A week in a Middle East Utopia

Caroline Glick describes the exact situtation I predict after a Gaza withdrawal. There will be no one there to fight the terrorists who will work on increasing the lethality of their weapons and the frequency of their attacks. If Egypt is given charge of Gaza and Israel finds it necessary to go into Gaza to clean it out, what will Israel do if Egypt says "no"?

In an opinion column in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, [Abraham] Sofaer, who as legal adviser to the State Department during the Reagan administration arguably did more than anyone to prevent international law from being used as a whip to prevent nations from fighting international terrorism, argued that Sharon's withdrawal plan is the only option. Sofaer allows that 'the Palestinians are far from ready to negotiate.' The advantage of Sharon's plan therefore, is that it gets Israel out of an 'untenable' position in Gaza. Sofaer compares the withdrawal from Gaza to Israel's May 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon, arguing, 'Today, the Lebanese-Israeli border is more secure than during occupation.'

This is the sort of sophistry that friends of Israel like Sofaer would almost certainly never have entertained before Sharon adopted the plan. The fact of the matter is that today, Hizbullah forces in south Lebanon constitute a strategic threat to Israel. Just this week the army reported that Hizbullah is developing unconventional weapons. Last week the IDF deployed a battery of Patriot missiles to Haifa to prevent Hizbullah drones, which can be armed with chemical and biological weapons, from infiltrating Israel ? again. Hizbullah's transformation from a tactical challenge to a strategic threat has advanced unfettered over the past four years because the IDF left Lebanon and stopped fighting Hizbullah. The fact that since the withdrawal of IDF forces from Lebanon no soldiers have been killed in Lebanon is a tautology, not proof that the move was wise. Aside from that, the IDF also reported this week that the majority of Palestinian terror cells in Judea and Samaria that executed successful terror attacks in 2004 has been affiliated with Hizbullah. And so we disengaged from them in Lebanon only to fight them in Israel.

This week St.-Sgt. Nadav Kudinsky was killed in Gaza as he led forces in uncovering a tunnel for transferring terrorists into Israel. How exactly will Israel be able to prevent such tunnels from becoming operational once IDF forces have left the area? Will Egyptian or British forces fight Palestinian terrorists for us? Sofaer writes that "Israel's security would be threatened if Gaza is taken over by terrorists." Well, who else does he think will take it over when, in order to shore up domestic support, the likes of Abbas and Qurei and Shaath feel it necessary to bed down with the likes of Ahmed Jibril and Assad? What do Sofaer or any of Israel's other staunch supporters think Egypt, with fresh diplomatic ties with Teheran and new legitimacy in Israel because of Azzam's release, will do against these people when Mubarak's chief government-sponsored cleric Sheikh Tantawi this week extolled the legitimacy of the Sunni terrorists fighting Iraqi and coalition forces in Iraq?


The fact of the matter is that by fighting Palestinian terrorists on the ground in Gaza and along the Egyptian border and by controlling the air, land and sea entry points to Gaza, Israel is not in an untenable position. It is in a difficult position. But there can be no doubt that the threat won't go away if we turn our backs to it and call it untenable. As in Lebanon, it will grow all the more dangerous.