Israel's Leaders: When will they ever Learn?

In 2003, the late Israeli political activist, thinker and commentator Shmuel Katz penned an essay entitled "Sharon's Egregious Blunder"  bemoaning then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's determination to nursemaid into existence a "demilitarized" and severely limited Palestinian state.  According to Katz, the very idea of a state accepting permanent limitations on its sovereignty along the lines of Sharon's vision (and presumably current P.M. Netanyahu's as well) was the height of political naivete and, if implemented, would lead only to heartache and bitter recrimination:

If Israel were to reach the nadir of political inanity of actually helping to establish a state for the Palestinian Arabs, the Arabs would reject with all vigor the idea that their state would be hobbled by a denial of major armaments. No less emphatic would be the hostile reaction of a large segment of the European and other nations.

Even friends, appalled and distressed, would find themselves bound, albeit reluctantly, to deplore such a limitation of sovereignty. They would find it intolerable.

For the Arabs the military issue is doubly critical. First because the very idea of demilitarization would be regarded as a blow to their honor; second, because a sovereign state has never been the ultimate purpose of Arab policy. The purpose is the destruction of Israel. A state could represent only the penultimate 'phase' in the policy of phases. It could be the staging ground - with a large and variegated arsenal - for the 'final phase.'

That is the original Arab game plan. 

Arabs made their purpose clear from the very beginning of Israel's existence. In the UN debate on Palestine in November 1947 which led to the partition plan, Jamal Husseini, the spokesman of the Arab League States (there was no entity called Palestinians) announced that the Arabs would not tolerate the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine. The UN partition plan actually also offered them a state. They brushed the offer aside, rejected the plan, and on the morrow of the British government's departurefrom Palestine, the Arab states launched their war for the annihilation of the infant Jewish state.

Nineteen years later, when the Arab leaders calculated again that they could win, they launched what became the Six Day War. The leader of the Arab coalition, president Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, confidently, repeatedly and vociferously announced its aim. 'The liquidation of Israel' he declared 'will be liquidation through violence. We shall enter a Palestine not covered with sand, but soaked in blood.' This is pounded out every Friday in the mosques. It is part of textbooks in the Arab schools and is the highlight of political speeches in the Muslim world.

If the Arab objective is achieved, the sovereign state of Palestine could join the Arab League. There, a pact for mutual security exists. Any Arab state attacked may call on the other members of the League to come to its assistance. A ready-made casus belli exists: The Arabs have long laid it down that the very existence of Zionism is an 'aggression.'

Does it not seem that Katz's words are as true today as they were 7 years ago?  Perhaps it is not too late for Israel's leaders to heed them.