like the US; launching a new party is prohibitively expensive. Small, new democracies like Israel typically have a fluid party composition, with parties continuously entering and leaving the political scene. That trend is especially pronounced in a country of credulous, dreaming, messianically minded Jews who jump on every savior media ads proclaim to them. Hijacking Likud makes no sense for Feiglin.

Can the right wing form a winning coalition? Voter turnout is fairly high among Israel’s 19% Arabs; they vote Jewish left (which is Arab right). Slavs and Jews-by-grandfather form about 15% of Israeli population. They often stand for strong measures against Arabs, but rarely support truly conservative ideas like the annexed Judea and Samaria, expelled Arabs, and even united Jerusalem; they are decent soldiers, but it’s just not their war. They fought equally courageously in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Close to 10% of Israeli Jewish citizens reside abroad and don’t vote. Not less than a third of Jews are hard-core leftists who embrace Arabs in the Jewish state and don’t consider Judea the Jewish land. Israeli conservatives cannot hope for a majority. Even if they do form the Knesset majority, the leftist Supreme Court would quash their racist moves, and Israeli security establishment based on the MAPAI core will enforce the left’s law. Murders of Kahane family and Ze’evi showed that Israeli establishment won’t risk ideological competitors. They will be bought like Lieberman, subverted into political mainstream like Feiglin, or killed like Kahane. Government propaganda machine didn’t yet try on Feiglin a fraction of its facilities mobilized against Kahane or Sharon.

There is no alternative to revolution.

Grown people criticized adolescents throughout the ages as immoral, lazy, money-hungry, etc. The adolescents grew up and similarly criticized their children. Teenagers don’t have our values, but neither had we have those values when were young. Values are a product of extreme indoctrination or long-term personal development. Israeli children are not ardent Zionists like their parents, but what Russian or American Jew was ardent Zionist at the age of fourteen? Titans like Zhabotinsky made some teenagers Jewish zealots, but most people distilled their values later on in life. Children are even more superficial than adults, and go for shiny objects: music stars, glamorous living, etc. Life will soon break their hopes to become new Madonna or for a villa in Beverly Hills, and they will start looking for alternative goals. They will come to the Jewish idea, and do so from much better start up position than their parents. Israeli children lack the Exile mentality, fear, and excuse-me-for-being-alive attitude. They know how to hate. They hate Arabs. Later, they will look to rationalize hatred, and embrace Zionism – not ethnic-blind democracy.

“Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences, no dialogs.” Abdullah Azzam

In more than a century of the Zionist enterprise, Arabs made no concessions while the Jews gave way continuously. Triumphant return to the Promised Land immediately degenerated into buying land from Arabs; that’s not what Joshua ben Nun did. When the Ottomans titled unused land in the coastal plains, Arab notables rather than Jews got it through legal machinations; speak of Jewish lawyers and simpleton Arabs. Jews settled mostly the lowlands without significant Arab presence, drained marshes and cultivated sand dunes instead of claiming the land from aborigines. Jews did not significantly protest when the British stole most of the land they guaranteed us in return for our support in WWI and established Jordanian princeling in two-thirds of Palestine. Jews accepted yet another partition in 1947 which created a second Palestinian state beside Jordan. Jews won every war with Egypt but returned Sinai, a place where Hebrews received the law which molded them into a nation and a place of critical strategic importance to Israel. Jews prevailed in every conflict against Syria and now all but accepted to return the strategically indispensable Golan Heights. Palestinians – an insignificant enemy – pressed Israel for sweeping concessions even while they keep shelling Jewish towns. The Arabs did not give way on a single issue.

Arabs protested Jewish settlement of Palestine; most Jews were unsympathetic to Zionist idea. Arabs always rejected massive Jewish presence while Zionist leaders implored Arabs to stay in the Jewish state. Sadat pressed Begin to evacuate Jewish towns from Sinai; Sharon concurred then and demolished Jewish villages in Gaza years later. Arabs refuse to accept Jews in their countries, but successfully insist that swarms of Arabs be citizens of the Jewish state.

The Arabs consider the land rightfully theirs and fight for it. Smart and critical Jews rejected religion and doubt their right to the land. The balance of will favors the righteous.

Judea, the second Jewish state in the West Bank, is assured of last-resort Israeli protection. Even the Jews who dislike ultra-Orthodoxes won’t stand idle as Arabs butcher them. Israel would intervene to retain its claim of representing all Jews. Because of that claim, Israel will oppose establishing of Judea but, once she is established, extend her the protection. If Israel is not the only Jewish state, then at least a Big Jewish Brother.

Large war between Palestine or Jordan and Judea is unlikely for some years, and by that time Judea would build a sort of conventional army, possibly with nuclear bomb. Religious Jews, ruthless to Arab enemies, will efficiently counter low-level guerrilla attacks. Israeli last-resort protection is only deterrence, much like the nuclear deterrence. The world believes Jews stand for each other, and Arabs will find Israeli protection of Judea credible.

Judea won’t have major trouble with economy. Religious authority shouldn’t engage in economic regulation, though there is a danger of religious socialism. Judea can thrive as free market, zero customs duty economy. Religious government will likely misuse money supply and cause inflation; Judea will be better off using foreign currency, whether Israeli, American, or Swiss. Ultra-Orthodoxes accept extreme poverty and subsist on donations now; that state of things will continue in Judea. Most Orthodox Jews work productively. They can build a parasite economy in Judea thriving at the expense of overtaxed and over-regulated Israel like Mexico near the US. They can build solid low-end economy with agriculture and basic factories.

Theocracies historically survived longer than secular states because theological authority is closed to doubt and questioning by subjects. Secular Judea will eventually slither down into the Israeli leftism, US populist democracy, or apartheid. In public opinion, only religious state can exclude Arabs; secular states must be ethnic-blind. Secular government which imposes strict moral code will be dubbed fascist and ostracized. No doubt, great, honest rabbis won’t ascend to the helm of Judea, but even a rav like Ovadiah Yosef would rule Judea more sensibly than Olmert rules Israel.