Security Israel's biggest issue, Q-C leaders say

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| Tuesday, April 8, 2003 11:16 PM CDT | () comments

Thomas Geyer

Skepticism permeates Quad-City Jewish leaders' opinions about the U.S.-led plan to create a sovereign Palestinian state by 2005.

Rabbi Henry Karp of Temple Emanuel in Davenport says that, once war against Iraq is over, "peace is not going to come at the hands of an American road map, or with American intervention.

"It's going to come when the Arab world decides that it is truly ready to live in a real peace with Israel, when they're truly ready to live in a peace where Israel's security will be guaranteed."

A prerequisite to that peace, he added, is for the Palestinian Authority

to abandon its policy of terrorism forever.

"The Israelis will be the first to tell you, the only effective curtailment of terrorist violence has been when the Palestinian Authority has acted to stop the violence," Karp said.

Israel is always willing to sit at the peace table, he said. "Israel wants an independent Palestinian state. It is not in Israel's interest to govern these people. It's the choice of the Palestinians to be peaceful neighbors with the Israelis." But that will not happen, he added, under the rule of Yasser Arafat.

One stumbling block to peace is the return of Palestinian refugees, now numbering more than more than 3 million, said Allan Ross, executive director of the Jewish Federation of the Quad-Cities.

"As a democracy, we cannot maintain the Jewish state by allowing the return of all the refugees. It's never going to happen."

Israel will not allow itself to be voted out of existence, Ross said. Refugees, however, may return to a sovereign state of Palestine.

As for the issue of lands that Israel has occupied after military action, he added, "There is no one in their right mind who believes that the way Israel was configured before (the occupation) will provide security."

Of course, the most emotional of all the issues is Jerusalem, which Israel declared as its capital in July 1980.

"A perfect example of that is the site (in Jerusalem) where Jews believe the original Temple was before it was destroyed by the Babylonians and then again by the Romans," Ross said.

On that site is the golden-domed Muslim Bayt al Maqdas, known as the Dome of the Rock, and next to it, the silver-domed Al Aqsa Mosque n the third holiest sites to Muslims.

"So who ultimately has claim to the area?" Ross said.

Many Jewish leaders fear the United States will put extreme pressure on Israel to accept some concessions that Israel will be unwilling to make without an absolute guarantee of security, Karp said.

"There is concern the U.S. will try to cater to the Arab nations, even though the Arab nations turned against the U.S. in this war," he said.

The U.S.-led war in Iraq has given the world greater insight into Arab thinking about the war, he added. For example, Palestinians gathered in the street in support of Iraq and called upon Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to fire chemical weapons on Tel Aviv.

"The war is completely unrelated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," said David Roet, deputy consul general of the Israeli Consulate in Chicago.

What the war is showing is that dictators who rule with terror will not be tolerated, he said.

Thomas Geyer can be contacted at (563) 383-2328 or tgeyer@qctimes.com.