Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer
Rabbi Prof. Dov FischerCourtesy
Here is what Lapid told the United Nations:

“An agreement with the Palestinians, based on two states for two peoples, is the right thing for Israel’s security, for Israel’s economy and for the future of our children. Peace is not a compromise. It is the most courageous decision we can make.”

Now let us contemplate:

1. Most importantly, there never will be an Arab country west of the Jordan River, whether it is called “Palestine,” “Fredonia,” or “Lapidstan.”

More than 60 percent of Israelis now oppose a “two-state solution,” but even if huge numbers of Israelis change overnight — and that happened with the Oslo delusion — there never will be an Arab country west of the Jordan River. It will be impossible to implement. It will mean forcing over half a million Jews out of their villas, condominia, and apartments throughout the eastern part of United Jerusalem and all of post-1967 Judea and Samaria.

That is impossible — not impractical, not impracticable, but impossible — to implement. Israel’s most ambitious project to uproot Jews from their homes came in 2005 with the abandonment of Gush Katif and its 8,600 Jews. Remember what a mess that was?

Judea and Samaria house at least sixty times that many Jews — literally. Where will Israel resettle over half a million people? Where will Israel find them jobs? And what of all the Knesset members who live in Judea and Samaria — or have parents or children living there? And their staffers who live there? And the Haredim who now have discovered Judea and Samaria as critical to their housing shortages? All the Bibi haters nevertheless will come together over this one because so many of them or their loved ones live there, too, like Avigdor Liberman.

It never will happen. It might have happened thirty years ago, but that train has left the station.

2. Lapid spoke with no authority to make major policy changes or announcements.

He heads a caretaker government that ends in a few weeks. He is prime minister in name only. This is the price of Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked selling out more than half their voters. Yes, half those voters might have agreed with the primacy, at any cost, of avoiding yet another election. But the other half voted for Bennett and Shaked on the promise that they were voting “Yamina” — literally for a right wing party. So he made a deal that gave the stage to Lapid after Bennett had the stage for a brief time.

But new elections are coming anyway. The only difference is that Bennett opened the door to break precedent for an Arab party to be in the government, forcing changes in Israeli housing and infrastructure policy for Arabs in the Negev and elsewhere. And in the end, Israel’s haters still call her “apartheid.” Those haters include non-Jews like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, Jews like George Soros and Ben and Jerry, and — perhaps the largest group of all — non-Jews who tell pollsters and the media that they are Jews by virtue of some halakhically meaningless Reform or Conservative “conversion.”

When people ask me how so many who describe themselves as Jews can hate Israel and call her “apartheid,” I explain “Because they are not Jews. They do not fall into any category of Jews but are ersatz ‘Jews,’ many of whom never have seen a mikvah (much lesse immersed in one as part of a kosher conversion) and men who have never even been circumcised (much less by a kosher mohel conducting a proper bris or hatafat dahm procedure as part of a kosher conversion).

3. Hamas now can bombard Jerusalem and Tel Aviv from Gaza, driving thousands of families into shelters and the economy into chaos.

Hezbollah now can reach Haifa and also Tel Aviv from South Lebanon. Imagine if such rockets additionally were in the hands of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria. Arabs thereupon would blanket Israel during a war with rockets and missiles coming from all directions. The country would have to build an underground Israel to operate. Every centimeter would be within range of Arab murderous attacks.

And any Arab country west of Jordan would become a client state of Iran, much as Lebanon and Syria have become, stocked to the teeth with drones, rockets, missiles, and even more infiltrating terrorists than exist now. In short time, when Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) dies of old age or is turned out of office when his term ends by assassination, Hamas will grab Judea and Samaria, and oh what a swell time Israel will have then. The southwestern front in Gaza will make war in tandem with the eastern front in Judea and Samaria, no longer relegated to fighting alone.

In the end, though, it never will happen.

Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer is Senior Contributing Editor at The American Spectator, adjunct professor of law at two prominent Southern California law schools, Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, Rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California, and has held prominent leadership roles in several national rabbinic and other Jewish organizations including Zionist Organization of America and regional boards of the American Jewish Committee and B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation. He was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerked for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and served six years on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America. His writings have appeared in Newsweek, National Review, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Los Angeles Times, Federalist, Jerusalem Post, Israel Hayom, and other major Jewish and Israeli Hebrew media. Other writings are collected at www.rabbidov.com. To attend any or all of Rav Fischer’s weekly 90-minute live Zoom classes on the Weekly Torah Portion, the Biblical Prophets, the Mishnah, Rambam Mishneh Torah, or Advanced Judaic Texts, send an email to: [email protected]