How The Israel/Pan-Arabist Chess Game Plays Out Over Time
by Bruce L. Cohen • 19 November 2023
In chess, the skill of “thinking into the tree” is a core ability of master-quality players. Masters are not only playing “the moment” – they are playing the move of the moment after having thought into “the tree of” five to ten moves ahead and all their implications for position and tactics. Some genius-level players, like Bobby Fischer, were able to think ahead to the end of entire games.
What does the “tree” of possible future moves for a solution look like in the present Israel-Arab dispute over the future of The Land of Israel?
Here is an overview:
- A “Two State” Solution, by its very nature, demands compromise between Jewish and Arab interests. In the UN’s 1947 “Plan For The Partition Of Palestine” (Resolution 181)– a genuine “Two State Solution” – neither side got all it wanted. We Jews agreed to it as a place to start our forward journey together, side by side. The Pan-Arabist and Pan-Islamist forces in the Arab world said no, and attacked from 5 countries with armies outnumbering Israel 10 to 1, with the intent of destroying Israel. They lost. Arab interests have been attacking and losing ever since. The Sinai War, The Six Day War, The Yom Kippur War, the Lebanon War – all have been attempts to “push the Jews into the sea.” All have failed. Some have resulted in losses of territory and resources, like the Sinai Peninsula and Judea-Samaria (“The West Bank [of The Jordan River]” in anti-Jewish parlance).
Pan-Arabist and Pan-Islamist group’s opposition to compromise allowing a Jewish State to exist is driven either by nationalist-ambition, or religion: so, their extremist, one-dimensional vision (as was was that of Hitler and his Nazis) is therefore reason-resistant and compromise-resistant. To achieve their extremist, non-compromisable views, these sides will commit terror against any peaceful momentum leading to acceptance of a compromise solution, and toxify any peace developing between any Arabs and any Jews – especially the Jewish State.
Hamas is a good example of the above truth: the Hamas charter states that nature itself hates the existence any Jews anywhere, and will actively help Muslims to find them and kill them, no matter where they are, or hide. They feel ideologically compelled to kill every Jew alive. They are genocidal movements. Hamas is a small faction among them. There are larger organizations like the Houthis, Hizballah and even whole nation-states like Iran having this commitment, and willingness to have their entire nations destroyed by Israeli nuclear counter-strikes in order to cause Islam to conquer the world and remove the Jews from existence.
All “Two-State Solutions” proffered up to 2023 doom Israel to ongoing terror. As “the cost of doing business,” Israel faces the implicit demand of finding “acceptable” some annual number of Jewish lives destroyed by terrorism. No way has been found to meet Israel’s repeated necessary conditions to any “Two State Solution” – “security” and “secure borders” – and seems it cannot be met while there are Arab states and factions fomenting and supplying arms and military training to Arab and Islamic terrorism forces. Israel’s post-7 October Massacre position on Jewish victimhood for 2023 forward now sums up as this: the new acceptable number of annual Jewish and Israeli deaths and casualties from terrorism is now “zero.” Israel will after the events of 7 October 2023 do anything she must to bring the Zero Annual Victims standard into reality: and Hamas-type perpetrators of atrocities and war crimes, and their world of sympathizers can whine about it all they want: it won’t change this commitment now forward as it has in the past, as Israel has sought to appease an anti-Israel biased world.
- A “One State Solution”
One State, democratic in operation, would be either (a) non-national and multi-nationally governed, or (b) entirely Jewish, or (c) entirely Arab. Here is how the One State “tree” plays out.
A. An all Jewish State (“Greater Israel”) absorbing the entirety of the Biblical land-grant to the Jewish people, would be condemned by the entire world as unjust territory seizure. The world in 1947 granted that Israel’s claims to the Land are just, but cannot be inflicted on the longterm Arab squatters without showing respect for their cultural memory developed among the long-term squatters in the land historically known to have been stolen from the Jewish people by Imperial Rome in 70 c.e. – when Rome conquered it, re-named it with a non-Jewish Latin nonsense name (“Syria-Palestina” – the Syrians who live East of Israel, and Philistines who were Aegean colonialist conquerers on the western central coast of Israel, were deadly enemies with almost nothing in common); and threw out the Jewish population into world-wide exile.
B. An All Arab State would, of course, mean the end of Israel’s existence, and Jewish acceptance of return to a life of exile among the nations, with no national homeland, and again being at the mercy of the “host nations” which always, at some point, turned toxic on them with pogroms and Holocaust-like events. There is no way the Jews will accept this fate propelling from the original Roman seizure of the Jewish homeland, and condemning us to live from pogrom-to-next-pogrom, and Holocaust to next-Holocaust. “Never again.”
C. A One-State With Two Peoples Solution (either self-governed or multi-nationallly governed) would lead inexorably to the death of the Jewish State and its people for the following reasons:
i. In the One State with Two Peoples, the Arab nations would call on Arabs from all over the Arab world to flood Israel in as many numbers as possible; and those Arabs in the land to reproduce at a frenetic rate, so as to change the demographics of the One State by creation of a VAST ARAB MAJORITY.
ii. This majority would then be cited as the “democratic” justification for the Arab presence in the land to pass laws “democratically” that entirely ARABIZE the one state: its name would “democratically” be changed to Palestine. Jerusalem would “democratically” be renamed Al-Quds and given to the Arab world. The names of Jewish cities would “democratically” be changed to Arab names. Laws diminishing Jewish rights and existence would “democratically” be passed. Eventually, the Jewish homeland would democratically” be entirely Arabized, and laws would surely further be “democratically” passed that eliminate Jewish citizenship across time.
And if Jews objected to the above “ethnic cleansing” process, the Arab world would say to the rest of humankind, “it’s a democratic country, and these are laws and conditions created by democracy. How can you object? You believe in democracy, don’t you?”
The nations of the world have displayed a consistent propensity for Jew-hatred and anti-Israel bias. Thus, a multinationally governed Two-Peoples state would most likely result in a cascade of “democratic” legislation manifestly and increasingly anti-Israel/Jewish in nature.
So – the road for total peace from now forward is pocked with serious pot-holes.
Zealotry-based groups like Hamas – whether religious or nationalistic in their zeal – will always look for a way to become “a poison pill” to any momentum between Arabs and Jews leading to peaceful co-existence.
Jewish existence itself, and the Jewish State make the Quran clearly inaccurate and meritless – basically, an arabic Mein Kampf – and thus, Islamo-zealotry cannot rest until Israel is entirely Arab “from the (Jordan) River to the (Mediterranean) Sea.”
As for Arab national pride – having the Jews in a state next door, outdoing Arabs in every area of human endeavor 1000 to 1 … is intolerable.
As the son of one Hamas founded stated – “The west cannot understand: Hamas is still stuck in the Arabian desert in its thinking: it sees itself as a tribe, and the Jews as a tribe. In desert banditry-based culture, you attack other tribes to take from them what you need. Either their tribe dies or your tribe dies: there is almost never “enough” in the desert for both tribes to co-exist.”
A positive closing note for those who believe the Two Testaments of Scripture – there is a prophetically-foretold time coming when a solution will be found: the borders between Israel and her neighbors will eventually be so peaceful, there will be no need for checkpoints or defenses or bars or gates.
Ezekiel 38:11 describes Israel at a future time as …
“… the land of unwalled villages – those who are at rest, that live securely, all of them living without walls and having no bars or gates.”
The contention between our cousins and us will, at some point, come to an end to the extent that no borders or protective barriers between us will be necessary. What a glorious vision!
May it be soon, even in the days of some who are alive right now.
Kadima – forward (into history) we go.
Bruce L. Cohen
New York City • 19 Nov 2023
P.S. – the workbook (cover pictured above) “Israel, Arabs, and the Middle East” is available for purchase at this link. > PURCHASE