Any Palestinian Regime Given to Terror Shall Not Survive

Last Friday night’s heinous murder of 20 young boys and girls, the worst atrocity in the wave of terror that has engulfed Israel for eight months, has torn our nation’s heart asunder and left many Israelis bereft of hope that this wanton bloodshed will end.

We are told that there is no way to stop Palestinian terror and no military solution to the current conflict. I vehemently disagree. Palestinian terror can and will be stopped by restoring Israel’s deterrent strength and by using that strength when necessary.

When my government came to power in 1996, the Jewish state had witnessed horrific carnage over the preceding months, including a spate of exploding buses and suicide bombings that left scores dead and hundreds wounded. Three years later, when my government left office, it handed over a tranquil Israel whose citizens shared a sense of personal security.

How were we able to restore security? We did it by restoring deterrence and by refusing to accept terrorism as an inevitable part of our daily lives. Yasser Arafat understood that I was prepared to use the full strength of the Israeli Defense Forces against the Palestinian Authority to stop terror, even to the point of dismantling Arafat’s regime; that my government would uniformly support this policy; and that this policy would be implemented in the face of international pressure.

The danger that Arafat faced was made clear to him in our response to the riots that followed the opening of the Western Wall tunnel--riots which lasted only two days--and in our response to the three serious bombings that occurred during my tenure. Faced with the threat to his regime, Arafat arrested terrorists, reined in Hamas and Islamic Jihad and instructed his security services to prevent further attacks against our citizens.

The restoration of Israeli deterrence led to a dramatic reduction of terror. By abandoning this policy, the government that succeeded mine endangered the security of Israel’s citizens.

By offering outrageous concessions, by negotiating under fire and by the ill-advised nature of its withdrawal from Lebanon, Ehud Barak’s government implemented a policy of weakness that also marked the government that had signed the original Oslo accords. The result was another wave of terror that has continued for eight months.

To restore that deterrence, we must now do three things:

First, Israel must be prepared to use any means necessary to stop the terror, even if that entails the end of the Palestinian Authority.

Second, the Israeli government must unite behind this policy, a policy supported by the overwhelming majority of the nation.

Third, Israel must explain to the international community that we are exercising our nation’s most basic right to defend its citizens. The presence in Washington today of an administration strongly committed to fighting terrorism should make that task easier. After all, if the U.S. and Britain bombed Moammar Kadafi’s Libya over the bombing of a Berlin nightclub, Israel certainly has the right to take action after Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are bombed by Arafat’s proxies.

Adopting these measures should stop the terror without having to dismantle the Palestinian Authority. But if Arafat doesn’t get the message, his replacement surely will: Any Palestinian regime that terrorizes Israel will not survive.

The central premise behind Oslo--that we could forge a peace with the PLO because it had given up its intention to destroy Israel--was flawed. In its place, we must return to a peace based on the concept of deterrence: a strong Israel that is prepared to defend itself. This concept has protected Israel since its inception, stopped the conflict with two of our neighbors and eventually enabled peace with them to become a reality.

But be aware. For the first time in decades, parts of the Arab world believe that it is possible to overpower the Jewish state. We must again convince them otherwise. I have full confidence in the will of a people who over the centuries has overcome obstacles far greater than Arafat’s corrupt junta.