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By Ira Sharkansky
 JERUSALEM, July 20—My column about benign neglect brought several criticisms to the effect that such a posture would prevent a solution of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
It is time for another column on coping.
Coping is the default response when a problem appears to be chronic, or insoluble. On the personal level such a problem can be a family member, neighbor, or boss who is intolerable, irremovable, and for whom one's own option to leave is not appropriate. It can be an illness or injury for which there is nothing but a palliative (i.e., a medication or appliance that represents medical coping). The chronic problem can be personal poverty resulting from debt, a lack of education, or a physical condition that limits one's capacity. Old age is filled with insoluble problems.
In the public arena, insoluble problems may be ingrained corruption, extensive poverty, or cultural conflict that persist for generations without responding to programs of welfare, education, or policing that the regime is able or willing to implement.
Israel's chronic problem is the Palestinians.
I do not think of myself as a racist. Some of my good friends and best students are . . .
Mahmoud Abbas and those around him may have given up on violence as a way to deal with Israel. If so, that is a blessing. However, they are not willing to pursue anything less than full satisfaction of their slogans: a return to the borders of 1967, and a right of return to Israel for refugees and their families. Either they firmly believe that they can achieve those dreams, or they are wary of pressing more extreme and violent Palestinians to give up their dreams of displacing Israel entirely.
One should not underestimate the internal problems of Palestine. Their on-again, off-again civil war resulted in more than 400 Palestinians killed by Palestinians from 2006 through 2008.
Whatever the sources, the Palestinian regime has shown itself to be a chronic problem.
If world opinion or the governments of the United States and Europe press Israel to be more accommodating, it will not solve that problem. Israel has offered something close to the 1967 borders, with land swaps for the rest, and has agreed to take a number of refugees.
It has never been enough, even to tempt the Palestinians to make a counter offer.
There are other problems in dispute, not worth mentioning here. The borders and refugees by themselves demonstrate the insoluble nature of the problem.
So Israel copes.
Among its tactics are going along with international demands
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that it negotiate, despite sufficient experience that the negotiations will lead nowhere. It absorbs considerable
violence in order to pay heed to persistent international demands that it not react to every provocation. There were numerous violations of its northern border before its attack on Lebanon in 2006, and seven years of rockets on its civilians before it went into Gaza earlier this year. It has learned to avoid occupation of Palestinian areas. It left Gaza after three weeks, and moves in and out of West Bank towns only when it goes after bad people.
It invests heavily in intelligence, which allows it to locate the bad people. It employs check points to control the movement of Palestinians. They are unpleasant for Israeli soldiers as well as Palestinians, so it removes those that appear to be unnecessary. It reestablishes them when the removal appears to have been premature.
It grants individuals permits to enter Israel for medical treatment, schooling, religious and family purposes, but closes the borders or rescinds individual permits when its intelligence advises that.
It blockades the northern and eastern boundaries of Gaza (Egypt blockades the southern boundary), but monitors the need for fuel, medication, and food, and lets in enough to prevent a disaster. Reports are that Gazans live better than most Africans. We do not know if the Israel prisoner there is still alive. There have been no visits by the Red Cross or other international organizations. Perhaps they are too busy criticizing Israel for human rights violations.
You want to help?
Some international programs may assist the Palestinians. Not more food aid and financial transfers. They breed dependence and corruption. A good deal of the money has gone to foreign bank accounts without buying goods or services for Palestinians.
An American-Jordanian program to train security personnel has produced some protection of individual Palestinians from exploitation and violence at the hands of other Palestinians, and has allowed Israel to reduce its security activities in the West Bank.
Urging Palestinians to stop inciting hatred of Israel in its schools and media has not produced results. Further preaching may help.
Insisting that Israel stop all construction in what others view as "occupied territories" may be counterproductive. An Israeli view is that the territories are "disputed" and not "occupied." Prime Minister Netanyahu says that no western government can no longer deny a Jew the right to live in a residential neighborhood of Paris, London, or New York,, and no Israeli government will deny Jews the right to buy property anywhere in Jerusalem. That has considerable support among Israelis familiar with anti-Semitism. Numerous Israelis, other than extremists, support the extension of Netanyahu's line to include the purchase of property by Jews anywhere in the Land of Israel.
The proclamations about freezes in settlements, including neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, by President Obama and his people may actually provoke more construction by Israelis, and more funding of land purchases by overseas Jews.
Leave Israel alone. It knows the neighborhood, and how to take care of itself.
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