The 90`s

Labor Gov't opening a Pandora's Box

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of October 27th - November 2nd, 1994

Do you hear them?  Listen carefully, these are the cries of mourning, the muffled, plaintive wails of mothers, father, sisters and brothers; the anguish of those sitting shiva for the 22-plus Jews murdered while riding in a bus on Tel Aviv's Diezengoff Street. It is the mourning for Corporal Nachson Waxman, a 19 year old soldier who was martyred for his people.  The Diezengoff Bus Massacre brings the death toll to at least 85 since the signing of the Rabin Arafat deal last September.

Nackshon Waxman was a nice religious boy from the nice new Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot - considered "occupied Arab territory" by nearly the entire world.  The Diezengoff bombing occurred in the very heart of Israel. Like Yogi Berra says, "it's like Deja vu all over again." Now that the dust is settling, some probing questions need to be asked.  

How has internal Israeli security become so lax that soldier can be kidnapped in broad daylight near Ben-Gurion airport (Waxman was not the first soldier abducted this year inside Israel by Hamas) and bombings on Israeli main streets?  How is it that the Hamas terrorists who carried out the Yoel Salamon Street shooting-spree the week before had any access to rifles and grenades belonging to the Palestinian Police? How is it that no one apprehended these terrorists way before they were in center of town?  How is it that Israeli intelligence is unaware that Hamas is actively operating in Arab villages a scat few miles to the north and east of Jerusalem?

How come it doesn't bother the government when Yasser Arafat states, in Arabic, in Gaza, hat he has no intentions whatsoever of disarming Hamas?  Why isn't the government bothered by the PLO's failure to rescind its covenant calling for Israel's destruction? Arafat, again in Gaza said "I will never give my hand to the annulment of one paragraph of the Palestinian National Charter."    Statements made by people such a Farouq Qaddoumi, head of the PLO's political department, don't ruffle their feathers either. Qaddoumi asserts that "Israel will have to withdraw from all of the occupied territories including East Jerusalem." This, however, is the moderate stuff. Qaddoumi said recently on the PLO's radio that "the Zionists stole our land" and that "there is a state Israel which was established out of historic coercion and it must come to an end."

Why does the government permit the Palestinian Secret Police to operate freely throughout the territories and Jerusalem?  Why do they tolerate the existence of Feisal Hussein's PLO headquarters at Orient House in East Jerusalem, replete with its own security guards, visa requirements and the like?  Why does the government allow PLO activists from Gaza to freely travel to and address Israeli Arab audiences in Israel and say things like "the light which has shone over Gaza and Jericho will also reach the Negev and the Galilee,"  such were the utterances of Rashid Abu Shebak speaking recently in the Israeli Arab Negev village of Lakia.

Getting back to Cpl. Waxman: Would the government have been as hot and bothered over the affair if Mr. Waxman had been in civilian clothes, a resident of say Efrat in the territories - a religious settler? How come neither Prime Minister Rabin or Foreign Minister Peres attended Waxman's funeral?  How come they hardly ever attend any of the recent terrorist victim's funerals? Why were they in such a rush to ink a deal with King Hussein? Were they concerned that someone might notice that they agreed to cede 135 square miles of territory and retreat to the 1947 - not 1948 - border, that someone might notice they've agreed to give Jordan 13.2 billion gallons of Galilee water annually?  And who knows what else?

The government has accepted the principle that land gained as a result of successfully defending ourselves in wars of aggression ought to be, can be and will be returned in exchange for written documents of peace. They have long ago decreed there is nothing sacred about the territorial integrity of the Land of Israel.  The Syrians are calling for a return to the 1947 lines - the PLO wants everything the U.N. said it should have in 1948. These concepts are Pandora's bozes and once one has stepped inside it's as though you're Alice in Wonderland or Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.

Polls in Israel show Labor's support slipping dramatically.  Dr. Mina Zemach's Dahaf poll from two weeks ago reports that the Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu would beat Labor's Yitzhak Rabin by 41 percent to 39 percent.  None too good for an incumbent prime minister. Gallup shows the two running dead-even and in overall Knesset elections, Dahaf shows Likud and its allies getting 41 percent of the seats and Labor and its allies getting 41 percent of the seats and Labor and its allies 36 percent.  In a nutshell, this says that the Israeli government still lacks a solid majority of public opinion to totally alter the course of Jewish destiny. To proceed further on the subjects of Syria, Jerusalem and the final status of Judea and Samaria, there needs to be elections now, to eliminate ambiguities and to give the victor a clear mandate from the people, so that if Labor is re-elected, at least the Nachshon Waxmans of the world will know what they're dying for and if Likud wins, hopefully there will be no more Nachson Waxmans.