Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas A few months ago Muslim terrorists in Israel demonstrated a new method of terrorism. Leveraging on dry winds from the east they set the forests in Israel on fire.
This form of terrorism is extremely dangerous for a country like Israel because in Israel every man and a majority of the women (including firefighters) serve as reservists in the military. Can you imagine a simultaneous attack of rockets guerilla warfare and fires? In a traditional" war the manpower of the police and firefighters are diluted as the first responders are pulled into their military reserve units to fight. A simultaneous attack would be devastating to a country the size of Israel.
I am not writing this as an update of what is going on in Israel but I am writing to share my opinion regarding the Peace process between Israel and the Palestinians" which was destined to fail before it even started.
I dont consider myself a top negotiator or an expert in diplomacy but I am a businessman who successfully negotiates multi-million dollar deals on a regular basis. To successfully negotiate a deal each side needs to understand the other side. It is imperative to learn what is important to them what is a deal breaker and what isnt and know what they are trying to achieve.
Understanding the Israeli side is very simple:
Israelis want to live in peace in a Jewish state somewhere they can be safe.
Throughout history Jews have been persecuted. The Jewish people have been the worlds scapegoats from ancient times to the present.
After the Holocaust the Jewish people were meant to have their own state where they could live in peace and without the fear of being victims of government sponsored persecution and genocide.
The Jews were given a territory.
To understand the Palestinian" side you need to dig a lot more. What is the Palestinian" side of the argument?Their argument is that they want land for their own country and that they occupied Israel before the Jews. I can understand the reasoning of a group of people who want their own country.
The point I disagree with is their claim that they lived in Israel before the Jews. This is a lie.
The truth which is factually supported both by archaeological and scientific evidence is that the only people who have continuously occupied the land of Israel for millennia are Jews not Muslims and definitely not Palestinians".
You might be asking yourself why does he keep putting the word Palestinian" in quotes? Well Ill tell you: Its because the word Palestinian" didnt exist until Yasser Arafat coined the term in the 1950s. Let me explain. Yasser Arafat was born in Egypt but lived the majority of his young life in a refugee camp in Jordan. He was a brilliant guy with political aspirations and keen marketing skills. His goal was to unite the poor people of Jordan and overthrow their king King Abdullah.
To this effect he organized the hijacking of two Jordanian airplanes and an attempted assassination of King Abdullah. In retaliation King Abdullah and the Jordanian military bombed the refugee camps in Jordan and then exiled the survivors to Lebanon. When Yasser Arafat arrived at a refugee camp in Lebanon he noticed that the refugees there were not united. To help unify these unwanted refugees and give them mental strength and legitimacy he did two things: He gave them a name and identified a common enemy.
First Yasser Arafat coined the term Palestinians." Brilliant indeed as before 1948 the land of Israel was called Palaestina and was actually larger than the current state of Israel. Palaestina included parts of Lebanon Syria and major parts of Jordan. Palaestina was named after the Philistines people who migrated to Israel around 12th century BCE from Cyprus Crete and Egypt. They were NOT Muslims. It is also important to mention that Philistines means invaders in Hebrew.
The Philistines have no relationship to the modern age Palestinian" people. The land of Israel was named Palaestina by the Romans who conquered the land around 63 BCE. If you open any history book atlas maps or etc. prior to 1948 the Palestine flag was the Jewish star the Star of David.
Second it is a well-known military tactic that when you want to unite people you need to find a common enemy - my enemys enemy is my friend". Now that Arafat was living in Lebanon he couldnt unite the refugees against Abdullah as Abdullah was two countries away. He couldnt unite them against Lebanon or Syria as they were too powerful and if he tried to go against these administrations he would be quickly assassinated. So he decided to go after the common enemy of every Muslim country at the time which was the land of the Jews Israel.
Regardless of the facts the Palestinians" now had a homeland to fight for and an enemy that other Muslims countries would gladly support them in fighting against: the Jewish people in Israel. The Palestinians" want land because basically they dont want Jews living there. Kids in the Palestinian" controlled territories arent being taught math and science in schools they are being taught how to kill Jews.
This new state of Israel was established in 1948. The Arabs refused to accept the U.N. 1948 resolution and went to war the same day. Since then Arabs have launched wars against Israel on an average of every 7 years. The Palestinians" and most Muslim countries in the world refuse to accept Jerusalem as the capital of Israel yet Jerusalem has no biblical or historical meaning to the Muslim world.
Muslims are well known for trying to changing history. For example the Temple Mount was built on the ruins of the first and second Jewish temples. The first Jewish temple was built in 830 BCE and the Prophet Muhamad was born in 570 CE - that is approximately 1400 years AFTER the first Jewish temple was built. Claiming ownership of this area is like a homeless person breaking into your house and claiming ownership of your house just because you were on vacation while he broke in.
We were able to prove that the Palestinians" have absolutely no historic claims to the land of Israel but the Jewish people have over 5000 years of direct relationship and ownership of the land of Israel.
This brings us to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords
I truly believe that both sides the Israelis and the Palestinians" agreed to the peace accords as a way of kicking the can down the road. Neither side thought that real peace would result. Even during the so called peaceful times Arafat and his leadership continued supporting terrorism with the goal of 
conquering all of Israel.
Arafat openly called for terrorism against Israel and vowed to continue the fight as long as Jerusalem remained the capital of Israel. On the Israeli side Rabin and Peres agreed to a two state solution. This in my opinion was set to fail before it even started.
The geographical borders of these two states as planned could not exist! The Palestinian" state would have the Gaza strip on the west and Judea and Samaria on the east and in between going north to south would be Israel. So how would a state like this function? Every time a resident from Gaza would want to visit his friends or family in Judea or Samaria he would have to travel internationally" with a passport.
This means traveling through a foreign country where the license plates language currency and political climate are different. It just doesnt make sense!
Political & Geo-Political Failure
The Palestinians" cant achieve peace with Israel because the Palestinians" arent a united people - they arent the same people and they have different leaders. The Muslims in the Gaza strip are led by Hamas and are actually Egyptians - they speak in an Egyptian dialect and use Egyptian currency.
The Muslims in the Judea and Samaria are led by Fatah and are actually Jordanians - they speak in a Jordanian dialect and use Jordanian currency (Both also use Shekel the Israeli currency as well).
Physical failure
This goes back to the poor job the British and French did when they gave up control of the Middle East without a real plan. Throughout history most borders have been established by using geographical barriers such as mountains seas valleys etc. or through war. Given this context the borders in Middle East dont add up. Groups of people were given pieces of land to form their own countries without any consideration to the size of the group.
We can see that as long as the fight between Israeli and Palestinians" is for the same small piece of land peace will never be achieved as we will run out of room. To understand this lets look at the population densities of Israel the countries bordering Israel and other neighboring countries.
- Israel (without the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria) is 8019 square miles with an estimated population of 8541000 which makes Israels density around 1004 people per square mile.
- Syrias density is 306 people per square mile Egypts is 234 people per square mile Iraq is 184 people per square mile and Iran is 124 people per square mile.
- Gaza strip is at 13070 people per square mile and Judea and Samaria (including Jews) is 1311 people per square mile.
kind enough to bring massive amount of land to Muslim countries such as Egypt Lebanon and Palestinian" in the name of peace.
Itamar Gelbman is Councilmember from Place 5 in Flower Mound Texas.
