Here and there we read about what to expect from President Bush's Middle East "vision": increased terror with Katyusha rockets raining on Tel Aviv, a restricted military field of operation, becoming a political protectorate of the Quartet and a military protectorate of NATO, Anschluss of Jordan to Greater Palestine, cutting off the Negev from the rest of Israel by a Gaza-West Bank corridor, Israeli-Arab irredentism, losing the mountain aquifer, orchestrated pressure of 'refugees' on the Green Line, and a reduction of Israel's international stature to 'loser' status whose future is already past.

No one, however, has investigated the internal implications of the two-state "vision" -- how will it affect us as a people and a society. Below are some chapter headings for further research.

Let the economists calculate: if the expulsion of 10,000 people cost 10 million shekels, where will the 100 million shekels come from to expel another 100,000 victims? Add to this sum reparations to the Arabs of East Jerusalem, and another 200 million shekels to liquidate the settlement blocks so as to keep us within the Green Line. They must also ask how the traumatic collapse of the lives of 300,000 productive citizens and consumers will affect the economy.

Doctors need to extrapolate, based on figures from the previous expulsion, the probable rise in cancer diagnoses, heart failure, diabetes, depression, and other medical conditions that will be sparked by the trauma of becoming refugees.

Sociologists need to research how many marriages will break up, how many youth will end up on the streets, how many disillusioned citizens will emigrate, and what influence a large and bitter population will have on the wider public.

Military analysts will need to calculate the impact on the IDF of desertions, refusal to serve, evasion, maintaining the lowest possible profile and avoiding induction into the officers' corps, loss of motivation, sub-standard performance, and the loss of our qualitative advantage (Will an officer in the reserves want to risk his life to recapture areas that will only be ceded to the enemy yet again?).

Psychologists need to measure the drop in national morale after ceding Biblical Israel as a result of an unconditional diplomatic surrender, and once there's no safe center of the country any more to escape to when the katyushas fall. They must also investigate the effects on the society of massive emigration, civil disorder, contempt for the law, and public disillusion and hopelessness.

Historians and philosophers need to research how actuating the "vision" of giving Biblical Israel to the enemy will influence the national ethos and how will the destruction of dozens of communities affect the Zionist value of Settling the Land.

Demographers need to predict how extinguishing the Zionist ethos will dry up aliyah and how the ability to attract new immigrants will be harmed by turning Israel into a midget country that can no longer be a 'safe haven' to Jews once its every house will be targeted by the enemy. How will the potential immigrant pool view a bitter land, hounded by pangs of conscience and mutual accusations, eaten up by internal strife and hatred?

Political scientists need to research the unraveling of Israel's democracy in a process similar to the degeneration of the Weimar Republic after Germany`s defeat in the First World War: weak government, civil disturbances, contempt for authority, a polarization of society into hostile camps, the rise of extremists, the corruption of politics, the bureaucracy, the legal system, and the entire society. They will need to determine the survival prospects of a sub-independent state that has lost the ideological and social unity that in the past gave it such resilience and strength.

Economists will also need to look at the future prospects of a national economy in an atmosphere of demoralization. Investors invest on the basis of confidence (credit comes from the Latin credo -- I trust), and who can have trust in a country whose actions testify to a total lack of self-confidence?)

When all these experts have finished their research, the poets can take up their muse and write the song about the poor dove, born with a black right wing, who tore it off in furious anger, wanting to rid herself of this hated limb. But when she finally succeeded in severing it from herself completely, she fell to the earth and died.
 

At the Annapolis Conference, the prime minister intends:

• To divide Jerusalem and give the Temple Mount to the Muslims;
  
• To cede and withdraw from all of Judea and Samaria;
  
• To establish a terrorist state in the heart of the country to be called
  
• Palestine;
  
• To give the enemy control of the mountain ridge overlooking "little
  
• Israel," rendering the densely populated center of the country indefensible;
  
• to expel hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes and to destroy their communities;
  
• To allow Arab "refugees" to immigrate to Israel, thereby recognizing an Arab "right of return."

This national disaster, which will place Israel's continued existence in jeopardy, is being orchestrated by a self-serving and corrupt political clique bent on trading the nation's most sacred and vital interests for a reprieve from their legal problems.

We, therefore, declare that:

• The government has no right to cede the Land of the Bible and to blithely discard the Jewish People's unique heritage of thousands of years. It has no right to reverse the Biblical prophecies of return to Zion that were fulfilled in our era at such tremendous human cost.

• The government has no right to use the state as a tool to steal the Land of Israel from the Jewish People and to give it to foreign powers, in absolute negation of the purpose for which it was founded.

• The government has no right to destroy cities, towns, and communities, to make hundreds of thousands of Jews into homeless refugees, and to steal their property.

By capitulating to foreign interests and to the tiny but powerful anti-Zionist Left in Israel, the government is shattering the social contract that is the source of its right to govern. By violating the foundational principles and norms of the Jewish State, this government has delegitimized itself.

When a government becomes a force that destroys what it is charged to protect, people have a moral obligation to refuse to collaborate, to disobey, and to resist its decisions, orders, and legislation that lead to national suicide and crimes against humanity.

The Jewish People in Israel and the Diaspora will not be bound by any international commitments of this government to cede parts of the country. It declares any such obligations null and void, and will do all in its power to defeat them.

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning.

Elyakim Haetzni is a lawyer, a devoted activist for Jews settling all of the land of Israel and a former Knesset member. He lives in Kiryat Arba. Contact him at ehaetzni@netvision.net.il

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