Posted on 06/22/2007 9:20:47 AM PDT by SJackson
Talk about a twist of fate. Watching the frightening scenes on television the other day as the green flag of Hamas was raised triumphantly over Gaza, I couldn't help but think back to the Israeli elections that took place 15 years ago this week.
Still reeling from the brutal terrorist murder of teenager Helena Rapp of Bat Yam, Israelis went to the polls on June 23, 1992, and voted for Yitzhak Rabin, thanks in large part to his promise to "take Gaza out of Tel Aviv."
IDF may have to parachute food to Gaza Now, just a decade and a half later, Gaza is back, and with a vengeance. For far too long, Israel has been trying to run away from the Gaza problem, and that has gotten us nowhere. The time has come to stop fleeing and to face this threat head-on.
Indeed, thanks to the blundering of successive Israeli leaders, what was once just a thorny counterinsurgency problem has now become a full-blown strategic threat, as the rise of Hamastan before our very eyes makes abundantly clear.
The existence of a rogue, Taliban-style terrorist state along Israel's southern border is a recipe for disaster. If allowed to come to pass, the consequences will be felt far beyond the outskirts of Sderot and Ashkelon. Gaza will serve as a regional launching pad for terrorism, trouble and tribulation, and it will tempt the rest of our neighbors to think that the "liberation of Palestine" is near.
And if Hamas were to extend its rule to Judea and Samaria, it would place all of central Israel within striking distance of Muslim fanatics. It is therefore essential that Hamas's "experiment in Islamic rule" be shut down as quickly as possible, before the danger becomes even more pressing.
So let's finally shed our delusions that we can "take Gaza out of Tel Aviv," and let's just "take Gaza," once and for all.
Israel should reassert complete control over the area, topple the Palestinian Authority, arrest and try its leadership, and finally declare that this land is rightfully ours and we shall never again abandon it.
We should methodically uproot the terrorist infrastructure, and rebuild the rubble of Gush Katif and its once-thriving Jewish communities. In other words, take Gaza back, take all of it back, and don't ever give it up again.
LET'S BE honest: after 15 years of retreat, it is time to try something else. Those who preached concessions and withdrawal have been proven painfully wrong, again and again, and the people of Israel have suffered terribly for their shortsightedness and frailty.
The government needs to stop worrying about how Condoleezza Rice and Javier Solana will react, and start concerning itself a little more with the safety and security of its citizens. Leaving Gaza in the hands of Hamas and its supporters is simply not an option.
"But there is no military solution," shout the Left and much of the media, as Kassam rockets continue to slam into the Negev. "We must negotiate," they say, as the terror groups recruit Palestinian mothers with young children to serve as suicide bombers.
Pay them no heed. These are the same high priests of appeasement, after all, who got us into this mess in the first place. It was at their behest that Israel pulled out of Gaza nearly two years ago, expelling thousands of Jews from their homes and withdrawing the IDF. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan's famous 1980 query to Americans, "Are Israelis better off now than they were before the Gaza retreat?" It is evident that the answer is a resounding "no."
At the time, proponents of the move said it would wash Israel's hands of Gaza, strengthen Palestinian moderates and pull the rug out from under the extremists.
They were wrong. Dead wrong.
The pullout from Gaza has proven to be a disastrous mistake, one that has claimed numerous Israeli lives - and Palestinian ones, too.
So when the pundits and the talking heads now try to persuade us of the wisdom of supporting Fatah thugs against Hamas terrorists, or of inviting an international force into the area, let's just remember how effective their previous policy prescriptions turned out to be.
After all, it was the opponents of the pullout who have proven to be prescient. They predicted beforehand that an Israeli withdrawal would lead to a Hamas takeover in Gaza. That, of course, is precisely what has occurred. They warned that pulling the IDF out of Gaza would lead to intensified Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel, and that, too, has come to pass.
WE NEED not accept the present situation, nor should we. It is not too late to correct the error of withdrawal, and to declare at last an end to the delusions of reaching a false peace with those who seek our demise. So let's hit the collective rewind button, and take back control over the entire Gaza Strip.
Let the Left ridicule the idea of returning to Gaza as much as they please. They were wrong then and they are wrong now, and I'd rather be right and alive, than progressive and on the run.
What about the Palestinian population, you say? Sorry, but the Palestinians had their chance. They blew it. They could have had a state, they could have made a deal with Barak, with Peres, or with Rabin. But instead they chose the path of extremism and bloodshed. They have no one to blame but themselves for the outcome, and there is no reason why innocent Israelis should continue to pay the price for the Palestinians' ongoing obstructionism.
Will there be political and diplomatic fallout from an Israeli move into Gaza? For sure. The Europeans will spill their latt s when they hear the news, and the halls of the United Nations will echo with the drumbeat of outrage as the Jewish state is condemned for defending itself.
But as important as diplomacy is, it pales in comparison with protecting the lives of innocent Jewish men, women and children. When it comes to safeguarding the welfare of its citizens, Israel has no choice but to put aside all other considerations and to act to defend itself.
For no matter what Israel does, or does not do, the blame is inevitably hurled our way. So we might as well do what we must, and proudly raise the blue and white flag once again over the sand dunes of Gaza.
We should never have left in the first place, and the time has now come to return. Like it or not, the choice between Israel or Hamas ruling over the area really doesn't leave us with much choice at all.
So Gaza, here we come!
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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Or open the borders and let the Palestinians import their own.
"and finally declare that this land is rightfully ours"
Rightfully because God says so? Yeah, that'll work.
"as the Jewish state is condemned for defending itself."
Seizing Gaza is "defending itself"? Similarly, seizing the West Bank would be defending itself. Lebanon? Defense. Jordan? Defense. Syria? Defense.
Gosh, where does it stop?
Why not. Just make sure you flatten everything there now before you move in. Arty the rat hole until nothing is left moving and no stone stands upon another.
It'll make it easier to put up some nice golf courses.
L
When a strategic border territory is controlled by a terror gang bent on your siege and destruction, then sure, seizing it is important to defense. I don't understand why this would even be controversial.
Gosh, where does it stop?
Great question. Perhaps when a significant number of Arab-Muslims in that part of the world (and, seemingly, other folks in other parts of the world) cease having genocidal fantasies about Jews? Just my guess.
Pesky Jews. Why do they keep defending themselves?
That's the only option? Are you saying Israel should have seized Jordan and Egypt, rather than working out a peace treaty with them? Was that a mistake in your opinion? Have those treaties not worked?
Is that what they're doing? What else -- the settlements are really "military outposts"?
To do it properly, they should have pushed the Egyptians out of Gaza in 1967. And the Jordanians out of the West Bank.
What else -- the settlements are really "military outposts"?
If you start a war and lose, you should lose territory. That would make you think twice, don't you agree?
You’re so funny.
Great idea. Pity it’ll never happen.
When the frontier is just a little bit further from Israel’s border than the range of whatever rockets with which the animals are arming themselves.
I didn't say that's the "only option", certainly if it were up to me I'd take things on a case by case basis, on any given instance there could be reasonable disagreement as to the merits and wisdom and efficacy of seizing a border siege-camp, etc.. But your apparent implication was that defense is never a sufficient justification at all. My point is simply that that is wrong.
Are you saying Israel should have seized Jordan and Egypt, rather than working out a peace treaty with them?
No, not necessarily. On the other hand, given that there've been instances where Israel was attacked by countries including those two, neither would I agree that at no time would it ever have been ok for Israel to invade and occupy those places, if they had chosen to, decided it was in their interests, etc.
We are talking about states of war between Israel and these other groups/entities. I guess my overall point is that in a state of war it is extremely one-sided to apply the sort of moral standard you seem to be applying only to Israel. Why must Israel justify every move outside her national borders when no neighbor of Israel ever needs to?
[peace w/Jordan, Egypt] Was that a mistake in your opinion? Have those treaties not worked?
I'm not enough of an expert on the history of Israel's relations with Jordan & Egypt to judge whether those "peace" treaties were "mistakes". I do think it's probably debatable how/whether the outcome has been favorable for Israel, on balance. In both cases the peaces in question seemed to leave staging areas on Israel's border from which interests in either country, and elsewhere, could fund and stage plausibly-deniable death-by-a-thousand-cuts warfare against Israel.
Which is to say, it's not really obvious to me that a full-on, conventional all-out war to settle things with more of a finality than the pathetic 50-year "refugee camp" situation of quasi-nation proxy fighters kept as pets/wards by the UN would have, in the long term, led to a worse situation for Israel - or for Egypt & Jordan (& others).
There are ancillary effects to take into account, as well. The peace with Egypt, so I understand, is maintained in part by a hefty infusion of yearly funds from the United States to the Egyptian regime. This puts the United States in a situation of appearing to "support" the Egyptian regime, which is, so I hear, oh the most common adjective seems to be - "repressive". Thus dissident/insurgent groups actively working against the Egyptian regime - Al Qaeda-linked groups, indeed Al Qaeda itself - have the United States in their sights in part as a direct result of the peace arrangement between Israel and Egypt. I remind you that four of the 9/11 hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, were Egyptian.
As an American, I would think I am therefore perfectly entitled to wonder if the "peace" in question has been such a good idea for all concerned, all things considered.
But I'm certainly not going to assert definitively one way or another that it was definitely a "mistake". It's a complicated situation, difficult to assess. You were the one who (if I read your initial comment correctly) in effect made a definitive assertion, that seizing staging-areas outside one's borders is wrong, at least if your name is Israel. Perhaps I misinterpreted though? Let me know,
I might be wrong on this, but I think it took "seizing" a pretty good section of Egyption desert to get them to even talk, so you might have swerved into a winning solution for the Israelis. Good work!
It should turn our beneficial for all concerned with freedom and peace.
The only reason that they have worked is US and worldwide aid to Egypt and Jordan. We give the Jordanians some $350-400 million a year, and the Egyptians are still getting aid under the more massive Camp David Accords. It's a bribe, but it's also a deal: you keep the fighting down so that oil shipping lanes are safe, and insurance premiums low, and we'll give you a hunk of guaranteed money.
The world has tried that with the Palestinians. It has ended in dismal failure, as the Palestinians have voted for even more radical government. Now, one could easily make the case that letting the Palestinians vote was the mistake, Turkey is the only Islamic state that has been able to adequately govern itself with a democratic form of government.
But that toothpaste is out of the tube. We now have 1.5 million Palestinians who are on the edge of existence. What will they do? Simply starve, fight, and die, like the sub-Saharan Africans, or will they use their strategic position to benefit their only 'parent' state, Iran?
Given their history, I'd bet on the latter. Thus, Israel has to defend itself by going on the offense, when the time is right. The only alternative I can see is for ordinary Palestinians to overthrow Hamas after it fails to govern. Hopefully, this happens before the weapons shipments from Tehran make it in.
Why do you say that? Israel pushed Egypt out of the Sinai, yet ended up giving it back. They're even discussing giving back the Golan Heights to Syria. I don't see your point.
"If you start a war and lose, you should lose territory."
Technically, Israel struck first in the 1967 War. But whatever.
Israel is a signatory nation to the 4th Geneva Convention which states that civilians will not be transferred to conquered territories.
By that logic, the U.S. should invade Russia and China.
You're just a little warmonger, aren't you?
Gosh, are Russia and China lobbing rockets at the United States? When did that start?
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