...Should any measures, not mutually agreed upon, be instituted in international forums to advance the establishment of a Palestinian state, Israel should announce that, since consensual resolution of conflict has proved unattainable, it will seek other alternatives – now unavoidably unilateral.
Next, the Israeli leadership must muster the intellectual integrity not only to identify the Palestinians for what they really are, and what they themselves declare they are: an implacable enemy.
Israel must also undertake a policy that reflects this underlying and undeniable truth — now made even more starkly obvious by the recent Palestinian-sponsored UNESCO resolution denying any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.
Clearly, Israel has no moral obligation or practical interest in sustaining such an enemy’s economy or social order.
Independence implies…independence
Consequently, should Israel be confronted with an un-vetoed resolution to promote Palestinian statehood, it must convey in unequivocally clear terms to the Palestinians, and to their supporters, that if it is independence they demand, then independent they will have to be.
As a result, Israel will cease, forthwith, to provide all services and merchandise that it provides them today. In other words: no water, electricity, fuel, postal services, communications, port facilities, tax collection or remittances will be supplied by Israel any longer.
After all, what possible claim could be invoked to coerce one sovereign entity to provide for another allegedly sovereign entity – and an overtly adversarial one at that?
Indeed, when Israel declared its independence, no Arab country rushed to help it develop and evolve. Quite the opposite: The Arab world imposed embargoes and boycotts on it, and on anyone with the temerity to conduct commerce with it.
These proposed measures will vividly expose the farcical futility of the Palestinians’ endeavor for statehood, people who — almost two decades after the Oslo accords and massive investment — have not produced anything but an untenable, divided entity, crippled by corruption and cronyism, a dysfunctional polity, an illegitimate president, an unelected prime minister and a feeble economy that — with its minuscule private sector and bloated public one — is unsustainable without the largesse of its alleged “oppressor.”
Nothing could do more to lay bare the absurdity of the Palestinians’ total dependence on the very body from which they seek independence.
...That just might have a chilling effect on the world’s enthusiasm for the whole idea of Palestinian statehood.
Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. (www.strategic-israel.org).
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