-Caveat Lector-
Population new Arab weapon
By Paul Martin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
12/12/01
LONDON - Amid American mediation efforts, a new battleground has
opened up between Israel and its Arab antagonists. The issue: Whether
Israel can be conquered by making Palestinians the majority of the
population.
After failing to extinguish Israel in three conventional wars and a
war of attrition since its foundation in 1948, many Arab strategists are
convinced that this is now the key to destroying the Jewish state without
needing an all-out military conquest.
The underlying thinking behind this concept is not entirely novel. In
the past some planners considered that Israel could be "killed with
kindness." Their belief was that, after Egypt signed a peace treaty in
1979, Israel could be made so dependent on Arab trade and on water supplies
piped across the Sinai from the Nile - an offer made by the late President
Anwar Sadat - that it would eventually be unable to withstand Arab demands
for a bi-national rather than a Jewish state, and then become progressively
"Arabized."
Another popular Arab theory was that if Israel no longer felt it faced
an imminent danger of destruction from the outside, its unity in the face
of the enemy would evaporate, and supposed internal tensions between
Ashkenazi "masters" and Sephardic "minions" would lead to the state
imploding.
Now, as the intifada sputters on, leading Arab strategists say they
are fine-tuning plans to destroy Israel by using the "population bomb."
The prime proponent of this conquest by demography is Wahid Abdel
Maguid, chief editor of the Arab Strategic Report, an annual publication of
the Al Ahram Institute, Egypt's premier think tank. It's part of the group
that publishes Al-Ahram, the semiofficial newspaper.
"We are capable of increasing the demographic threat against Israel if
we demonstrate the necessary determination," Mr. Maguid said in a recent
interview with the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat.
Currently, there are around 1.2 million Arab Israelis and some 5
million Israeli Jews, but the Arab birthrate is far higher than that of the
Jews, and Mr. Maguid estimates that simply by natural increase the Arab
population will equal the Jewish population in 34 years.
However, Mr. Maguid outlines a five-point strategy for making sure
this "population bomb" can be accelerated, hence defeating Israel without
an all-out war:
.Limit and even reverse immigration of Jews from the former Soviet
Union countries.
.Bring Arabs living inside the pre-1967 borders into close alignment
with their fellow Palestinians, encourage them to spurn their identities as
Israeli citizens and give them decision-making roles in the anti-Israel
campaign.
.Maintain an ongoing "intifada" to discourage Jewish immigration and
encourage Israeli emigration.
.Continually build worldwide condemnation of Israel as a racist state
to prevent Israeli pressure against Arabs to leave Israel or to reduce
their birthrates.
.Promote an influx of Arabs into pre-1967 Israel through infiltration
and marriage.
The population battle has been joined already. Not only has the
intifada damaged Israel's economic output, living conditions and tourism,
it has led to far fewer immigrants coming into the Jewish state.
Apparently in response, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last month
announced his government's "plan to bring 1 million Jews to Israel by
2020." He identified as potential immigrants "hundreds of thousands [more
Jews] in the former Soviet Union, about 230,000 Jews in Argentina "in dire
material straits," as well as more than 100,000 in Brazil, 150,000 in
Mexico, 600,000 in France, 80,000 in South Africa and thousands in
Ethiopia.
Mr. Sharon added: "Israel is the only place in the world where Jews
can continue to live as Jews and withstand the danger of assimilation. ...
By 2020 we should gather most of the Jewish nation in the State of Israel."
Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, added:
"The country is strong today, but with a million more Jews it will become
even stronger. When Israel overcomes its current difficulties, we can also
expect it to attract Western Jews thanks to its thriving high-tech and
biotech industries. The quality of life is rising all the time."
Already the Palestinian Authority has recognized the dangers of any
new wave of Jewish immigration. Its spokesman has condemned Mr. Sharon's
proposal as a "powder keg" likely to set off a new explosion. His statement
expressed fear the new immigrants could be settled in the West Bank and
Gaza.
Mr. Maguid's fear would be that these new immigrants settle within
Israel's pre-1967 borders, as the vast majority of immigrants have, and
make Israel more Jewish. Mr. Maguid said success for the Arabs can only
come about if their leaders "heal themselves from the disease of suspecting
and fearing" the Palestinians living within Israel's pre-1967 borders.
He proposes that the future conduct of anti-Israel actions be
spearheaded by its Arab citizens, though coordination with Arab states and
Palestinians living outside Israel. Mr. Maguid recommends that infiltrators
into Israel should make it a policy to marry Israeli Arabs, making it
virtually impossible for Israel to expel the illegal immigrants. Any such
expulsions would be denounced by Arab propagandists as racism, said the Al
Ahram strategist.
As the Arab population increases, he expects Israel will introduce
repressive steps to "deny some of the social rights of the 1948
Palestinians" - a term widely used to avoid stating that they are Israeli
Arabs - and again open Israeli authorities to accusations of racial
discrimination.
At present, Israel contends that its Arab citizens, though restricted
on where they can buy land, otherwise have the same civil rights as Israeli
Jews.
The Arab infiltration is apparently already under way - though not
yet, perhaps, in the focused and organized way Mr. Maguid advocates.
According to Israeli estimates, more than 50,000 thousand non-Israeli Arabs
have crossed unobserved into Israel since the signing of the Oslo accords
in 1993. They are mainly Palestinians, Jordanians and Egyptians who have
taken up residence in Arab communities in Israel.
Even when infiltrators are caught, it's not easy to return them.
Jordan generally refuses to accept Palestinians, even if they have
Jordanian papers. Israel then deports them to the West Bank, but the
Isaelis admit it's impossible to stop people from simply crossing over the
"Green Line" back into pre-1967 Israel.
Transferring the infiltrators into the already overcrowded Gaza Strip
is more secure, in that there are well-guarded fences surrounding the whole
area. Mr. Maguid sees these infiltrators as merely a harbinger of a more
organized influx that would work whether or not there is a neighboring
Palestinian state.
Part of the Israeli-Palestinian agreement, should one come about,
might be a very limited "right of return" of Arab residents of the
pre-Israel British-run protectorate of Palestine. In all likelihood this
would be restricted to well below 100,000, based on reuniting separated
families.
However, in Mr. Maguid's view, even this would help. A wave of
immigration to Israel from the Soviet Union in the 1980s and early '90s
bolstered the Jewish population, though many of the immigrants turned out
to have dubious Jewish roots.
Mr. Maguid says a key plank of the new Arab strategy should be to
undermine Israeli efforts to persuade Jews to move to Israel. He urges
wide-scale Arab activity to meet with candidates for immigration to Israel,
especially in the ex-Soviet states, and tell them that living in Israel
will present more daily hardships and security hazards than in their
present countries of residence.
Continuation of the intifada, he argues, will "foil the Zionist
efforts to increase immigration and may even encourage emigration."
The key argument to make to potential immigrants to Israel is to
stress the feelings of "marginalization and disappointment" that he says
now exist among ex-Soviet immigrants.
Both Mr. Sharon and Mr. Maguid would agree on one thing: to the winner
of the population contest would go control over the nature of the state.
Should the Arabs become the majority within the boundaries of pre-1967
Israel, Mr. Maguid has no doubt about the type of state that would be
imposed.
"Palestine can be made Arab again - Arab, and not bi-national - Arab
Palestine," he wrote.
In the new Arab-dominated state that Mr. Maguid envisions, those Jews
who wish to stay could live "strong and respected under the umbrella of our
Arab culture."
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