in their face what a hell on earth their

support for terrorism creates. As you have pointed out. It’s different

when it comes back to bite you. If

the Palistinians aren’t hopeless, their

priorities will change. If they are hopeless, well, the gene pool won’t miss them. Sigh.

article that looks at this issue from a different point of view.

Important points:

The realistic Left has given up its wild hopes for a Canada-style unarmed border between Israel and the Palestinians, because of the utter failure of the Oslo Accords.

The realistic Right has given up its wild hopes for an Israel that would include the West Bank and Gaza, simply because of demographic realities. The Arab population in those areas is sky-rocketing, supported by European welfare money.

Israel needs to shield itself from the Palestinian terror state. Gaza is a drain on its resources, with less than 8,000 settlers living close to 1.3 million Palestinians. But the biggest suicide bomber threat comes from the West Bank, not Gaza. By itself, Gaza can be contained.

Prime Minister Sharon’s “defensive deterrence” against suicide bombers is working so far. Attacks against Israeli civilians are down by 75% in the last three years, due to the protective fence and targeted assassinations of terror chiefs.

Does Gaza signal a general retreat? Not likely. The voters will not allow any Israeli government to go back to the indefensible pre-1967 borders, not unless there is a trustworthy guarantee of peace. There is no confidence in Palestinian peaceful intentions today, nor can there be.

It’s worth remembering that the occupied terratories are occupied because of the 1967 war, Israel always hoped to return the lion’s share (beyond what Israel needed for defensible borders) back to the original contries. However, those countries gave up their claims, rather than negotiate for peace. Now, almost fourty years later, Israel is finally withdrawing, securing its borders, and treating the terratories as external (and hostile) terratory.

The Palistinians have always placed the extermination of Israel before getting their own state, Israel is cutting them lose and leaving them to their own failed state. Good riddence.

Staying in Gaza and trying to police it or leavimg Gaza and putting up the wall will not solve the problem. Anyone can attack either solution and rip it to shreds. Unfortunetly Israel is in the position of choosing which option is less hellish.

The only good aspect of leaving Gaza is that it takes away a couple of the most powerfull talking points of the Israeli haters. They will continue to blame Israel but there arguments will not resonate as well as the current ones. Occupation is such a easy sell. The current argument that Israeli is not pulling out of Gaza in the proper fashion takes more effort. “You been demanding the end of the “occupation” for decades, they are leaving, and you don’t like it!” I am not saying this is logical. But as agit-prop “improper end of occupation” is harder to sell then simple “occupation.” The severe Israeli haters will not stop their screeds. But for the apolitical or the indifferent they might not jump on to the Palestinian bandwagon on such thin gruel.

By leaving Gaza it also gives the Israelis some more rhetorical weapons. When the critics say that the wall is the cause of Palestinian misery they can point to the Arab judicial wall against the Palestinians. I think, and if I am wrong someone please correct me, that most Arab nations in the area do not allow palestinian migration into their countries, except for Jordon, and they do not allow normal economic relations with the Palestinian people. And Israel has the added bonus of stating the fact that the restrictions on movement are because of suicide bombs. What excuse do the arabs have? (actually they have the same fear but after portraying the Palestinians as noble victims it is hard to state the obvious that they do not let them in to their countries because they do not want the violence to happen in their countries).

When Hamas, Hizbollah, and the various permutations of the PLO give up the goal of destroying Israel there could be normal relations between the two states. The people of the world who view Zionism as the equal of nazism are hopeless. The PLO is corrupt so I have no doubt that Hamas will be running the show in Gaza and that is a nightmare. But when Israel is gone it may, over a period of decades, dawn on the Palestinian people that the war on Israel has brought them nothing but misery. I don’t think Israel could hold on to Gaza anymore then they could hold onto southern Lebanon.If they lived in a vacumn they have the military ability to do it but the International world can not be completly ignored. As I stated before all solutions are ugly and do not solve the problem. It has come down to which solution is less ugly. Pray for Israel and if Roger could provide a list of Israeli products that the blogosphere could buy from it could counter the Academic slander campaign that the left is waging.

Kevin Peters

Most probably this will split Likud between Sharon’s crowd and the more extreme elements.

For the record, suddenly after a long absense from public view Bibi’s wife Sara appeared, Sunday, together with him in public.

After the pull out, Israel will have the ability and the will to counter-attack against violence emanating from Gaza in stronger, less pinpointed ways. It will not rise to full scale war or carpet bombing, but something in between that and what they have been doing in the past few years. As long as there is some demonstrable level of restraint in Israle’s actions, the world will surely grumble publicly about it, but nothing strong enough to change its course of action.

This will ultimately force the populace of Gaza and the PA to finally make some important choices. Will they stand up to the criminals that will be making their lives ever so demonstrably worse? With the “support” of Egypt, there is a decent chance for that. At some point, the Palestiniains must be treated like adults who have their own problems to solve. And one of the best ways to do that is to take Israel out of the equation as much as reasonably possibleb.

Sympathetic ears in the world are dissapearing; the Pals will have to decide whether they will too.

Huh? I must be some sort of moron for I still fail to understand your reference to Adolph Hitler. Property rights underpin the very concept of human rights. Courts in the West reject claims by those whose ancestors may have resided on a particular piece of land—but eventually abandoned it for one reason or another. Proof of consistent ownership is demanded. We know from historical records that Turks owned the land. This is the beginning and ending of the matter. Nothing else makes any difference.

Mark Twain and others have pointed out that only the Zionists were willing to invest time and money to develop the area now named Israel. The Arabs during that time period rarely, if ever, described themselves as Palestinians.

However, if one believes the wall is truly the answer to Israel’s security problem, as Charles Krauthammer, for instance, does, then the pullout makes perfect sense. Only time will tell which is the correct reading of the situation.

My own opinion is that, while Gaza may become an incubator for terrorists, that is not a distinction with 95/100ths of the rest of the Middle East. Terrorists are like mosquitos and Saudi money is like rain. Put the two together and their eggs hatch in a fortnight. Only a comprehensive application of DDT can get rid of them.

Because if you read Mein Kampf you will find that Hitler had a similar amoral point of view of history where conquest was its own justification. I found it curious that in some respects I was in agreement with Hitler; his analysis of how to manipulate crowds and meetings, for instance. So I brought it up as a curiousity. You might also think of it as occasion to consider the consequences of such views and as a goad to reconcile an objective amoral consideration of history with the moral considerations that must inform personal behaviour.

ëAnd what is your point? It matters little who originally owned a particular piece of propertyí

Historically, this is the case. I find you and myself on the side on Hitler here (gasp!). But what if the Arabs get their act together and drive the Jews into the sea? Are you fine with that, or are you taking sides?î

Why in hell are you dragging Adolph Hitler into this discussion? You seem unable to distinguish between free choice and coercion. I am all for the legal transfer of land from those who presently hold title to someone else. My position does not in any way justify the capture of land through violence.

Frankly I used to think the proper would be what Dafydd is thinking Israel is up to now. Withdraw unilaterally, award nationhood to the Palestinians right now. Give them 6 months to a year grace period. And then treat them like a sovereign nation when they can’t control the ongoing terrorism.

The only problem is that it just returns everything to the status quo. Even if Israel treated the Palestinians as an enemy country, so what? What are the possible strategies that Israel could apply?

1. Bomb the hell out of them.

Well this doesn’t really accomplish much. Not unless you’re talking about carpet bombing, but there is no way that domestic Israelis or lefty Europeans would accept carpet bombing of such “helpless” people. If Israel is reduced to targeting specific individuals, well that’s not much different than now.

2. Ethnic cleansing.

This would work, but it would be political suicide and set Sharon up to be tried for war crimes regardless of how humanely it was done. Israel could pack everyone up at gunpoint, drive them to the Jordanian border and tell them “here’s $20, get yourself a cab”. And it wouldn’t be enough.

Or Israel could simply start shooting people en masse, but that wouldn’t be possible due to the heavy Nazi connection.

3. Re-occupy the territories.

Status quo anyone?

As long as there are Palestinians and as long as there are Palestinians who think the ongoing terrorism against Israel is worth the cost, then it will continue. The only answer is to teach the Palestinians that the cost for them is just too high. One way of doing is mass slaughter, neither ethical nor survivable politically. Another way is to apply the lessons of Fallujah and use that as a teaching method.

If Israel goes Dafydd’s way then the best they can hope for is a return to the status quo.

If Israel goes my way, then the worst they can hope for is the return to the status quo. The best they can hope for is for the population of Gaza to renounce terrorism entirely and petition for independent statehood apart from the PA.

*shrug* who knows what’s going to happen. Well except for violence. I think we’re all anticipating that.

Which really is too bad.