WILLIAM K. LANGFAN
Member of the Board of Directors
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
TEL # (561) 533-5116 - FAX # (561) 533-5118
May 10, 2011
Dear Editor:
All sane people want peace and all sane people do not want war.
It is the interpretation of the “facts” which determine our opinions pertaining to which steps will lead to peace or to war. Sir Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain both had the same information in 1938 relating to Hitler’s demand for the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia.
Churchill, out of power, vehemently opposed appeasing Hitler by forcing Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland for “Peace.” Chamberlain, the sitting British Prime Minister, chose otherwise and forced Czechoslovakia to surrender the Sudetenland to Hitler. Several months later, Hitler attacked Poland with his Blitzkrieg and World War II began.
Nobody can say with certainty that there would not have been World War II if Chamberlain had not forced Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland. However, it is not debatable that Hitler would have had a much more difficult time if his tanks had been forced to attack the highly mountainous area of the Czech Sudetenland.
The Wehrmacht’s blitzkrieg would have been ineffective against an entrenched Czech military force rather than the killing fields of the flat lands of Poland where Hitler’s blitzkrieg was supremely effective. Hitler might have had second thoughts about starting World War II if he had to deal with a treacherous, stiff Czech fortified mountainous resistance.
The Palestinian leadership ostensibly insists that Israel must return to the 1967 borders in order for the Palestinians to live in “peace” with the Israelis. The United States, the countries of the E.U., many Israelis, and many Jews in the U.S. are of the opinion that if Israel returns to the 1967 borders, the Palestinian-Israeli conflicted will be resolved.
All of us have the knowledge of the same basic facts. My personal analysis of the facts compels me to conclude that Prime Minister Netanyahu must take the Churchillian position in this debate.
There are three formal Palestinian documents all of which call for Israel’s destruction: The undated Fatah constitution,, the Hamas constitution which surfaced in 1988, and the PLO Charter (Covenant) which was created in 1964 when Israel did not occupy any part of the “West Bank” and was, by very definition, within its “1967” borders. Egypt and Jordan controlled the Gaza and the West Bank respectively in 1964.
The 1964 PLO Charter was amended in 1968 (after the 1967 War where Israel gained, for the first time, the “West bank”) with no change to the provisions calling for Israel’s total destruction. The Palestinian leadership has made several promises to eliminate the “Israel destruction” clauses of the Charter during “peace” talks. They have voted to allegedly eliminate any of the specific “Israel destruction” clauses and other objectionable clauses and to redraft a new charter. As of this writing, no specific Palestinian eliminations of the objectionable clauses have appeared, and no new charter has ever been published.
If one were to combine the failure to modify the charter with the public pronouncements of the Palestinian leadership which always reiterates the necessity of the “return of the refugees,” the additional fact that Hamas is a client state of Iran, and has agreed to unify with Abbas’ Fatah, there is no reasonable logic to conclude that return to the 1967 borders will actually lead to peace.
On the contrary, Israel should insist that all three documents must be specifically nullified by the 2/3 majority vote of the Palestinian population in a public referendum. The issue of “return of the refugees” must also be formally renounced by a referendum of all of the Palestinians.
The Palestinians must further enact a law which precludes a Palestinian political party from running for the legislature if it promotes the destruction of another country.
These matters and several other relevant issues relating to Israeli security must be resolved to Israel’s satisfaction in the same manner the US and its allies were satisfied before they returned control to Germany and Japan after World War II.
Respectfully submitted,
William K. Langfan
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