Posted on 03/29/2002 9:04:20 PM PST by FresnoDA
End Game!
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03/29/02 Commentary By Benjamin Netanyahu An unremitting carnage that indiscriminately slaughters all who come within the murderous reach of Palestinian terrorists shows the depths of their hatred. Clearly, the only constraint for Arab terrorists is their destructive capability. Given the power, they would destroy all of us, down to the last infant.
The primary objective of Arafat's terrorist regime is not to establish the twenty-second Arab state, but to destroy the only Jewish state. This was and remains the heart of the conflict.
In 1948, the Arabs rejected an international resolution that would have established an Arab state, and instead attempted to destroy an embryonic Jewish state. Fifty-two years later, Arafat rejected a similar offer and demanded the flooding of Israel with millions of Palestinians, a measure that would effectively bring about the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.
With such a regime, whose ultimate objective is our destruction and which pursues this objective by the most barbaric means imaginable, there is no place for negotiations and no hope for reaching any sustainable peace agreement.
Indeed, the much vaunted political solution to end the conflict was in fact attempted two years ago at Camp David, and it utterly failed. Arafat rejected a scandalously far-reaching Israeli offer of a sovereign Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip, which included half of Jerusalem, and instead chose to unleash the present war of terror against Israel.
There is only one option that is now available to Israel: to decisively win the war that has been forced upon us. What is required of us today is not a willingness to clench our teeth and bear this ongoing violence. We must instead seek a total military victory against an implacable enemy that is waging a terrorist war against us.
First, we must immediately dismantle the Palestinian Authority and expel Arafat. Second we must encircle the main Palestinian population centers, purge them of terrorists, and eradicate the terrorist infrastructure. Third, we must establish security separation lines that will allow Israeli armed forces to enter Palestinian territory, but prevent Palestinian terrorists from entering our towns and cities.
The choice we face today is not between military victory and a security separation. Rather, we must do both together. Only by combining the two can we stop the terror, restore a deterrence that has been dangerously eroded in the last two years, and enable a realistic and moderate leadership to emerge among the Palestinians with which we can pursue a political settlement in the future.
Like a partial dose of antibiotics that is not sufficient to cure the disease, the partial actions of the government and the fitful changes between a policy of restraint and half-hearted military action has not and will not achieve anything. Our excessive concern about the international community has also borne bitter fruit. Israel's refusal so far to act as would any other self-respecting nation heightens the doubts in the minds of our friends of our belief in the justice of our cause and encourages our enemies to increase the bloodshed.
The only way to win international understanding for our position, especially in America, is to steadfastly assert our basic right to defend ourselves and achieve a quick and decisive military victory that will stop the terrible massacre of our citizens.
Finally, the claim that we have tried all military means to end the terror is baseless. We have not even used a fraction of our military power, and the little we have used has not been directed at the right target, namely ending Arafat's regime. Today, after 18 months of terrorism, the government continues to work under the illusion that it is possible to stop terrorism without dismantling this main terrorist engine.
What is absolutely clear is that we cannot continue, even for one more day, on a path of indecision, without a goal or a policy. We must do what any nation in our position would do: stop bickering among ourselves, fight the war that has been forced upon us, and vanquish an enemy who is determined to annihilate us.
(The writer is former prime minister of Israel.)
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/03/29/News/News.46032.html
I see a stain on a wall.
This is an excellent illustration. When one does not kill off the infection entirely it comes back worse. That seems to be the case with the terrorists.
It is NO wonder the IDF has to use restraint. These morons practically kill themselves! Fish in a barrel. Fish in a barrel.
the very definition of blindness and culturally based insanity.
Can religion alone, so blind a people?
Iran is urgently supplying Syria with the technology to produce scud missiles on its own, and that significant shipments of very lethal weapons, including medium-range missiles capable of devastating Israeli cities, may now be passing from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, to the Hezbollah army that is building up in southern Lebanon."Aghast" is the word, for what we are witnessing looks like joint preparations by the Palestinian Authority, Syria, its Lebanese client, Iraq, and Iran, for war on a regional scale, against both Israel and U.S. interests. I fear we may face a major, sudden, external assault on Israel, meant to precede U.S. action against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, and indeed prevent the U.S. from going there by enmiring it in the defence of Israel.
Arab Summit Calls attack on Iraq attack on all Arab Summit Members
This isn't shaping up to be Gulf War part deux.
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