Does this mean that there are no genuine, voluntary terrorists out there, acting only on their beliefs and not getting paid by anyone to do it?
Sure, if one guy goes crazy and pulls out a knife on people in the street, he might be acting alone. But as soon as you start talking about car bombs, suicide bombers, ambushes, roadside explosives, there’s no way to get these things done without coordination and organization, and those cost a lot of money. So much money, in fact, that only national governments are able to foot the bill.
THE PROBLEM WITH OSLO
I told you earlier that the first failed attempt of a two-state solution, in 1947, was followed by another one, in 1993. It was known as the Oslo Accords, because it was signed in Oslo, Norway.
The Oslo Accords were a terrible idea. They were not at all an honest attempt to establish long-lasting peace between Arabs and Jews. Instead, they schemed to keep the Arabs under the control of a team of outside gangsters, paid by Israel.
In Oslo, Israel inflicted on the Arabs a permanent policy of Divide and Conquer, sentencing them to a slow and debilitating decline. So far, unfortunately, the Israeli plan has been working. One half of the Palestinians have been reduced to poverty. All of them are living in constant fear of violence, without the most elementary rights which you and I take for granted.
At the root of the Oslo Accords was the old Israeli yearning to rid themselves of the Arab presence, once and for all. We don’t want to fight you, we don’t want to deal with you, we don’t want to know you.
Have you seen the protective wall Israel erected alongside the West Bank and Gaza? The same wishful thinking forged both that wall and the Oslo Accords: Please, just make the people on the other side disappear.
Remember how I called the British repugnant, for their policy of Divide and Conquer? Can you imagine how I feel about the Israelis who invented the Oslo Accords?
THE FIRST INTIFADA
Something remarkable happened in Israel or Palestine between 1987 and 1993: the First Intifada, or uprising, against Israeli rule in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which Israel had conquered from Jordan and Egypt in 1967.
Those territories are mistakenly called “occupied,” which would suggest that they were taken away from their rightful owners. But both Jordan and Egypt controlled those areas from 1948 to 1967 without widespread, formal international recognition of their ownership. Legally, those were no-man’s lands, and have remained so under Israel’s rule, with the exception of East Jerusalem, which Israel did annex. I prefer to use the less charged term “disputed territories,” which acknowledges the disagreement over who should rule them, without castigating Israel unfairly as an occupier.
The Intifada uprising began in the Jabalia refugee camp near Gaza, and spread like wildfire throughout the Gaza strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The Palestinians declared general strikes, boycotted Israeli products, refused to pay taxes, painted anti-Israeli graffiti everywhere, set up barricades, demonstrated in the streets, threw rocks at Israeli soldiers, then went on to hurl Molotov cocktails and hand grenades, and attacked hundreds of Israeli civilians with guns and explosives.
In the six years of the first Intifada, some 1,100 Palestinians and 160 Israelis lost their lives. Another 1,000 Palestinians were killed by their neighbors for suspicion of collaborating with Israel.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE ARABS? (I)