So where’s Livni been for the past 8000 rockets?
She’s right, but her answer still falls short.
A military response is necessary, but insufficient. You need to kill the attackers where possible, but there is an endless line of misfits and psychopaths ready to take their place, you’ll never get them all. And, frankly, killing these cretins transmits no pain whatever to the people who deploy them. The arabs themselves do not care about the loss of these lives, almost certainly the Israelis care more about arab lives than do arabs themselves.
The only response that will transmit pain, the only response that will get their attention, will be to annex territory in response to every attack that makes it over the fence. Whether its a rocket, or a mortar shell, or a deluded teenager with a bomb strapped to her waist, the border fence must be moved half a mile every time. The land must be annexed permanently, any structures bulldozed, the loss of land must be permanent. Compensate any innocent landowners affected by the new boundary, but move it.
The UN and State and the arabs have been promoting “land for peace” for decades now, and it has never worked because they had the inputs and outputs reversed. Swap the wires around, and it will work brilliantly. You do not give up land in hope of peace, you seize land in response to every violation of the peace.
There is no other roadmap to peace. Nothing else has ever worked because nothing else is ever going to work.
I have been advocating this ever since the first rockets starting being fired.
And I wouldn’t want to disappoint the UN and MSM who always bitch that Israel uses a disproportionate use of force when it responds to being attacked. So for every rocket fired from gaza, west bank, Lebannon, Syria, Jordan, or Egpyt, its immediatly returned by a full artillery barage at the location of the original rocket launch. If the islamderthals wish to fire from civilian locations, then they will be held responsible for the results, not Israel.
Has to pretend to defend Israel until she gets elected.
Actually, I disagree. The best response is not waiting for the IDF to respond. The best, the fastest response is a *local* response.
For example, look at the city of Sderot, a frequent target of rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip. Instead of them waiting for the IDF to show up, what if they instead bought themselves a 105mm Howitzer, and plenty ammo, and gave a tit-for-tat response for every rocket fired at them?
Importantly, this wouldn’t be called “counter battery fire”, even though that is what it was. Instead, they could play the cynical game the international community plays and say that they are just “trying to shoot down the incoming rockets”.
I know that this is both cynical and sarcastic, but it has a good reason. International law permits self defense, and generally holds blameless those “defending” themselves against enemy weapons. This avoids the hand wringing that they are targeting civilians from where the rockets are launched.
It turns any Palestinians hit by the counter battery fire from “victims” to “unfortunate accidents”, for which the citizens of Sderot and Israel is blameless.
And since the international community itself is utterly cynical and hypocritical, this turns their forked tongues back on themselves.
Plus, if the citizens of Sderot erect a 100 or so foot tall observation tower, they can respond so quickly with a 105mm howitzer as to make the rocketeers teeth rattle at best.
So why wait? Act now. Don’t wait for the IDF to do so.