One Final Disengagement Remains

The Prime Minister paused leaning forwards in his chair. Around him microphones were being arranged and cameras positioned. Channel 1 and Channel 2 and Army Radio and many more foreign reporters had come. This was not entirely usual but then his speech would be entirely unique and of integral importance. The speech had been extensively prepared and written for him. It had been tested on selected audiences but still he knew it would be a difficult one to make. He leaned into the microphone.

"Fellow Citizens of the State of Israel,

My brothers and sisters. We have fought together in battles, lived and worked together in one country as one nation. I come today with a great sadness in my heart to deliver a speech to you as significant as Ben Gurion's declaration of independence.

As you know we have struggled for many years with scourge of terrorism only to watch our children die. We have fought to exist in a hostile area surrounded by countries determined to consider us their enemies. We have tried many solutions to appease or defeat them but they have all failed. Today we embrace a final solution to the problem, disengagement.

Disengagement remains controversial to some. You have lived in this state all your lives. Many of you have fought and shed blood for it, as have many of your children. But disengagement is absolutely necessary and though I do it with a great pain in my heart, I am resolved to execute the disengagement of the State of Israel from the Middle East.

Experts have told you how unsustainable the demographics of a Jewish State in the Middle East are. I need not repeat what they have said. Every schoolchild is well aware that we surrounded on all sides by hostile Arab nations and that a large and growing percentage of our population is Arab. We have attempted to address the situation by smaller disengagements. We have disengaged from Gaza and the West Bank. We have disengaged from East Jerusalem. We have disengaged from the Galilee. We have disengaged from the Negev. We have disengaged from Haifa. We have disengaged and uprooted every Jewish community living in a portion of Israel with an Arab majority or a large Arab minority. Yet this has not helped.

The terrorism has continued as has the hostility of our Arab neighbors as has the demographic problem posed by an Arab population inside Israel with a much higher birth rate than us. As we have continued to retreat, we have come to see that we have only two options. We can either expel the Arabs, which unlike expelling Jews is an unacceptable act of racism and ethnic cleansing, or we can choose to depart from this land entirely. It is a difficult decision yet the way has become clear to me. For Israel to survive, Israel must be destroyed.

Surely we all aware of the tremendous cost of maintaining our army and navy and air force and intelligence services. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and reservists risk their lives on a regular basis to protect the security of a handful of Jews among over a hundred million Arabs. It is an impossible burden to ask them to bear. Disengagement will free them from that burden, forever.

The Palestinians have told us time and time again that there would be peace if there was no Israel and if they could claim all the territory of the State of Israel and build a state on that land. Now while each time the Palestinians have promised us anything they have not proven trustworthy, yet the international community has continued to support them. Now when we abandon the land entirely to them and they will still not build a working state, it will prove once and for all to the world that the Palestinians are not reliable partners in peace for us or anyone who in the future tries to make peace with them.

Many of you I know are concerned about the loss of your homes and businesses. You have spent a lifetime working to build them and now you fear that the disengagement will take them from you. I however can reassure you that the government of Israel will be providing fair compensation for your losses. As the Disengagement liquidates the State, the State will liquidate all its assets at home and abroad ranging from embassies to the military and even the Knesset and Yad Vashem buildings, which the Palestinians or some international party may choose to buy from us. Using those funds we will return you up to ten percent of the value of your home or business in what was the former Land of Israel.

Some of you I know are concerned about where you will go after the Disengagement. The government in close cooperation with the international community is seeking solutions to just that question. Many countries have generously offered to take in Jews. Germany, Poland, France and Holland, Spain and Russia are just a few of the countries that have offered to take in Jews whose ancestors immigrated from those countries. We are also negotiating with Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria and Morocco for the return of the Jews from those lands back home. The Jewish Agency is transforming its mission from encouraging Aliyah to encouraging Yeridah and the departure of every Jew from the land by Motzei Tisha Bav.

Those who resist the democratic will of the government and defy its authority with acts of incitement and disobedience will nevertheless be forcibly expelled by the IDF as their final mission to former Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan which are being made ready to hold them. I know this will be a difficult mission for the IDF to engage in but it may be a comfort to our brave soldiers to know that their final mission will be to uphold the democratic authority of the government seeking to tear down the State of Israel against those lawless elements which would seek to illegally perpetuate the existence of this country and this state.

I thank you all for your cooperation and for the difficult labors of the past and the brief labors still to come as we complete the task of dismantling this country and our land. It is a painful and difficult task, yet we are determined to fulfill it. On Tisha Bav two temples were destroyed and now a third will fall as well. As Prime Minister I ask that we bow our heads for a moment of silence and go into exile again among all the nations where surely we will find peace and safety."

The Prime Minister leaned back in his chair. It was done. The State of Israel was destroyed. At last the terrorism would end. At least the Jews would be accepted among the nations. At last the Anti-semitism that he had been told was caused by Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands would end. At last he could rest.