Celebrate the Decision, Brace for Impact

While President Trump and his Administration gained a political achievement with the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel, their decision will be testing many sensitivities.

A historic day that aims to bring Israel closer to a final status with the Palestinians, keep the Saudis and the wider Arab world on a track to normalization with Israel, and bring together a coalition to deter an aggressive Iranian regime.

In the Old City of Jerusalem, there is celebration and there is awareness. President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is seen as an act of recognizing reality. The fear in Eastern Jerusalem is what comes next.

Until the Israeli security council decided to remove the metal detectors at the Temple Mount, Palestinian Muslims immediately protested and rioted in Eastern Jerusalem and many West Bank towns. Notably the Lion’s Gate in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter was a hotbed of riots and other drama. Not to mention the incitement stirred by the Palestinian Authority and international media organizations such as Al Jazeera, whose reporters were seemingly involved in organizing Lion’s Gate protests.

Starting earlier this week, Israeli Police in Jerusalem’s Old City have been guarding in heavier numbers. This recognition by Israel’s Authorities has brought calmness for the first day off of the United States’ historic move to recognize Jerusalem.

Since the era of King David, Jerusalem has been the center of the Jewish People. In 70 CE, we lost her and have been yearning to return for almost 2000 years. Jerusalem has been the capital of the State of Israel longer than London has been the capital of Great Britain and longer than Washington DC has been the capital of the United States. Israel does not need the approval of world powers for the Israeli people to know that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. To the East sits a tense audience, watching their past military defeats and international successes change course. Internally, Saudi Arabia under the Crown Prince is moving forward, understanding Israel’s importance in the region. Especially towards the aggressions of the Iranian regime. As the Arab states take this decision on the chin, admirably they are also looking for a stronger future.

The Ayatollahs in Iran also see this decision as destructive. They speak publicly to taunt Israel’s emotions for a war with a strengthened Hezbollah, though they also see the future Sunni-Israeli alliance. Their next few moves will determine their long-term possibilities. Trump’s decision could bring the consequence of an intifada, but not long-scale war between Israel and Iranian proxies. Consequentially, an “intifada” brings upon the death of targeted Israeli soldiers, residents living their daily lives, and even visiting tourists. We do not forget about the deaths of terror inspired young adults from local Palestinian neighborhoods.

Enjoy this historic moment for Israel and brace for impact, Jerusalem has awoken again.

Change in Jordan, Easy, Cheap and Good for Everyone

Despite Israel’s desire to protect the Hashemite regime, and stay out of messy Arab internal politics, it is now public knowledge that the Israeli intelligence establishment believes that Jordan’s king’s fall is imminent, and Israeli officials have been whispering that in private for a while, desperately discussing ways to save king and keep him in power. Nonetheless, a well-calculated, carefully-ushered and engineered change in Jordan could pose a huge opportunity for US, Israel, our Jordanian people, and all of those who want peace.

No, we’re not seeking a total regime change in Jordan, in which the state itself is turned into nothingness, leaving a gap for Islamists to jump in and take over. That was Obama’s style at best, because Obama did not know better, or at worst, because he wanted the Islamists to take over.

The change we desire for Jordan will be simple: Seeing the already irrelevant king leave by a small and peaceful revolution that is protected by the army. The US does not and need not interfere, this will be an internal Jordanian affair. All the US should do is offer the king a safe exit while Jordan’s army and strong intelligence keep the country intact and the Islamists at bay. This was the case when Egyptians took to the streets against the Muslim Brotherhood, deposed Morsi and the army protected the people, and the outcome: Serendipity, and more secular and peaceful Egypt, under a strong and wonderful man, President Sisi. Worth-noting here, that Jordan’s king does not control the army or Jordan’s intelligence; therefore, he will leave in peace, the US, on the other hand, finances, trains and influences our army and intelligence and could help both secular and patriotic organizations to usher in a moderate interim government for Jordan.

The US and the region could obtain breakthrough advantages from change in Jordan. The first is destroying Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood. (MB). Jordan’s MB gets its power from the regime – so if the regime falls, the MB falls. Jordan’s own government believes this. This is important because Jordan’s MB is not just another terror group. The global MB HQ is based in Amman and controls Hamas and the global MB as well, especially Qatar’s. The US intelligence agencies are aware of this fact. If Jordan’s army -under US help and guidance- ushers in a secular anti-MB leader (like Egypt’s Sisi), that would be a major blow to the MB and the Western globalists forces who support them such as Soros.

The second advantage is ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; if a Palestinian-Jordanian leader becomes the head of Jordan’s interim government, and then Jordan’s president; this means that Jordanians from all backgrounds will have a home, and that 2.1 million Palestinians in Israel, all holding Jordanian passports, could find a place to call their state.

Next, once the king is out and his theft of public money stops, Jordan will become economically prosperous and attractive for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank itself. Meanwhile, Israel and the US should continue to apply pressure on the corrupt and terroristic Palestinian Authority, gradually putting them out of the business of killing our people, Israelis, and even other PLO figures. Defusing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be major blow to the globalists who have blackmailed the world for decades with it, and who remain united against President Trump and his advisor, Jared Kushner’s, effort to usher in real peace.

Another advantage is that a successful regime change in Jordan will put the region’s radical regimes on notice, Qatar for example. Those will need to end their hostility to Israel and to stop promoting radical Islamism, otherwise face the same music King Abdullah has. This also shall empower moderate regimes, and champions of change, such as the very pragmatic Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Ben Salman, and UAE’s Crown Prince, Mohammad Ben Zayed.

America’s deep and positive influence of Jordan’s army and security agencies means the country will remain safe during the transition, and so will its borders with Israel. In fact, it is this influence that keeps Jordan’s borders with Israel safe, and not the absentee landlord king who spends most of his time in Europe, with documented travel of 30 percent of the year, not counting his year-long private vacations. Basically, he is irrelevant to everything and anything in Jordan.

One a new interim leadership is in power, the first thing it should do is banning all Islamist groups, just like Sisi of Egypt did, and this will mean they won’t even have a chance of running for any public office, let alone for president.

Today, such positive change in Jordan will be embraced by several Arab governments who no-longer see Israel as an enemy and in fact would love to see an end to the expensive and obstructive conflict.

This sought change is the very reason my political party and I are proudly taking part in the Jordan Option Conference in Jerusalem in October.

The sweet music of change is playing loud, and we all better be listening.

Originally published in the Jewish Press.

Netanyahu’s empathy for Trump

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was attacked by the media for not jumping on the bandwagon and condemning US President Donald Trump for his response to the far-right and far-left rioters in Charlottesville earlier this month. It may be that he held his tongue because he saw nothing to gain from attacking a friendly president. But it is also reasonable to assume that Netanyahu held his tongue because he empathizes with Trump. More than any leader in the world, Netanyahu understands what Trump is going through. He’s been there himself – and in many ways, is still there. Netanyahu has never enjoyed a day in office when Israel’s unelected elites weren’t at war with him.

From a comparative perspective, Netanyahu’s experiences in his first term in office, from 1996 until 1999, are most similar to Trump’s current position. His 1996 victory over incumbent prime minister Shimon Peres shocked the political class no less than the American political class was stunned by Trump’s victory. And this makes sense. The historical context of Israel’s 1996 election and the US elections last year were strikingly similar.

In 1992, Israel’s elites, the doves who controlled all aspects of the governing apparatuses, including the security services, universities, government bureaucracies, state prosecution, Supreme Court, media and entertainment industry, were seized with collective euphoria when the Labor Party under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres won Israel’s Left its first clear-cut political victory since 1974. Rabin and Peres proceeded to form the most dovish governing coalition in Israel’s history.

Then in 1993, after secret negotiations in Oslo, they shocked the public with the announcement that they had decided to cut a deal with Israel’s arch enemy, the PLO, a terrorist organization pledged to Israel’s destruction.

The elites, who fancied themselves the guardians of Israel’s democracy, had no problem with the fact that the most radical policy ever adopted by any government, one fraught with dangers for the nation and the state, was embarked upon with no public debate or deliberation.

To the contrary, they spent the next three years dancing around their campfire celebrating the imminent realization of their greatest dream. Israel would no longer live by its sword. It would be able to join a new, post-national world. In exchange for Jerusalem and a few other things that no one cared about, other than some fanatical religious people, Israel could join the Arab League or the European Union or both.

From 1993 through 1996, and particularly in the aftermath of Rabin’s assassination in November 1995, the media, the courts and every other aspect of Israel’s elite treated the fellow Israelis who reject- ed their positions as the moral and qualitative equivalent of terrorists. Like the murderers of innocents, these law-abiding Israelis were “enemies of peace.”

As for terrorism, the Oslo process ushered in not an era of peace, but an era of unprecedented violence. The first time Israelis were beset by suicide bombers in their midst was in April 1994, when the euphoria over the coming peace was at its height.

The 1996 election was the first opportunity the public had to vote on the Oslo process. Then, in spite of Rabin’s assassination and the beautiful ceremonies on the White House lawns with balloons and children holding flowers, the people of Israel said no thank you. We are Zionists, not post-Zionists. We don’t like to get blown to smithereens on buses, and we don’t appreciate being told that victims of terrorism are victims of peace.

Trump likewise replaced the most radical president the US has ever known. Throughout Barack Obama’s eight years in office, despite his failure to restore America’s economic prosperity or secure its interests abroad, Obama enjoyed the sycophantic support of the media, whose leading lights worshiped him and made no bones about it.

In one memorable exchange after Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo, where he presented the US as the moral equivalent of its enemies, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas told MSNBC host Chris Mitchell that Obama was “kind of God.”

Obama’s job, Thomas explained, was not merely to lead the US as his predecessor Ronald Reagan had done. Obama was above “provincial nationalism.” His job was to teach morality to humanity.

In Thomas’s words, “He’s going to bring all different sides together… He’s all about ‘let us reason together’… He’s the teacher. He is going to say, ‘Now, children, stop fighting and quarreling with each other.’ And he has a kind of a moral authority that he – he can – he can do that.”

The American Left’s adoration of Obama was so all-encompassing, and its control of the mainstream US media so extensive, that it never occurred to its members that the public disagreed with them. They were certain that Hillary Clinton, Obama’s chosen successor, would win.

In 1996, the Israeli elite greeted Netanyahu’s victory with shock and grief. The “good, enlightened” Israel they thought would rule forever had just been defeated by the unwashed mob. Peres summed up the results by telling reporters that “the Israelis” voted for him. And “the Jews” voted for Netanyahu. His followers shook their heads in mildly antisemitic disgust.

Their mourning quickly was replaced by a spasm of hatred for Netanyahu and his supporters that hasn’t disappeared even now, 21 years later.

The media’s war against Netanyahu began immediately. It was unrelenting and more often than not unhinged. So it was that two weeks after his victory, Jerusalem’s Kol Ha’ir weekly published a cover story titled, “Who are you, John Jay Sullivan?” The report alleged that Netanyahu was a CIA spy who went by the alias “John Jay Sullivan.” It took all of five minutes to take the air out of that preposterous balloon, but the media didn’t care – and it was all downhill from there.

Netanyahu, the media insisted, was a crook. He incited Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. He may even have been the assassin. His wife, Sara, was mean to nannies. She was a bad mother. She was ill-mannered in general and probably crazy.

Any prominent politician or luminary who entered Netanyahu’s orbit was demonized and libeled. Authors who dared to have dinner with him, journalists who dared to write anything half- way supportive of him, were effectively excommunicated from their professional cliques.

His advisers and cabinet ministers found them- selves under criminal investigation over nothing, and so did Netanyahu and his wife.

Every action his government took that could in any way be interpreted as a step toward weakening the elite’s control of the country brought bombastic headlines day after day, accusing Netanyahu of seeking to undermine the rule of law.

Every disgruntled cabinet minister, every slight- ed aide who publicly criticized Netanyahu, was given instant celebrity and star-for-a-news-cycle status.

The dovish commanders of the IDF and the Shin Bet were openly disloyal to Netanyahu in every – thing relating to the peace process with the PLO. Every attempt Netanyahu made to abandon his predecessors’ blind and misplaced faith in PLO chief Yasser Arafat was immediately leaked to the media. “Security sources” blamed Netanyahu for terrorist attacks.

When the Mossad bungled the assassination of Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal in Amman, it was Netanyahu’s fault. When Arafat used Netanyahu’s authorization of the opening of a new entrance to the Western Wall tunnels to unleash a terrorist offensive against Israel that left 15 Israelis dead in a week, then-Shin Bet director Ami Ayalon blamed Netanyahu at a live press conference.

The purpose of the leaks and the misdirection was to box Netanyahu in with no option other than to continue his predecessors’ failed policy of appeasing and empowering Palestinian terrorists.

Just as the notion that Netanyahu – the man who rejected their post-Zionist euphoria and insisted that there would be no new Middle East – had beat- en their savior Peres blew the Israeli elites’ minds to bits, so the US elite has still refused to come to terms with the fact that Donald Trump, the man they view as nothing more than a nouveau riche vulgarian, beat the anointed successor of their idol Obama.

So they hate him and cannot stop demonizing him. Whether it’s Obama’s director of national intelligence James Clapper, who insisted that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “largely secular organization,” saying that Trump is insane, or Bob Costa from CNN calling him a white supremacist and antisemite, there is no lunatic depth the American Left will not plumb to attack, demonize and dehumanize Trump and his supporters.

So how is a leader to respond to this sort of onslaught? Netanyahu for his part gave up fighting at some point in his first term. Faced with the implacable animosity of an empowered elite that boxed him in at every turn, Netanyahu decided to try to give them what they wanted in the hope of surviving in office.

He made a deal with Arafat and Bill Clinton at Wye Plantation. He handed Hebron over to PLO control. He surrendered government control over selection of the attorney-general to a committee controlled by the elites and so sank Israeli democracy into the hole it is still in.

Since 1997, unelected lawyers unaccountable to elected officials have the power to dismantle democratically elected governments, essentially at will.

Netanyahu got nothing for his efforts. The media, prosecution, state bureaucracy and security services continued to wage political war against him until, with the help of the Clinton administration, they overthrew his government in 1999 and brought Ehud Barak to power. Barak presided over a government so radical that the Rabin-Peres government looked hawkish in comparison.

Before Israel could move past its elites, the fruits of their radical policies first had to be ingested. In the event, the fruits of those policies were 1,500 Israelis killed in the Palestinian terrorist war and the emergence of strategic threats and repeated wars from post-withdrawal Gaza and Lebanon.

Today it is clear that Trump is wrestling with how to proceed in governing, as the American elites openly seek his political and even personal destruction. One day he tacks to the establishment in the hopes of appeasing those who hate him, and the next day he embraces his supporters and repeats his campaign pledges to “drain the swamp.”

The lessons of Netanyahu’s first term – and to a degree, his subsequent terms in office as well – are clear enough and Trump would do well to apply them.

You cannot appease people who want to destroy you. And you cannot succeed by embracing the failed policies of your predecessors that you were elected to roll back. The elites who reject you will never embrace you. The only way to govern successfully when you are under relentless assault is to empower your supporters and keep faith with them.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Preparing for a Post Abbas Era

The post-Abbas era will pose new threats and opportunities for Israel. It is up to Israel to ensure that the opportunities are maximized and the threats are neutralized as quickly as possible.

PLO chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas scored a victory against Israel at the Temple Mount. But it was a Pyrrhic one.

Days after the government bowed to his demand and voted to remove the metal detectors from the Temple Mount, Abbas checked into the hospital for tests. The 82-year-old dictator has heart disease and a series of other serious health issues. And he has refused to appoint a successor.

It is widely assumed that once he exits the stage, the situation in the PA-ruled areas in Judea and Samaria – otherwise known as Areas A and B – will change in fundamental ways.
This week, two prominent Palestinian advocates, Hussein Agha and Ahmad Samih Khalidi, published an article in The New Yorker entitled “The end of this road: The decline of the Palestinian national movement.”

Among other things, they explained that Abbas’s death will mark the dissolution of the Palestinian national identity. That identity has already been supplanted in Judea and Samaria by local, tribal identities. In their words, “The powerful local ties made it impossible for a Hebronite to have a genuine popular base in Ramallah, or for a Gazan to have a credible say in the West Bank.”

It will also be the end of the PLO and its largest faction, Fatah, founded by Yasser Arafat in 1958 and led by Abbas since Arafat’s death in 2004.

Fatah, they explain, has “no new leaders, no convincing evidence of validation, no marked success in government, no progress toward peace, fragile links to its original setting abroad and a local environment buffeted by the crosswinds of petty quarrels and regional antagonisms.”

One of the reasons the Palestinians have lost interest in being Palestinians is because they have lost their traditional political and financial supporters in the Arab world and the developing world. The Sunni Arab world, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, is now willing to publicly extol Israel as a vital ally in its struggle against Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. The so-called Arab street is increasingly incensed at the Palestinians for monopolizing the world’s attention with their never ending list of grievances against Israel even as millions in the Arab world suffer from war, genocide, starvation and other forms of oppression and millions more have been forced to flee their homes.

As for the developing world, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s refusal to visit with Abbas during his recent visit to Israel marked the official end of the Third World’s alliance with the PLO.

After Abbas departs, Agha and Khalidi identify three key actors that will seek to fill the military and political void. First and foremost, the Palestinian security services (PSF) will raise its head. The PSF is heavily armed and has been trained by the US military. Agha and Khalidi argue reasonably that as the best armed and best organized group in the area aside from the IDF, the PSF will likely seize power in one form or another.

The Palestinian forces pose a major threat to Israel. It isn’t simply that their members have often participated in murderous terrorist attacks against Israel. With their US military training they are capable of launching large-scale assaults on Israeli civilian communities and on IDF forces.

To understand the nature of the threat, consider that last month, a lone terrorist armed with a knife sufficed to massacre the Salomon family in their home in Halamish before he was stopped by an off-duty soldier. Contemplate what a well-armed and trained platoon of Palestinian soldiers with no clear political constraints could do.

The second force Agha and Khalidi identify as likely to step into the leadership vacuum is the Israeli Arab political leadership. As Agha and Khalidi note, since the PLO-controlled PA was established in 1994, the Israeli Arab community and the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria have become more familiar with one another.

Due in large part to subversion by the PLO and Hamas and lavish funding of radical Israeli Arab groups and politicians by foreign governments and leftist donors, a generation of radical, anti-Israel Arab politicians has risen to power.

At the same time, since the Arab Spring destabilized all of Israel’s neighbors, a cross current of Arab Zionism has captivated the Israeli Arab majority. Recognizing that Israel is their safe port in the storm, Israeli Arabs in increasing numbers are choosing to embrace their Israeli identity, learn Hebrew and join mainstream Israeli society.

Agha and Khalidi signal clearly their hope that the integration of the Palestinians and Israel’s Arab minority will enable them to worth together to take over the Jewish state from within.

Finally, Agha and Khalidi note that as support for the Palestinians has waned in the Arab world and the developing world, the West has emerged in recent years as their most stable and enthusiastic political support base. Ethnic Palestinians in the West are more committed to destroying Israel than Palestinians in Syria and Jordan. Western politicians and political activists who support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement are much more committed to the political war against Israel than their counterparts in Asia and Africa.

The Western forces now aligned against Israel in the name of the Palestinians will certainly seek to play a role in shaping events in a post-Abbas world.

This then brings us to Israel and what it must do now and in the immediate aftermath of Abbas’s exit from the scene.

The most important thing that Israel can and must do is send a send a clear message that it will not be walking away from Judea and Samaria. To do so, Israel should end the military government in Area C, where all the Israeli communities and border zones are located, and replace it with its legal code.

Militarily, it is imperative that the IDF be ordered to disarm the PSF as quickly and quietly as possible.

Since 2007, Abbas’s fear of Hamas has exceeded his hatred for Israel. As a consequence, during this time, the Palestinian security forces have cooperated with the IDF in anti-Hamas operations.

There is every likelihood that the forces’ calculations in a post-Abbas world will be quite different.

Israel cannot afford to have a well-armed force, steeped in antisemitic ideology, deployed footsteps from major Israeli population centers.

As for the Israeli Arabs, Israel can empower moderate, integrationist forces to rise to power. To do so, it must enforce its laws against terrorism-sponsoring groups like the Islamic movement and enforce its land and welfare laws toward Arabs with the same vigor it enforces them toward Jews. It must provide support for integrationists to enter the political fray against their anti-Israel rivals.

If Israel fails to take these actions, Agha and Khalidi’s dream that the Palestinian war against Israel is taken over by Israeli Arabs supported by the West will become a realistic prospect.

This then brings us to the West.

Economically, Israel has already begun to limit the capacity of anti-Israel forces in the West to wage economic war against it by deepening its economic ties with Asia.

Politically, Israel must reform its legal system to limit the subversive power of the West in its Arab community and more generally in its political system. Foreign governments must be barred from funding political NGOs. Israel should wage a public campaign in the US to discredit foundations and other non-profits in the US that work through Israeli-registered NGOs to undermine its rule of law.

By applying its laws in full to Area C, and by asserting sole security control throughout the areas, while empowering the Israeli Arab majority that wishes to embrace its Israeli identity, Israel will empower the Palestinians in Areas A and B to govern themselves autonomously in a manner that advances the interests of their constituents.

As Agha and Khalidi note, the Palestinians have been in charge of their own governance since 1994. But under the corrupt authoritarianism of the PLO, their governance has been poor and unaccountable. As local identities have superseded the PLO’s brand of nationalism borne of terrorism and eternal war against Israel, the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria well positioned to embrace an opportunity to govern themselves under a liberal rule of law without fear of the PLO jackboot.

The post-Abbas era will pose new threats and opportunities for Israel. It is up to Israel to ensure that the opportunities are maximized and the threats are neutralized as quickly as possible. Failing that, Israel can expect to contend with military threats in Judea and Samaria several orders of magnitude greater than what it has dealt with in the past. It can similarly expect to find itself under political assault from a combination of radicalized Israeli Arabs and Western governments that will challenge it in ways it has never been challenged before.

Originally Posted in the Jerusalem Post.

Modi and Israel’s Coming of Age

Modi’s historic visit is a good opportunity for Israel to understand where it now stands and what it must do to maintain and expand its current success into the future.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel this week marks more than the 25th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two nations.

It marks as well Israel’s coming of age as a nation.

When in 1992, India and Israel forged full diplomatic relations, the Indian government was reacting to a transformation in the international arena, rather than to changes that were specifically related to the Jewish state.

In 1991 and 1992, in response to the US victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, a large group of countries restored or inaugurated full diplomatic relations with Israel. These states – including the Russian Federation and China – had by and large been either on the Soviet side of the war, or leaned toward Moscow. Their refusal to forge full ties with Israel, a key US Cold War ally, became a liability in the US-dominated post-Cold War global order. Hence, they abandoned their Cold War rejection of Israel and instead embraced it.

Although ingratiating themselves with Washington loomed large in the considerations of most governments involved, they also took the step due to Israel’s independent power. If Israel had been a strategic basket case facing an uncertain future, then even in the face of the demise of the Soviet Union, Moscow and its allies could well have had second and third thoughts. Why anger the Arab world by recognizing a soon-to-be gone Jewish state?

Had Israel recognized and built on the sources of its power and attraction for other governments, it would have spent the rest of the 1990s strengthening itself still further – defeating Hezbollah in Lebanon, weakening the Iranian regime and working with the Americans to end its ballistic weapon program. It would have moved quickly to liberalize its economy to enable the million new Israelis from the former Soviet Union to immediately transform Israel into the global innovator rather than waiting for this to gradually occur over decades.

Instead, in 1993, then prime minister and defense minister Yitzhak Rabin and then foreign minister Shimon Peres decided to go off on a strategic tangent.

Ignoring or failing to understand the implications of the US Cold War victory and the economic and national security implications of the aliya wave from the former Soviet Union, Rabin and Peres decided the key to everything was appeasing the PLO – a terrorist organization whose declared intention was to annihilate Israel through a mix of terrorism and political warfare.

As far as they were concerned, nothing that had just happened in the world had strategic implications for Israel. Rather, Israel’s diplomatic, military and economic power were all contingent on making peace by appeasing the PLO.

To implement that strategy, Rabin and Peres and their government lobbied foreign governments to support the PLO militarily, financially and politically (not that anyone needed much convincing).

And they transformed the IDF. Rabin and Peres instructed the IDF General Staff to “change its diskette” in relation to the PLO and to fighting terrorism.

No longer were Israel’s generals to aspire to defeating terrorists. They were instead ordered to facilitate appeasement – through the transfer of land and military power to the PLO. The PLO, Rabin told them, could defeat terrorism more effectively than the IDF could. And all Israel needed to do to induce Yasser Arafat to defeat the forces he built, paid and commanded was shower him with money, territory, firepower and international legitimacy. The PLO was not Israel’s enemy. It was Israel’s peace partner.

Not surprisingly, this didn’t work out at all.

Israel’s diplomatic position collapsed. The international community effectively sided with the PLO against Israel when it rejected peace and initiated its terror war against Israel in 2000. Since then Israel has found itself targeted by political and economic warfare from the EU, its second largest trading partner and its previously fairly supportive strategic ally. Following Europe’s lead, the American Left has incrementally abandoned its pre-1993 embrace of Israel.

As for security, in the seven years of the peace process that ended with the PLO’s rejection of peace and instigation of its terror war against Israel, the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists was twice what it had been in the previous 15 years. More than 1,500 Israelis have been killed by Palestinian terrorists since 1993. More than 10,000 have been wounded.

Buffeted by the utter and complete failure of the appeasement strategy, since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in 2009, he has gradually restored Israel to the classic notions of national development.

Building on the market reforms he initiated in his first tenure as prime minister from 1996 to 1999 and his stint as finance minister from 2003 to 2006, Netanyahu has overseen the continued liberalization of the economy and expansion of Israel’s international markets to ensure the continued expansion of the economy and increase Israel’s attractiveness as a trading partner and investment hub.

Abandoning the PLO appeasement strategy, which made Israel’s diplomatic standing contingent on PLO approval, Netanyahu has based his diplomatic strategy on Israel’s economic and attractiveness and stability. He has emphasized the aspects of Israel’s economy – technological and agriculture prowess – among other things, where Israel has a comparative advantage to draw international actors to its shores.

While decoupling Israel’s diplomacy from the PLO, he has also gradually rolled back the legitimacy Israel unwisely conferred on the terrorist group 24 years ago.

The fact that Modi has opted not to visit the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority in Ramallah demonstrates the wisdom and success of the strategy. Modi may or may not be interested in establishing a PLO state, but he is very interested in developing his own economy. Modi recognizes the synergies between Israel’s comparative advantages in military and economic technologies and India’s needs.

As the leader of a democracy, his first interest is advancing his country’s needs. Whether or not there will be peace between Israel and the Palestinians has no impact on India’s security and prosperity.

Modi’s historic visit is a good opportunity for Israel to understand where it now stands and what it must do to maintain and expand its current success into the future. We must never again be seduced into believing that our nation’s fate will be determined by eternal factors. Whether Israel continues to prosper in security in the company of friendly trading partners and strategic allies is largely in our hands.

If we continue the hard work of growing our economy and defeating rather than appeasing our enemies while basing our diplomacy on what we have to offer the nations of the world we will ensure our prosperity and build a peaceful future for ourselves and all of our neighbors.

Originally Published in the Jerusalem Post.