ISRAEL HAYOM
by Yoram Ettinger
June 13, 2014

Policy makers and public opinion molders who call for Israel’s separation from Judea and Samaria are aware that prior separations — from 40 percent of Judea and Samaria in 1994, from Hebron in 1997, and from Gaza in 2005 — yielded land-for-terror and not land-for-peace.

They are aware that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, did not separate from, but rather annexed, western Jerusalem and additional parts of the Land of Israel during the 1948-1949 war. Ben-Gurion did not believe in land-for-peace. In fact, he expanded Israel’s sovereignty (including significant construction) by 40 percent, in defiance of brutal U.S. and European pressure.

They know that subsequent Prime Minister Levi Eshkol did not engage in land-for-peace, but rather reunited Jerusalem — the most sensitive territorial issue — annexing eastern Jerusalem and expanding construction there. They are mindful of Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s application of Israel’s law to the Golan Heights (and expanding construction).

However, policy makers and public opinion molders are intimidated by projections of demographic doom suggesting that the Jewish state will, supposedly, become a binational state unless it separates from Judea and Samaria. They assume that demographically time is on the Palestinian side, since the Arab society is younger and reproduces faster than the Jewish society. Thus, they conclude, retaining Judea and Samaria condemns the Jewish state to demographic calamity. They accept the highly inflated Palestinian numbers without scrutiny……

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