Maybe we should thank Hamas for last weekend's "March of Return" (and make no mistake – the Hamas leadership is responsible for the events in which 17 Palestinians, including at least 10 terrorists, were killed). It was an attempt to distract the frustrated population, who are suffering from the distress caused by the Hamas "government." The IDF successfully carried out its mission of blocking the rioters, and should be congratulated. Hamas managed, as was its plan from the start, to scoop up admiring headlines and declarations of solidarity throughout the Arab world, including from some who would have acted exactly as Israel did if confronted with a similar challenge.
Still, we cannot ignore the fact that this situation – which could clearly have been predicted – demands an appropriate diplomatic response, including legal ramifications. Apparently, this still hasn't happened.
From Israel's perspective, the main lesson from last weekend's events in Gaza is that they should be seen as a pattern and a preview of what might happen in the future if an independent Palestinian state were to be established on our eastern border under the current circumstances. No security fence or even a concrete barrier can stop an organized mass attempt to breach the Israeli border along a much larger front than merely the Gaza border, unless the IDF and the rest of Israel's security forces maintain full control, not only of the borders of Judea and Samaria, but inside those territories.
This leads to questions about the conventions of the two-state solution. According to proponents of the plan, the "right of return" for Arab "refugees" will apply only to a Palestinian state – which is supposed to ease our minds about our tiny country being flooded with hundreds of thousands of hostile "returnees." As if the small and resource-strapped Judea and Samaria could support double or even more its current population.
The obvious conclusion is that any possible peace deal must put an end to the fiction of Palestinian refugees that the U.N., for political reasons, keeps on life support. The "refugees" should be granted permanent residency in the places they have been living for three generations.
Others will argue that the problem could be offset by massive Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria, which would check the Arab demographic spread, and possibly prompt some of the latter to emigrate. This scenario ignores the concrete reality, and all the tricky numbers won't change the fact that within a few generations – even if there is large-scale aliyah by Jews, a worthy goal in itself – we would see an Arab majority or at least a sizable Arab minority from Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. This would cancel the vision of a Jewish state and require serious restrictions to its democratic government, not to mention constant violent clashes between the populations of the "one state for two peoples."
There aren't many in Israel who identify with the insane idea of a single state for both peoples – although even they don't love the idea of a nightmarish "Gaza" controlled by terrorist organizations on our eastern border – and this is apparently the position of the prime minister, as well. The reality demands a) that the settlement effort focus on the country's security needs and b) intense diplomatic work to reject worthless solutions that are more dangerous than the current situation, even if they are spearheaded by our friends.
This does not mean that we must hold the status quo sacred, but rather that we – with the help of the U.S. – must move ahead toward interim solutions that will remove unnecessary financial, civil and governmental limitations from the Arab population in the territories without affecting Israel's operational freedom on matters of security.
