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Jewish World Review
April 1, 2005
/ 21 Adar II, 5765
Sharon's retreat is a victory for terrorists
By
Jeff Jacoby
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In January 2003, Ariel Sharon won a second term as Israel's prime minister by crushing the Labor Party's Amram Mitzna, who
had campaigned on a promise of uprooting Jewish settlements in Gaza and surrendering the territory to the Palestinians. Sharon
firmly opposed that idea, which he had long regarded as a prescription for disaster. ''Evacuating Netzarim," he had said in 2002,
referring to one of the Gaza communities, ''will only encourage terrorism and increase the pressure upon us."
But within a year of his landslide victory, Sharon turned 180 degrees. To the shock of friend and foe alike, he embraced
Mitzna's plan for a unilateral withdrawal. There was no better option, he insisted. As painful as it might be to force 8,000 Jews out
of the homes and communities they had built with the encouragement of successive Israeli governments, continuing the status quo
would be even worse.
Sharon claims that a majority of Israelis agree with him, but it is impossible to know, since he has refused to put the issue to a
popular vote. On Monday, Israel's parliament backed him up, voting down a proposal to hold a national referendum on what
Sharon calls the Gaza ''disengagement." Barring the unexpected, then, the Jews of Gaza will be expelled this summer as Israel's
prime minister carries out the very plan he was elected to prevent.
The supporters of withdrawal make a plausible case. Defending the Gaza settlements exacts a heavy military and financial
cost, they say, tying down far too many soldiers to protect relatively few civilians. Pulling out of the territory will shorten Israel's
line of defense. And once Gaza's Jews depart, the terrorists will be deprived of victims to attack, thanks to the security fence that
seals off the territory from Israel proper.
To many Israelis, leaving Gaza also promises psychological relief — an end to the exhausting and unwanted burden of militarily
ruling a hostile population. Norman Podhoretz, writing in the current issue of Commentary, quotes the blunt comment made to him
by one Israeli at a high-level conference in 2003: ''Why should we keep trying to negotiate peace with people who want only to
murder as many of us as they can? Instead of going on with this charade, the best thing we can do is cut ourselves off from them
with the fence and then let them stew in their own juices."
But the world doesn't work that way.
To retreat in the face of terror is to invite more of it, not less. Handing Gaza over to the gangsters of Hamas and the PLO will
not leave them ''stewing in their own juices" but celebrating their victory. As they take over the houses, farms, and schools of the
people they demonized and terrorized for years, they will draw the obvious conclusion: Violence works, and the Jews are on the
run.
Listen to Ahmed al-Bahar, a top Hamas operative. ''Israel has never been in such a state of retreat and weakness as it is today
following more than four years of the intifadah," he exulted last week. ''The withdrawal marks the end of the Zionist dream and is
a sign of the moral and psychological decline of the Jewish state."
Just as Israel's unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 proved a triumph for Hezbollah, so will Fatah, Hamas, and
Islamic Jihad revel in Israel's surrender of Gaza. The Lebanon retreat inspired the Palestinian Authority to launch a murderous
terror war, the so-called ''second intifadah." What fresh hell will the Gaza disengagement inspire?
A few days ago, Israeli officials learned that Palestinians had smuggled SA-7 antiaircraft missiles into Gaza from Egypt.
Mahmoud Abbas, the ''moderate" Palestinian president, announced plans to release two hard-core terrorists from custody. Far
from cracking down on Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Abbas is taking them on as partners: The official Palestinian media reported this
week that the two terror organizations intend to formally join the PLO. ''What's happening now isn't considered a calm," the
leader of yet another terror squad, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, told an Israeli newspaper. ''It's merely a warrior's rest."
If the terrorists are this brazen now, when Israeli troops are still on the ground, what will happen when those troops are gone
and Gaza becomes a safe haven for killers and radicals?
It isn't only Israel that will pay the price. ''A Hamas flag over Netzarim will justify 37 years of terrorism," writes Michael
Rubin, the editor of the Middle East Quarterly. An Israeli withdrawal will embolden rejectionists across the region. ''If terrorism
can free Gaza, why not the West Bank, the Galilee, Indian Kashmir, or democratic Iraq?"
Wars are not won by retreats, or with fences, or through the ethnic cleansing of Jews. Difficult as the Gaza status quo may be,
what is scheduled to take place this summer will prove far worse. Sharon — the old Sharon — had it right: Unilateral withdrawal is
a prescription for disaster.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.
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