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Jun. 29th, 2006 05:33 pmОсобенно позабавила вот эта фраза: "Mr. Olmert will be unable to proceed on convergence and the Israeli right will begin its inexorable return to office."
Stop Terror at Its Source
A return to targeted killing might improve Israeli security.
BY MICHAEL OREN
Wednesday, June 28, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
JERUSALEM--Dawn broke yesterday over the Israel-Gaza border on a surreal but not unfamiliar scene: Rows of Merkava tanks, armored personnel carriers and Humvees were assembled in preparation for an incursion into the strip. These forces--when given the green light--would punch through booby-trapped refugee camps in search of Hamas and Islamic Jihad gunmen, while Israeli jets and helicopters hunt the terrorists from above.
By invading Gaza, Israel hopes to counter increasingly bold Palestinian attacks--such as the firing of some 1,000 Qassam rockets at Israeli border towns and the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Hamas earlier this week. The troops will probably net a large number of terrorists and may rescue the captured soldier. But while the operation may flex its military muscle, it cannot restore Israel's deterrence power or prevent future rocket attacks and kidnappings. Indeed, the attack may well prove Pyrrhic--inflicting greater injury on Israel than on the Palestinians.
The quandary Israel confronts today originated in the unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza last August. A sizable majority of Israelis supported disengagement, excruciating as it was, as a means of achieving a national consensus on the country's borders and of preserving its vital Jewish majority.
Yet even those Israelis most in favor of the Gaza pullout understood that many Palestinians would interpret the move as a strategic retreat and a victory for Hamas and al-Aqsa terror. "We shot at the Jews and they fled Gaza," they would say, "so let's keep shooting and they'll abandon Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem." Israel could have refuted that claim by responding immediately and massively to every infiltration and to every rocket fired, irrespective of whether the attacks caused Israeli casualties. Gaza is now a de facto independent state, Israel should have declared, and like any other state it must bear the consequences of its aggression.
( Read more... )
Stop Terror at Its Source
A return to targeted killing might improve Israeli security.
BY MICHAEL OREN
Wednesday, June 28, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
JERUSALEM--Dawn broke yesterday over the Israel-Gaza border on a surreal but not unfamiliar scene: Rows of Merkava tanks, armored personnel carriers and Humvees were assembled in preparation for an incursion into the strip. These forces--when given the green light--would punch through booby-trapped refugee camps in search of Hamas and Islamic Jihad gunmen, while Israeli jets and helicopters hunt the terrorists from above.
By invading Gaza, Israel hopes to counter increasingly bold Palestinian attacks--such as the firing of some 1,000 Qassam rockets at Israeli border towns and the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Hamas earlier this week. The troops will probably net a large number of terrorists and may rescue the captured soldier. But while the operation may flex its military muscle, it cannot restore Israel's deterrence power or prevent future rocket attacks and kidnappings. Indeed, the attack may well prove Pyrrhic--inflicting greater injury on Israel than on the Palestinians.
The quandary Israel confronts today originated in the unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza last August. A sizable majority of Israelis supported disengagement, excruciating as it was, as a means of achieving a national consensus on the country's borders and of preserving its vital Jewish majority.
Yet even those Israelis most in favor of the Gaza pullout understood that many Palestinians would interpret the move as a strategic retreat and a victory for Hamas and al-Aqsa terror. "We shot at the Jews and they fled Gaza," they would say, "so let's keep shooting and they'll abandon Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem." Israel could have refuted that claim by responding immediately and massively to every infiltration and to every rocket fired, irrespective of whether the attacks caused Israeli casualties. Gaza is now a de facto independent state, Israel should have declared, and like any other state it must bear the consequences of its aggression.
( Read more... )
