No Palestine

Former governor of Arkansas and 2008 GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee quotes

"Palestinians have a right to a homeland, but not within the boundaries of Israel."

"While both Israelis and Palestinians have a right to a self-governed homeland, it would be impossible for the countries to live side-by-side."

"I support creating a Palestinian state, but believe that it should be formed outside of Israel... Egypt and Saudi Arabia as possible alternatives, noting that the Arabs have far more land than the Israelis and that it would only be fair for other Arab nations to give the Palestinians land for a state, rather than carving it out of the tiny Israeli state." - 2007

This article appeared in The Jewish Press, published Friday, August 7, 2009 (17th Av 5769) under weekly opinion column “As I see it” by Rabbi Menachem Porush, a former Knesset member for Agudat Yisrael.

Israel-Arab Solution

It seems that President Obama is constantly delivering orders to Israel to not build housing for Israeli Jews in many areas of the Jewish state. It is unfathomable that a country no more than 27,000 square kilometers has such restrictions, while no limits on building are placed on the mega-larger Arab world.

This situation engenders great sadness and heartache.

After ports all around the world were closed to Jews seeking asylum during the Holocaust and British capitulation to Arab pressure to restrict Jewish immigration to the Holy Land, Jews fleeing from the Holocaust and Arab countries finally found a haven upon the rebirth of Israel. It has since been necessary to regularly create additional housing for the natural increase for Jewish families in our small piece of real estate.

But with all of the world’s problems, including those in the U.S. itself building homes in the Jewish homeland seems to be President Obama’s greatest “problem.”

I remember the time when a representative of the Jewish people, Professor Yakov Yisrael Dehan, negotiated with prominent Arab leaders. He suggested that Israel retain the borders similar to those that became the reality after the 1967 Six-Day War, while Palestinians would live in Jordan, within its considerably larger area of roughly 94,000 square kilometers.

Who in the political world would not be happy with this solution, rather than witness the suffering that the ensuring wars and terror have wrought on the region? Who can find fault with this suggestion?

President Obama should rethink his Middle East diplomatic priorities. Instead of pressing Israel to refrain from building homes for natural growth purposes, he should pressure Arab countries to accept Professor Dehan’s solution – namely that Palestinians live in Jordan.

This is my solution to the Middle East quagmire.