On the other hand, it has been surprising at the (for now) still minimal criticism of Israel's actions from Arab governments and fairly muted in the Arab press, as well. Hamas may very well be painting itself definitively into a friendless corner.

As always, the unexpected always pops up to surprise all the analysts, pundits, and decision makers of events in this quarter. I have far more confidence in my poker playing.

Until Gaza is isolated, which means the IDF effectively controls the gaza border with egypt...this will be nothing but a tit for tat operation.

 

other options would be splitting the gaza up into three sections like sharon did in the 50's. Staying out of the cities but on their outskirts once again, neutralizing their ability to aggregate arms/training/unified strategy and disseminate intel!!!

 

All hail disengagement, what a marvelous strategic plan...all those who were taken in by the ruse of ethnically cleansing gaza of its Jewish inhabitants in the idea that this would further Israel's security were suckers plain and simple!!!

Ezekiel,

              The removal of Jewish settlements from the Gaza strip has done nothing for the residents of Sderot, but it has mightily increased the security of the ex-residents of the settlements, who no longer travel from home to school in armed convoys, and has done a lot for the security of those soldiers who had nothing better to do than protect them. So we are not all losers.

The Palestinians - and other Arab nations - have historically shown less regard for the welfare of their own people than we expect of Western societies, so it is no suprise that they are drawing fire onto their own civillian populations. Whining to the media when they get hit is a neat propaganda trick that works quite well. But Arab leaders do duck and run when they find themselves in the centre of the crosshairs. It would appear that the leaders of Hamas have no problem in sacrificing hundreds or even thousands of their own people to achieve their aims - in fact they virtually say as much out loud - but they are not prepared to put their own lives on the line. If you want to get them to stop, you have to go straight to the top.

 

For a comparison, se what effect the arrest of drug dealers has on the drug trade. None. Because the dealers who hand out the fix and take the money are just foot soldiers working for minimum wage, and no one is looking out for them. The show is being run by the crime lords, surrounded by crooked lawyers. They are the ones you have to go for if you want the system to collapse.

Once again Battar your analaysis lacks a certain nuance and sophistication to capture the reverberations that the forced ethnic transfer of the Jewish inhabitants in Gaza had on the situation in southern Israel. First you point out that the disengagement had no impact on the residents of sderot....this is like saying that the removal of the IDF from s.lebanon had no impact on the rocketing 7 years later on Naariya, Haifa, Sefat etc. The point I am trying to make that in either case when we were inside the disputed territories, the concentration of fire and aggression wasn't on Israeli communities inside the green line, but was far more concerned with these disputed zones of influence. That is why once the retreat was called on both cases, we see a brand new reality where instead of rockets and attacks happening sporadically they have become the norm inside Israel. 

The Jewish communities inside gaza and the IDF in S.Lebanon were on the front lines with the militant islamic groups, the moment Israel pulled back the front lines also moved back. When you retreat in war the enemy doesn't just sit still they fill the vacuum as both examples have proven.

 

As far as being better security situation for those inhabitants in Gaza today, well that may be true....in the short term. BUT first these people some 3rd generation inhabitants didn't want to leave, they believed in pioneering the land of their ancestors conscience of the risk, and today more then 2/3 are still living without a permanent residents. Many have moved to Ashkelon, and as we can all see, rockets have followed them there....so the difference in security is minimal considering that katyusha's are falling all over south/western Israel, and if the trend continues, all of Israel.

 

The in true Israeli fashion you talk about the disengagement as if it were better for the soldiers....this is an absurd mentality. Soldiers are supposed to defend their homeland, people, national interest...and sometimes they die in the line of duty. You ask any infantry soldier (preferrably Givati) if since disengagement Gaza has become easier to penetrate, defeat terror and/or protect the homeland from threat eminating inside Gaza....every single one will say, that today the palestinian threat now in Gaza a whole different animal. Those Jewish communities in Gaza provided safe zones within enemey territory. They forced the IDF to control certain lines of supply, thus b/c it need control of roads it had a basic modicum of control over the strategic environment in Gaza. Then intel collection is must easier when the IDF is familiar within the territory, the moment their are no more troops, the ability to pick up informants and collect HUMINT drops considerably..... and then we are left with the phili corridor, the ceding of this border is one of the single greatest strategic blunder in Israeli history...outsoiurcing israeli security to Egypt as if they were going to suddenly warm their hearts to their Jewish cousins. They played with a peace treaty that shouldn't be played with, and provided Hamas a line to the outside world (Iran,syria, hezbollah, al qaida) this meant a massive upgrade in smuggling of weapons/training and intel...so now after disengagement we are left with a traumatized nation that cannabalized itself in order to placate a unsympathetic world, provided the palestinian sympathizers justifications to its fatuous occupier narrative, and weakened Israel's strategic posture vis a vis Militant Islam.

 

But still after all that has gone on in this past year, w/ all the rockets falling you still have the hellinized Jew, the schitzophrenic Israeli discussing the necessity of disengagement...the willful ignorance in such sentiments is astonishing, when one only puts on the T.V. or reads a couple of blogs, the denial found in the above statements lends you understanding how such a strong nation can act so meekly. But for the average israeli who lives in Tel Aviv (dan region), in his ivory tower, ethnically transferring your own from a territory that has some of the most genocidal, jew hating populations in the world, which subsequently after the Jews left democratically elected by a massive 70% margin an islamo facist militia (hamas) as a ruling governing body, which was followed by a constant barrage of bombings on Israeli civilians, and can still talk of the positives in disengagemnt...then one realizes how Israel was able to get itself in this predicament in the first place.....As battar represents quite adequately, there in Israel lives a population exhausted, having neither the will or the belief in their cause to destroy its own enemies, when an israeli discusses the palestinian conflict one realizes there is to state quite simply....a paralysis of idea's.

Demmed if you don't.  Ezekiel, just for the record I said that withdrawal from Gaza did not IMPROVE the security of the residents of Sderot. In August 2005, I truly believed that it would, and reality has proved me wrong. Of course it is the job of the IDF - as it was my job during my military career - to protect the citizens of our state, but if you have to put up a defensive perimiter around individual settlements rather than protecting the borders as a whole, it is possible that you are not pursuing the most efficient strategy.  

You stated that the Gaza strip is home to the most genocidal and hatred-soaked populations on the planet, true enough. Given that statement, why would any Jew prefer to live among them than anywhere else? Yes, you are making a loud political and historical statement, that even I can hear through my cynicism, but that doesn't make for a good nights' sleep.

My parents came to Israel from a country where Jews were reasonably tolerated, and going to live in a place where Jews are considered legitimate target practice would not have been a step up for them. So they settled in Ivory-towersville, and looked on with mild contempt at those Americans who were born in Brooklyn and came to settle in the west bank among Arabs whose families had lived there since the time of the Ottoman empire, and tried to push them aside saying "We were here first".  Of course, you can't put such blame on second and third generation settlers, or Israelis who were tempted by government grants and cheap housing, but those right wing settlers with the loudest mouths and most repulsive opinions always seemed to speak with a Yankee accent when interviewed on TV or radio.

As for the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it would appear that they want to kill Jews merely for the sake of killing Jews, regardless of where they live.

Shirrush's demogoguery concerning those citizens who believe that Judea and shomron and Gaza should not be judenrein, that they are settleing the land of their ancestors at the behest of both labor and likud Government's are as finatical as Hamas.... What a travesty of intellect.

 

If this were the case, if these people are such fundamentalists" why during the forced ethnic transfer of these jewish populations from gaza, was not one Israeli soldier seriously injured, why did this population exhibit the truest and purest example of passive resistence to the world....if these are Israel's finatics, consider yourself lucky. Your strawman fallacy is so filled with generalization and prejudice that it is easy to understand the jaundiced expectations when regarding the strategic ramifications (you conveniently did not address the vaccuum and consequences i pointed out in this retreat in my above post) of this retreat. For the secular radical in Israel the idea that their is a population that puts more stock in its historical obligations and that it would live fearlessly right next to a population that hates them is anathema to them.

 

Which by the way is a patently false argument, if the question is why should these Jewish populations be their surrounded by this horde of arabs that hate them, well then taking this question  to a larger dimension; why should israel exist in a region that is filled with arab states that hate it. 5 million surrounded by 350 million the numners are quite the same in proportion. Should we pull out of the galille in 30 years because Jews will be a vast minority in this area? It is about Jewish rights and once the justice of the cause is ascertained you never, never, never, never, never give in. The jewish right to live on these lands is inviolate from a historical and moral standpoint and even 5 billion people were against them....it should make no difference. What is the point of values and principles, when the moment it is tough they are out the window, which is what seems to be for those who argue against the settler populations.

 

Soldiers have died proudly for alot less...some have died for a mound, a hill top, a ridge, a bridge, a plataeu....point is the soldiers defending these communities were not only defending the right for Jews to live anywhere in the land of their ancestors, but also to bring the fight to the enemy instead of the enemy (as we see today) bringing the fight to us....this though is a state of mind, an attitude, which unfortunately has long been forgotten in Israel. Israel want their little piece of the deluded peace train at any cost....even if that means creating Jewish finatics that are the scapegoat to all our ills.... "those jews over there are the problem, they are the one's that are causing all that mess for us." --- This view is myopic and ignorant to say the least....especially when we see in the post disengagement/oslo aftermath that the palestinian is not interested in a state of their own, they are only interested in no zionist state. So it doesn't matter if you rid yourselves of every patriotic jew that is unafraid  and wishes to live in the disputed territories inspite of its enemies. Because the enemy wont be happy until tel aviv is theirs.

 

Instead of israeli's coalescing, uniting and forging a patriotic culture in order to fight the massive array enemies that face them, they go in the directions of the shirrush's and the Battars' creating their strawman's, creating imaginary 5th columns, once again creating a divide reminiscent of the 10 tribes seperating from Judah...and we observe how that page in history turned out. If you really have the urge again to ethnically transfer some population for once don't pick on the most zionist and tough of Israel's populations, maybe instead of picking on the jews we could actually tranfer our enemy

 

Tranfer the palestinian gazans to the west bank, now that is a forced deportation i can get behind.

I wasn't sure that your last, and inane post deserves a reply, but what the heck, have I not committed to confront all Israel bashers on this forum? So here's the first part, in which this guy Halevi accurately describes how I feel about this whole disengagement business, and he is a better writer than I am.
The second part will of course include the required amount of invective and names-calling, whenever I feel like writing it up.

I'm glad it only took you and halevi (read the article a couple of days ago) a 10 yrs farce of diplomacy (Oslo) a 2nd intifada that claimed 1500 israeli lives, Road map to no where, a disastrous Lebanon policy that has Hezbollah w/ over 30,000 rockets today and a disengagement policy that has brought Hamas to the front of Palestinian governance with their rockets as its greatest tool. Yes, I think it was about time to lose the guilt complex....some may remark as I do....long overdue

As for your response to my remarks filled w/ "name calling" I unlike you am interested in what you have to say. Never once did I refer to you with a substituted name other then shirrush, I may have referred to your positions in a certain light, w/ certain adjectives...but that isn't name calling, but giving one's opinion forcefully. If you wish to take the easy road and once again relegate my statements to mere rhetoric that is your choice, but I stand behind my statements as lucid, compelling and above all accurate in describing the domestic paradigms held in Israel concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict....

Shirrush,

                 Yes, UK of course. Couldn't you tell from the accent ?

For those of you who are prattling on about my ancestors, and where they lived, I would just like to point out that my ancestors ancestors came from Turkey (Abraham's father) and my ancestors grandchildren came from Iraq (after the destruction of the first temple), and some of my ancestors were born and died in Egypt, so if I want to resettle the land of my ancestors first I have to choose which page in the history book to turn to. I live in the state of Israel, but in a region which at no time was under Jewish jurisdiction prior to 1948. (Check the maps - The Isralites did not settle most of the coastal plain even during the reign of kings David and Solomon, and never controlled the part north of Haifa). But my point is, I have 3 small boys and it is far more important to me to create a new future for them than to re-create the past.

 

As for serpent, his suggestion sounds nice on paper - soft paper with perforations - but he is ignoring the fact that not just the Hamas activists but all the population of the Gaza strip are Moslem, if you want to help them rebuild their lives, economy, and neighbourhood, you first have to invent for them a new religion which doesn't include hatred for the "infidel" (read - non-Moslem).  You don't  expect Moslems to sit around and have the Jews tell them what to do, not if you live on planet reality.

</ Police report this is a Palestinian terror _ First Report: At least 8 reported killed, 35 injured, in Palestinian shooting attack at Yeshivat Harav Center in Kiryat Moshe, W. Jerusalem March 6, 2008, 9:30 PM (GMT+02:00) There are many wounded students, three in serious condition. Witnesses described one or more gunmen who fired in all directions as well as a suicide killer wearing a bomb vest storming the four-storey building. In an exchange of fire which followed the attack Thursday night, March 6, one or two terrorists were shot dead. Heavy police and counter-terror forces are scouring the building and neighborhood as dozens of ambulances head for the Yeshiva seminary. Special military forces have arrived in the building.