Thoughts on Gaza/Israel

[Typhoon]

What is Sharon up to?  Pulling the Israeli settlements out of Gaza is a grand gesture indeed, but what is the strategy in this?  

1)  A significant act of good faith on the part of Israel, with the hopes of gaining reciprocity from the Palestinians, and by extension, the global community?  

2)  Sharon, feeling the press of years, decides he should balance his former hard-line approach and become a peacemaker at the end?

3)  Israel makes the grand gesture, and by extension galvanizes the country into a feeling of unity.  (Although the settlers and others have disagreed with the Israeli soldiers, I do not predict open armed struggle with them.  Reports are coming through that even the most left-ward Israelis are sympathizing with the displaced settlers.)  Gaza goes over to the Palestinian Authority, and then&?  Nothing changes re: Palestinian attacks, but now Israel has more of a moral justification and internal support to really pound on the terrorists.  But to what end?  

My cynicism tends toward choice #3, particularly if I read my Sharons correctly.  Are we looking at an escalation?

[Paddy]

Israel can retake Gaza anytime it wants. If the Palestinian terrorism continues (and it will) Sharon has an excellent reason to obliterate them.  Hopefully he will drive them into the sea.   There can be no peace without a victory; there can be no victory until one side or the other is utterly defeated.

[matis]

"Sharon is a criminally incompetant counter-intuitive corrupt jackass. Don't expect to see his name next to anything especially stunning anytime soon. "



I second the motion.


This is a black day in Israeli history.  



Anyone who believes that there is any way to make peace with the Arabs, short of a devastating victory over them -- is smoking mushrooms.


matis

[Paddy]

It's a sad day when Jews forcibly evict other Jews from their homes.  What are Sharon and the Israeli government thinking?  On the one hand, I understand these are remote settlements surrounded by hostile 'Palestinians'.  By the same token, 30+ years ago Israel was encouraging these settlements.  It would be like Teddy Roosevelt sending federal troops around 1902 to evict people in western states who had settled on land formerly occupied by American Indians.

OTOH, Israel won the land fair and square in a war they did not start with Egypt.  They are literally surrounded by a hostile Arab population who have vowed to 'push the Jews into the sea'.   The Palestinians are no more than surrogates and pawns for the larger Arab population of the middle east.  They have been lied to and ripped off by their own leaders for billions of dollars of foreign aid.

Sharon was once a great general (yes I am familiar with his 'war crimes').  But he seems to be seriously betraying the Israeli people.

[The Rabbi]

Geez, I might as well be on Hashkafa.com

Let's take it from the top:
-The Gaza is an area with about 8-10,000 Jews and 1M Arabs.  It is difficult to defend and uses lots of resources from the IDF.  Israel's choices are: annex it and have 1M hostile voters, keep it as it is and have interminable guerrila war, withdraw from it and let the PA deal with it in their usual corrupt way.  They voted for #3, which is the right choice.
-The settlements are there because prior governments offered incentives (read: money) for people to settle there.  The present people there will be paid to resettle elsewhere and will lose little to nothing.  What Uncle gives Uncle can take away, holds true in Israel just like here in the U.S.
-The wall going up has cut terrorist incidents dramatically.  Completing the wall will do so even more.  It will not eliminate incidents but it will reduce them.
-Israel is a democracy (sorry to disappoint those with opposing opinions).  The gov't there was elected and Sharon ran on a platform of doing pretty much this.  If the electorate was really opposed they could push through a no-confidence motion and Sharon would fall tomorrow.  Hasnt happened.
-The leading rabbis (not the shlemiels you see on TV) have not opposed this move.  Those who have opposed it have done so only recently, partly on humanitarian grounds and partly because now its a done deal.
-Gaza arguably was never part of the Land of Israel.  OTOH, parts of Lebanon certainly were and no one made a fuss when Israel withdrew from there in the 1980s.

[Iapetus]

OTOH, Israel won the land fair and square in a war they did not start with Egypt.

I thought they won them in the war that they did start.  (Well, the one where they premptively struck when their neighbours were building up large forces just over the border).

[Paddy]

Iapetus, you know you're exactly right.  http://www.adl.org/ISRAEL/Record/67War.asp

In May 1967, Egypt and Syria took a number of steps which led Israel to believe that an Arab attack was imminent............
.........On May 22, Egypt announced a blockade of all goods bound to and from Israel through the Straits of Tiran. Israel had held since 1957 that another Egyptian blockade of the Tiran Straits would justify Israeli military action to maintain free access to the port of Eilat. Syria increased border clashes with Israel along the Golan Heights and mobilized its troops..........
.........
Against this background, Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against Egypt on June 5, 1967 and captured the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. Despite an Israeli appeal to Jordan to stay out of the conflict, Jordan attacked Israel and lost control of the West Bank and the eastern sector of Jerusalem. Israel went on to capture the Golan Heights from Syria. The war ended on June 10.

Israel technically did start the 'war', although not without provocation and plenty of warning.

[Typhoon]

Ahh! Riley!  You beat me to it!  

Here's my response anyway...

Israel did strike preemptively against Egypt in 1967 as a result of three big occurrences:  1) Under pressure from Egypts Gamal Abdal Nasser (and, admittedly others) United Nations Secretary General U Thant agreed to pull U.N. peacekeeping forces out of the Sinai, thus eliminating that buffer between Egypt and Israel.  It was hardly a secret that Nasser was wildly antagonistic to Israel.  2) Egypt then built up troops and began sending them into the Sinai.  3) Egypt then blockaded the Israeli port of Eilat, on the Red Sea.  

Sounds like sufficient provocation to me&

Now, the question is, how to return the captured territory&or not&

Edited to add:

It is also interesting that Arab leaders are now reevaluating United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (calling for a return to the post-1948 Israel borders, i.e. no Gaza and no West Bank) after soundly rejecting 242 after the 1967 War Armistice.  Remember the Three Nos of Khartoum?  No peace, no recognition and no negotiation.    

I guess 242 doesnt sound so bad, these days&

I do not envy Israel and its security concerns&

[Bemidjiblade]

Isn't it funny that all the people who want to smear Israel in this are ignoring that Israel is willing to enforce its political actions upon its own people for the sake of the peace process (for those who don't respect that, look back to George Washington and the Whiskey rebellion before you say Israel's not a democracy).  In the meantime, the Palestinians constantly fail, and in fact encourage, the very murderous dogs (no disrespect to canines intended) who blow up women and children as a form of "political activism".

I've never been so happy before this day, because in my mind this renders the very concept of moral equivelancy in the middle-east laughable.

[Antibubba]

Parliamentary democracy can, Blackburn, in many of them.

All that Sharon is doing is letting the Phillistines build the gallows from which they'll hang themselves.  And when the ordinary Palestinians who just want to go about their lives (and they do exist, but they don't get much press) see how Hamas and their ilk are the jackboots marching them up there, then, maybe, there will be real reform.

Because as much as the Arab world wants to blame the "Zionists" for their troubles, any of them with a sixth-grade education can see where the trouble truly lies.

[Bemidjiblade]

Ok... when was the last time that we saw ANYONE in Pallestinian territory arrested by the Pallestinian Authority for defying their efforts for the peace process.  But we see Israel enforcing an unpopular law against its own people.  When one of the states supports/permits terrorism, and the other is willing to exercise military force against its own citizens for the sake of the peace process.

The members of one of these governments has just established clear moral superiority in my sight.