Priority Must be to "let West Bank Arabs Jews live as normal lives as possible"

IDF blog

I was seething when I saw this headline in the Jerusalem Post:

Yaalon: We must let West Bank Arabs live as normal lives as possible

Instead of worrying about the Arabs, our Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, should be worrying about us Jews!! And not just the Jews here in Judea-Samaria. Think of all the recent terror attacks in Tel Aviv, Kiryat Gat etc.

The 5 victims from the Nov. 19 terror attacks

This most recent "wave of terror" has proven the old myth a lie that the Arabs just want Judea, Samaria, the Golan and Jordan Valley, what Israel liberated in the most dramatic and decisive defensive war, the 1967 Six Days War. After very public threats to destroy Israel by Egypt, Syria and Jordan, Israel was forced to defend itself for its very existance. The result was totally miraculous; military experts from around the world can't explain how it happened. Not only did Israel survive, but it defeats all three armies and rounded out its previous borders, which were just ceasefire lines. The new borders were easily defensible, unlike the previous ones which had no logic to them and had made Israel the most vulnerable country in the world.

As the dust settled after the war, the Israeli Government inexplicably decided to use the liberated land to offer in exchange for "peace." This failed policy is the cause of the Arab terror we suffer from to this very day. If Israel had only declared full sovereignty immediately and encouraged Jewish return to our Biblical ancestral Homeland, we'd be living in true peace.

Statements like Ya'halon's are just continuations of that faulty mentality/policy. 

Moshe Ya'alon, A Pawn or Player?

Ariel Hermoni /
Israeli Defense Ministry via EPA

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon was in hot water for telling the truth, and now he's in boiling water for apologizing.  Simply put, no matter what he does, there will be condemnation.  Many Israelis cheered when Ya'alon said what we've been thinking and saying for a long time.  We wondered how long those words would stay "live," and we're still wondering how long he'll keep his job.

Dry Bones

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu runs a tight ship.  He makes the decisions, and he decides just how far his coalition can go. Many people had expected Bibi to appoint Ya'alon as Defense Minister for his second (this is now the third) term as Prime Minister, but he took the Leftist Ehud Barak. In that government coalition Avigdor Lieberman as Foreign Minister would throw out the "extreme Right" statements, sort of testing the wind.  Now Lieberman has changed his tune and sounds almost to the Left of Peres at times.

Could it be that this whole "crisis" has been choreographed by Binyamin Netanyahu himself?   Or is it more accurate to call it an example of Netanyahu's chess playing tactics?  (I still consider myself a dancer, so choreograph would be the word, but since Bibi is a chess player...)

Gelfand with Netanyahu and Livnat (Photo: Moshe Milner, GPO)

And let's go back to the big question.  Does Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon really have power and influence?  Many on Israel's pro-Jewish rights in all of the Land of Israel Right have been counting on Ya'alon's power, position, influence to protect the State of Israel from endangering itself.

• Does PM Netanyahu have any real advisors? 
• To whom does Netanyahu go to for advice?
• Does the cabinet, the coalition have any say in security policy?
• Does Bibi have the guts to call off further American brokered mediated PRESSURED talks when it's so obvious that U.S. President Obama and his Secretary of State Kerry want us to accept P.A. Arab terrorist demands which will weaken Israel to the point of destruction?

Plaques awarded to terrorists show map of "Palestine" erasing Israel
Palestinian Media Watch

Ya'alon's Inconsistencies

At first glance, former chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya'alon seems to understand the dangers of Israel's policies:

Ya'alon: Land for peace concept failed

But then, as I read the article, I saw that he really doesn't. He hasn't a clue, but that's no surprise.

First of all, remember that he spent his first retirement year as "Distinguished Military Fellow" at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was also Ramat Kal, Chief of Staff, after Ehud Barak's withdrawal from Lebanon, and we know how badly the army dealt with that dangerous campaign pledge. I consider him responsible for the results.

So what's under the headlines of his admitting that "land for peace" is a failure?

At the same time, he said Israel should give the Fatah-run PA in the West Bank a chance to establish autonomous rule

Isn't that basically the same? I think so, and it's consistent with the US aim of a G-d forbid Pseudistinian State. He does add the "condition" that Israel should be responsible for "security," but we all know that the Arabs won't accept that condition. It has been offered before and was the Pandora's Box which brought us to the horrendous situation we are in now.

Ya'alon's mixing of good and bad makes him as dangerous as all of the other politicians. He is no improvement, just a new model of the same.