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Quote by: BaronVEsslingen The point is, until you do away with the extremists who want nothing more than to drive the Israelis into the sea or die trying, you will have no peace. The ball is in Abbas' court, not Sharon's. |
I understnd, but do not agree. First of all Sadat clearly was not able to lock up all his radicals because he was killed by some of them in his own entourage. Second there is still weapons smuggling from Egypt into Gaza. While there is a working peace accord with Egypt, it does not exist in some oasis of peace in a region of war. The hatred of Israel is still palpable but it is contained because Egypt, the nation, sees it to its advantage to suppress its own internal militant groups as much as possible and not to make war with Israel part of its official policy. Israel could settle for the same relationship with the Palestinians.
The policy of Israel has always been massive retalliation to violent provocation. This was a decision of the high command going back to the forties. When innocent Palestinians are killed, the response is always to reiterate Israel's undeniable right to self-defense. Perfectly understandable except for one thing. It repeatedly fails. The logic is to assure the militants that they will pay a terrible price for their violence and thefore they will be contained. It has failed and it fails over and over again. The overreaction stimulates the militants, leaves the moderates with no argument to make and makes it more difficult for other nations to support Israel.
If you use massive violent retalliation and refuse to cummunicate, even in self-defense, and that policy repeately fails to do anything more than stimulate more violence, not only have you failed to defend yourself, but you have also lost your moral rationale.
Israel has cut down the number of attacks by the use of the security fence. The fence runs through, what the Israelis call disputed territories and the Palestinians call Palestinian land. It is a very tough measure. Given that the Israelis have been able to achieve some measure of security by way of the "fence" they should capitalize upon that small measure of increased security. They should understand that the attacks from the radical militants are not going to cease so they ought to keep open the lines of communication and they certainly ought to renounce their own policy of massive retalliations and targeted killings. That is, if they actually want a peaceful two-state solution. Their present posture indicates they are more comfortable with continued intifada.
Melvyn Polatchek