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8/17/05 D-Day for Hamas? Israel is pulling out of Gaza. They are doing this despite the fact that the Palestinian Authority has failed to keep any of its obligations under the Road Map to Peace. Benjamin Netanyahu has resigned in protest, and many of the Jewish settlers in Gaza are resisting their mandated removal. It all makes one wonder what Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister, is really planning. Some of what is going on is becoming clear from some of the things the representatives of the Sharon government are saying. This is the (last?) chance for Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority to keep its obligations, disarm and dismantle Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Palestinians have back the land they have wanted back since it was occupied in their last foolish gamble on an Arab victory over Israel that they hoped would hand them the whole territory they call Palestine. There are no Israelis in the Gaza strip, so the Israeli Defense Force doesn't have to worry about harming their own people should a conflict occur. 2 + 2 + 2 = D-Day for Hamas. Abbas and the Palestinian Authority will fail. Hamas will use the arms it has been accumulating to begin shelling Israel. And Israel will appeal to the world, with U. S. support, to make Gaza the next front line in the War on Terror. And the world will either prove it is as hypocritical and anti-Semitic now as it has ever been, or it will grudgingly admit that Hamas is not a group of freedom fighters resisting an unjust occupation, but is a group of international terrorists bent on the same hegemony sought by al Qaeda and its splinter groups that delight in killing children. But even if the world is hypocritical, George W. Bush will not. We will stand with Israel and declare the Palestinians our enemies (as they have been all along). The kid gloves will come off, finally and irrevocably. Gaza and the West Bank will be staging grounds for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but all the IDF will need to do is destroy any neighborhood from which any aggressive moves are made. The regions will be blockaded and isolated. Israel will offer free passage out of the areas to any parties who want to leave, so the hard liners will either end up sneaking out and thus rendering themselves less of a threat, or staying and slowly starving themselves and their human shields to death. Either way, Israel wins and the terrorists lose. The tragedy is that Hamas and Islamic Jihad will take plenty of innocent Palestinians with them, although those Palestinians are more than capable of disavowing these extremists and even turning them over, if they wanted. So they have the power to save themselves, even though they seem doomed not to use it. But this is war, and they will be members of a quasi state that is responsible for the actions of those acting in its name. That is the law of war. But finally Hamas and Islamic Jihad will fail and all their goals will evaporate. That will be a victory for all humanity. Modified: 10/05/2005 |
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