Godolhador writes:
So I spent part of Succot in the occupied Terror-tories, a.k.a Yehudah veShomron, in a typical middle of the road dati-leumi type Yishuv. The view was beautiful, and the people were friendly. They all seemed nice and normal, but on speaking to them, they were very brain washed about the overall situation. Of course they accused me of being brain washed by the liberal US media, so I didn't get very far in my arguments with them. But they believe passionately in our right to keep the territories, no matter what. When I asked them what are we going to do with 1 million hostile Palestinians, they responded that they don't have to live here and they can go someplace else. Where exactly? Dearborn? Lebanon? Ridiculous.
Lets take a look at these issues from 2 perspectives. 1st a pure ideal Torah perspective. 2nd a "realistic" perspective.
The Halacha is clear that unless gentiles meet certain criteria, they may not live in the land of Israel. There is a basic disagreement among the rishonim regarding what these criteria are. On the one end, the Rambam (Avoda Zara, 10:9) holds that unless a gentile accepts all 7 noahide laws in front of a Beit-Din he may not live in the land. On the other end, there is the Raavad and Rashi who hold that if the gentile does not practice idolatry then he may live in the land.
There is another condition though, and this is one that ALL rishonim agree on. If a gentile meets the above criteria, then he must still accept upon himself מס ועבדות (Special tax and servitude). The servitude that they must accept is described by the Rambam (Melachim, 6:2):
והעבדות שיקבלו--היא שיהיו נבזים ושפלים למטה, ולא ירימו ראש בישראל, אלא יהיו כבושים תחת ידם; ולא יתמנו על ישראל, לשום דבר בעולם.
The servitude means that they should be lowly and not lift up their head in Israel, rather be conquered by [Israel]. And they should not be appointed to any position of authority over a Jew, under any circumstances.
Based on these sources Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook Zt"l paskened that a Muslim Arab may live in the land as long as he accepts that the land belongs to the Jews and that he is living there only through our good graces.
If we are to apply these principles to the current situation, the Torah demands that the vast majority of Arabs be driven out of the land. Those who pledge loyalty to the Jewish state can be allowed to stay through the lenient opinions of Rashi and Raavad.
From a practical perspective, GH claims that the transfer of 1 million Arabs from the land is not realistic. This ignores the fact that transfer of populations has worked several times this century (Poland/Germany, Czech/Germany, Greece/Turkey, India/Pakistan). It also ignores a Haifa university study that showed (in June/04) that 64% of the Jews in Israel support the transfer of Arabs. The same study showed the 25% of Jews would vote for the Kach party (!) if such a party was allowed to run in the Israeli "democracy." This means that any claim that there is no support for transfer in the Israeli public is absolutely false. What is missing is a leader that can turn these potential votes into actual action. As far as the logistics of such a transfer are concerned. Well, we already saw in 48 and 67 how fast the Arabs know to run when they are convinced the Jews will actually use the strength that Hashem granted us.
Also, we can not ignore that this is really the only choice we have left. The Oslo path has already led to disaster after disaster. thousands murdered, even more injured, tens of thousands of lives ruined. The expulsion of Jews from Azza will just motivate the murderers to work a little harder. Basically, the path of Israel ever since the Yom Kippur war has been a dismal failure. So why not support that which the Torah demands? That is something only godolhador can answer himself.
