Posted on 12/02/2008 10:23:32 AM PST by forkinsocket
Israel's hardest battle may still lie ahead, and it's not against an Arab foe.
Warnings are growing louder that evicting tens of thousands of Jewish settlers from the West Bank's heartland — a requirement for peace with the Arabs — will be bloody, and perhaps fail.
The defense minister says extremism is spreading among ultranationalists like "a cancerous growth," the intelligence chief warns of a growing readiness to take up arms to resist evacuation, and some settler rabbis are urging religious soldiers to refuse orders.
It's a homegrown problem: For decades, Israel pampered settlers as brave pioneers, and the government continues to shy away from confronting them.
In recent years, the government has failed to dismantle dozens of unauthorized squatter camps, despite promises to the U.S. to do so. And its resolve is now being tested by a few dozen militant settlers holed up in a house in the West Bank city of Hebron, in defiance of a Supreme Court eviction order.
Yet some warn that running from that fight could condemn Israel to rule the Palestinians forever and spell the end of the dream of a state that is both Jewish and democratic. In that case, "people like me will not have a place here," said Ilan Paz, a retired brigadier general who served in the West Bank for a decade.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
If only the Jews in the Nazi established Jewish Ghetto were as well armed...
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When the last settler has been evicted, there will still be no peace with "the Arabs," euphemistically used in this article instead of "islam."
If they are able to do it, there will be no peace with islam when the last Jew has been shoved off-shore into other countries. islam will follow to kill.
My understanding is that these "ultranationalists" PURCHASED the land they live on; and usually they purchased this land from A-rabs.
ML/NJ
Al-AP....make that Judean city of Hebron....there is no "west bank".
Barak prefers a fight with his own people, to club them or shoot them, to a fight with Hamas or Fatah. He is a coward of the highest sort. It is truly hard to imagine him as a war hero...now he is as yellow as it gets.
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