PUBLIC STATEMENTS BY ISRAELI LEADERS

QUOTES:

"We must do everything to insure they never return. The old will die and the young will forget. We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters."
David Ben-Gurion – First Prime Minister of Israel, 1949: on the Palestinian refugees who had just fled the combat zone.



"There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries, not one village, not one tribe should be left" (Joseph Weitz, one of the founders of Israel, 1940)



"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country .... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."
Theodore Herzl – founder of Zionist movement (from Rafael Patai, Ed. The Complete Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Vol I)



"... it is the duty of the [Israeli] leadership to explain to the public a number of truths. One truth is that there is no Zionism, no settlement, and no Jewish state without evacuating Arabs, and without expropriating lands and their fencing off." -- Yesha'ayahu Ben-Porat, Israeli Cabinet Minister, 1951.



"The very point of Labor's Zionist program is to have as much land as possible and as few Arabs as possible!" --Yitzhak Navon ("moderate" ex-Israeli president and a leading left wing party politician.)

THE ISRAELI VISION OF SETTLEMENTS POLICY (quoted at www.fmep.org: The Foundation For Middle East Peace)
As Moshe Detain explained, Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are essential "not because they can ensure security better than the army, but because without them we cannot keep the army in those territories. Without them the IDF would be a foreign army ruling a foreign population."

During the first decade of occupation after the 1967 war, Labor-led governments established the infrastructure and institutions for the creation and expansion of permanent Israeli settlement in the territories. Labor's approach was incremental, but after 1977, Begin's Likud government embraced settlements as its raison d'être and the key to the Likud's political renaissance. Aside from the ideological imperative to settle the land, Begin viewed settlements as his opportunity to create a political constituency rooted in the settlements of the West Bank just as Labor had done with its kibbutz and moshav settlements in pre-state Israel.

In July 1977 Begin refused President Jimmy Carter's request to freeze settlement activity. At the time, there were about 50,000 Israelis living in annexed East Jerusalem, but only 7,000 settlers in 45 civilian outposts in the West Bank and Gaza.

In September 1977 Begin's minister of agriculture, Ariel Sharon, unveiled "A Vision of Israel at Century's End," calling for the settlement of 2 million Jews in the occupied territories. The Likud plan proposed settling Jews in areas of Arab habitation and for numerous settlement points as well as large urban concentrations in three principle areas:

-- a north-south axis running from the Golan through the Jordan Valley and down the east coast of Sinai;
-- a widened corridor around Jerusalem; and
-- the populated western slopes of the Samarian heartland of the West Bank.

This last wedge of Jewish settlement was of prime concern to Likud strategists, particularly Sharon, who was intent upon establishing Israeli settlements to separate the large blocs of Arab population on either side of the Green Line north of Tel Aviv.

The Government of Israel has used legal ruses to confiscate Palestinian land for settlements. It has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the development and expansion of settlements in occupied territories. Settlement construction fluctuates between 2,000 and 5,000 housing units each year. By the end of 1985, the settler population in the West Bank and Gaza stood at 42,000, a 100 percent increase since 1982. By 1990, it stood at 76,000. In addition, 120,000 Israelis had settled in East Jerusalem, 10,000 more were in the Golan Heights, and 3,000 lived in Gaza.

(quoted at www.fmep.org - The Foundation For Middle East Peace - a well established and respected peace organization)

For the views of a radical fundamentalist group of West Bank settlers, see Gamla.org. They advocate the foricble expulsion of all Arabs not only from the West Bank and Gaza but also from Israel proper. Their website has a lengthy article detailing the exact logistics of the wholesale ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. They tactics may seem familiar. If you've seen the movie "Schindler's List" you will have seen most of the methods before.

Am I suggesting that the radical fundamentalists of Gush Emunim are advocating ethnic cleansing? Precisely.

One example:

THE LOGISTICS OF TRANSFER

[during the mass transport of Arabs out of the West Bank and Gaza]...meanwhile, any attempts on the part of the Arabs to carry out sabotage or terrorist activity must be immediately suppressed in the most brutal way. It is possible, for example, to implement a suggestion by Harvard Professor Alan Derschowitz, an American liberal lawyer and Harvard Law professor. With slight modification, it works as follows: Israel issues a warning that, in a response to any terrorist attack, she will immediately completely level an Arab village or settlement, randomly chosen by a computer from a published list.

The essence of the idea is to make the Arabs completely responsible for their own fate, and to make it clear that terrorism will not be merely tolerated, but will be harshly punished. Along with the world community, the Arabs will know precisely what will result if they attack Jews. The use of a computer to select the place of the Israeli response will put the Arabs and the Jews on a level footing.

The word "erased" very precisely reflects the force of Israel's response. The Arabs residing there will be evicted without compensation, all houses and buildings completely demolished, and the settlement itself, with the help of bulldozers and any other necessary equipment, will be leveled into a large field.

http://www.gamla.org.il/english/article/2002/july/b1e.htm

The author says "leveled into a large field" but it is clear that he means "a level construction site on which to construct a Jewish-only settlement." This is precisely the tactic that was used at the sites of over 400 Arab villages in what is now Israel: complete erasure by bulldozer: no trace of them left on the earth, on maps or in public documents.