Peace at Last
A Satire on How Israel Can Make Peace with Its Neighbors . . . and What Happens Next
by Steven Plaut, Freeman Center For Strategic Studies, April 28, 2011

It was in the year 2013. The Israelis at long last gave up their attempts to resist the pressures of the world. Their newly elected national unity government approved the plan. The Palestinians, led by a coalition of the PLO and the Hamas, had already earlier announced the creation of a Palestinian state. Israel's Left had been holding weekly protests in support of Palestinian statehood. When the UN had officially and unanimously called for such a state, even the United States of Barack Obama voted in favor.

The national unity government of Israel announced that Israel was willing to accept the unanimous UN proposal for peace, supported by every single country in the world. Israel would return to its pre-1967 borders, remove all Jewish settlements from the territories of the new state of Palestine, recognize Palestine, and grant Palestine all of East Jerusalem, that is, all of the city located east of a line running north-south through Zion Square, renamed Martyrs' Square.

The world had not seen celebrations like this, celebrations that greeted the Israeli decision and the creation of Palestine, since the fall of the Berlin Wall or the transfer of power in South Africa to the black majority. All-night celebrations were held in every city of the planet, but none so enthusiastic as the party held in Tel Aviv in Rabin Square. Speaker after speaker appeared under a banner "Liberation at Last" and praised the decision to agree to the terms of the accord as the ultimate completion of the work and dreams of Yitzhak Rabin.

The settlers were marched out of the lands of Palestine at bayonet point, with crowds of jeering Israeli leftists pelting them with garbage as they moved into their temporary transit camps inside Green-Line Israel. Liberal Jews in the United States organized a march in Washington to celebrate. "Peace at Last" was the number one pop single everywhere.

The State Department sent out a message urging Israel and Palestine to conduct good-faith negotiations and round-the-clock talks on all outstanding issues of disagreement still separating the two sovereign states. At long last, there were two states for two peoples. Land had been exchanged for peace. Peace had at long last broken out in the world's most troubled region.

The morning after the Palestine Independence Celebrations, the message arrived in the Israeli parliament, brought in by special messenger. The newly formed government of Palestine had only a small number of issues it would like to discuss with Israel. It proposed that peaceful relations be officially consummated, as soon as Israel turned over the Galilee and the Negev to Palestine.

Israeli cabinet ministers were nonplussed. We thought we had already settled all outstanding territorial issues by giving the Palestinians everything, they protested. The spokesman for the Palestine War Ministry explained: the Galilee was obviously part of the Arab homeland. It was filled with many Arabs and in many areas had an Arab population majority. Israel was holding 100% of the Galilee territory, while Palestine held none at all, and surely that was unfair. As for the Negev, it too has large areas with Arab or Bedouin majorities, but is in fact also needed by the Palestinians so that Palestine can settle the many Palestinian refugees from around the world in lands and new homes.

Israel's government preferred not to give offense and sour the new relations, and so offered to take the proposal under consideration. Within weeks, endorsements of the Palestinian proposal for stripping Israel of the Galilee and the Negev were coming from a variety of sources. The Arab League endorsed it. The EU approved a French proposal that the Galilee and Negev be transferred to Palestine in stages over 3 years. Within Israel, many voices were heard in favor of the proposal. Large rallies were held on the university campuses, organized by leftist faculty members. Sociologists from around the world produced studies showing that these Arabs were victims of horrible discrimination and that Israel as a state is characterized by institutional racism. Israeli poets and novelists wrote passionate appeals for support of the Galilee and Negev 'Others.'

When Israel's cabinet rejected the proposal, the pressures mounted. A Galilee and Negev Liberation Organization (GNLO) was founded and immediately granted recognition by the UN General Assembly. It established representative consulate facilities in 143 countries. Weeks later, the infiltrations began. Squads of terrorists from Gaza and the West Bank infiltrated Israel through the new borders separating Palestine and Israel. The border fences were reinforced, but to no avail. The US State Department proposed that Israel defuse the situation by considering compromise on the matters of the Galilee and Negev.

Six months later, the 'victims of Jewish discrimination' in the Galilee and Negev decided to escalate their protests. Gangs of Arabs lynched Jews throughout the disputed territories. Roadblocks were set up, and entire families of Jews were dragged from their cars by the activists and militants, and beaten to death or doused with flames. The EU sent in observers, but warned Israel that there is no military solution to the problems of terrorism and violence. When Israel arrested gang leaders from the riots, the General Assembly denounced Israeli state terrorism against Galilee and Negev Arabs. French universities gave the pogrom leaders honorary doctorates. Dozens of universities around the world held special Israel Apartheid Week events to denounce the rump Zionist entity.

Meanwhile, boycotts of Israel arose throughout Europe. Israel's own leftists launched a Movement against Apartheid, and the foreign press reported that 400,000 protested attended a rally by the Movement in Rabin Square. Cars around Israel had bumper stickers that read "My Son Will Not Die for Nazareth" and "Peace Now". The Israeli Left urged people to refuse to do army service outside metropolitan Tel Aviv. The Israeli Labor Party proposed erecting a series of separating barriers throughout the Galilee under the slogan "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors".

But Palestine could not sit idly by. Even before the formal demands by Palestine for the Negev and the Galilee were presented, Qassam rockets and mortars were being fired into Israel from Tul Karem, Beit Jalah, and other towns in Palestine. Over time, the rocket attacks escalated. Barrages of rockets and mortars drenched Israeli cities. The death toll rose to 1,000 Israelis per month. The White House and State Department threatened to cut off all supplies to Israel if it dared to launch reprisal raids against independent Palestine. Large cargo ships from Turkey and Egypt, laden with advanced arms, entered the besieged port of Acre to provide munitions to the Galilee militants. Thousands of volunteers streamed into Palestine from around the world to assist in the campaign to rescue the Galilee and Negev Arabs from Israeli oppression.

On the afternoon of Yom Kippur, tank columns from Palestine cut Israel in two just north of Tul Karem, near Netanya. Palestine offered to withdraw in exchange for immediately transferring the Negev and Galilee to its control.

Meanwhile, outside Israel, synagogues in Belgium and France were torched. Teach-ins for the Negev and the Galilee were held on US campuses. A new conference was called in Durban to denounce Israeli apartheid. The White House insisted that Israel not use force to expel the invading Palestine troops who had divided the country, for the dispute was a matter for negotiations and dialogue.

Increasing numbers of Israeli politicians urged that Israel respond to the situation by granting limited autonomy to the Negev and the Galilee. The Americans offered to send in ground troops to protect the remaining Israeli territories, if Israel would only decide to accept the proposal to give up the Negev and Galilee. Let's have peace in the hills that Jesus roamed at long last, suggested the President. Jews living in the Galilee and Negev were under siege everywhere and the roads were unsafe. The road through the Negev to Eilat was cut by Arab gangs in four places. Leftist Israeli professors officially joined the Arab militias fighting for liberation, as did solidarity protesters from Western countries. Two of the latter blew themselves up on a Jewish school bus to show their solidarity with the oppressed Arabs. Ahmed Tibi, head of the largest Galilee militia, insisted he was doing everything possible to stop the suicide attacks on buses and cafes in Tel Aviv and Haifa by Arab activists from the Galilee, but the Americans demanded that he do more. The UK demanded 100% effort to stop the violence.

The Negev and Galilee liberation organizations raised their flags over their towns and proposed that the Jews living in their territories be resettled elsewhere. The Palestine War Ministry was shipping them guns and explosives. The first word came of a detention camp north of Nazareth in which Jews expelled from their Galilee homes were being concentrated, with a second camp opened in the Negev near Rahat.

Strange black smoke rose from the chimneys…