Posted on 01/27/2008 2:57:02 PM PST by tpanther
Jan 26, 2008 22:37 | Updated Jan 27, 2008 20:48
Power and Politics: So, is the 'occupation' over?
By ELLIOT JAGER
To this day, it's been hard for Israel to rid itself of the Gaza Strip and its 1.3 million Palestinian Arab inhabitants.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin tried to convince Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to take Gaza in 1979, when Israel turned over the Sinai Peninsula as part of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.
No thanks, said Sadat, though Egypt had occupied the Strip from 1948 until the 1967 Six Day War.
Israel's unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005 was another attempt to solve our Gaza problem. The Palestinian Authority, under EU tutelage, was supposed to handle border control at Rafah. But the Europeans and "moderate" Palestinians abandoned their posts in the wake of Hamas's violent takeover of the Strip in the summer of 2007 (which, you'll recall, followed its earlier, electoral victory over Fatah in 2006).
All this undercut a pillar of Israel's disengagement strategy: to be done with Gaza. Jerusalem could not really disengage under an onslaught of flying bombs aimed at the Negev - even if every last Israeli citizen had been evacuated and the IDF had pulled out.
Those of us who supported disengagement must now admit that it created more problems for Israeli security and diplomacy than it solved.
AS FAR as I know, no pundit or intelligence agency forecast what happened on January 23. There was no advance warning that the Philadelphi Corridor would essentially disappear. At this writing, the division between Hamas-controlled Palestinian Arab Gaza and Egyptian Sinai has vanished. Or as a BBC correspondent put it: "There are so many Palestinians in Rafah that it is almost as if the town had been annexed by Gaza."
What had been a background headache for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his security chief Omar Suleiman is now a full-blown migraine.
Moreover, it now transpires that Hamas didn't just engineer the recent "humanitarian crisis" in Gaza, but also plotted demolishing the Philadelphi Corridor fence separating Egyptian from Palestinian Rafah.
For his part, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been shown (once again) to be a hapless bystander with little influence over what happens on the Palestinian street.
In the wake of Thursday's events, there are more questions than answers.
Among the people wondering what happens next are the clans who made their living transporting contraband and weapons via the tunnels under the Philadelphi Corridor. Will they still have a business? How will they adapt to the new situation? What impact will the fall of the Philadelphi Corridor have on rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas? Will the Sinai-Negev border now become a new flashpoint?
And, conversely, does the corridor's collapse end the talk of Gaza being "a big prison" and of Israel's "occupation" continuing? Or will the media take the line adopted on Thursday by the Guardian that the crisis continues, and it's Israel's fault?
A ROSY SCENARIO argues that Gaza is at last no longer Israel's problem; it's the clear responsibility of Egypt and Hamas. Ranking Israeli officials told The New York Times that the events in Gaza may be "a blessing in disguise... some people in the Defense Ministry, Foreign Ministry and Prime Minister's Office are very happy with this. They are saying, 'At last, the disengagement is beginning to work.'"
In other words, now that the border is open, Hamas must begin worrying about the delivery of essential services and the population's welfare, something that would necessitate a genuine cease-fire with Israel and the end to cross-border attacks.
A gloomier scenario would argue that the fall of the Philadelphi Corridor may have dire consequences for the Mubarak regime itself; that the Islamist triumph and Cairo's sclerotic management of the developing crisis will embolden the Muslim Brotherhood, which, for all we pundits know, is right now making quiet inroads into the Egyptian military.
Further, on the internal Palestinian front, Hamas will seek to leverage its Gaza accomplishment by manipulating Abbas to end what's left of the EU and US embargo.
The Abbas approach of dealing with Israel - call it outward accommodation, the phased plan, whatever - has less credibility on the Palestinian street than ever.
The Fatah chief will either further adapt his policies to Hamas, or quit to make way for a newly released Marwan Barghouti.
MY HUNCH is that in the near-term, Egypt will try to pick up the pieces. It will attempt to control traffic between the Sinai and Egypt proper; it will bring Hamas and Fatah together, with the Islamists as the senior partners and the nationalists as conduits to the civilized world. Israeli decision makers, after due deliberation, will probably opt not to send the IDF back into Gaza to rebuild and take charge of the Philadelphi Corridor.
Fruitless negotiations on a "shelf agreement" between Israel and the PA will naturally continue because the Bush administration needs this illusion of momentum, the EU thinks the talks can actually produce something tangible, and Ehud Olmert has every incentive (if he survives the Winograd Commission's report later this week) to play along.
Hamas will reduce attacks on Israel even as it lays the groundwork to continue the struggle. It will, meantime, concentrate on rebuilding its network in the West Bank.
All this makes the post-Annapolis negotiations aimed at a theoretical, paper agreement (which, Israelis are told, will be implemented only if the Palestinians change their violent ways) an even more dangerous exercise in futility: Concessions to Abbas may yet be reaped by the Islamists who stand poised to take over Palestinian society.
Even if the Rafah barrier is reconstituted, how the bitter lemons of Hamas's latest achievement can be turned into lemonade is beyond me.
The "palestinians" are all leaving Israel?
There will never be an independent arab Gaza, and there will never be an independent arab West Bank. As an independent country, they are not viable and never will be. They have no markets, no source of employment other than welfare and terrorism, no manufacturing base, nothing at all.
The destruction of this fence points to the only solution, even if its a solution no one wants. The solution is for Israel, first, to choose the borders she is prepared to live and die by, seal them, and defend them. They have largely done this. Part two is to force the mother countries to resume kicking and screaming their responsibilities for the contiguous arab territories. Egypt and Gaza, Jordan and the arab portions of the West Bank.
Jordan and Egypt don’t want to? Of course not. These two territories are designed to be a cancer on Israel’s hide. But the answer is to reverse the game, and force the mother countries to deal with their orphaned brethren across the imaginary border. If Israel doesn’t play the game, Jordan and Egypt have no choice but to resume control, or face outlaw enclaves on their own border. Israel has been playing along all this time, trying to control the border between Gaza and Egypt, for example, when all they need to do is control the border between themselves and the arabs in general, and let the arabs deal with the arabs.
If the arabs sail a missile over the line, move the line, it doesn’t matter whether it is Hamas or Egyptian military. Israel certainly had no qualms in the past seizing land from Egypt proper, or Jordan proper, they should have no qualms about doing it again if the current border is not respected. Gaza and West Bank are only “jails” if the line separating them from the rest of araby is closed by Israel. If it is closed by Jordan and Egypt, it isn’t Israel’s affair. Israel has to stop being the heavy, and let Egypt do Egypt’s dirty work for themselves.
That’s exactly right, and what a wonderful time to implement my plan:
Israel should build a series of unmanned rocket batteries that are triggered by launches from rocket attacks from within Gaza.
Explain to the whole world in a comprehensive communications project, complete with slideshow, powerpoints etc. that the system is on-line now and Israel has no control, other than teams that will reload the launchers.
Once a rocket leaves Gaza and enters Israeli air space, the launch site is obliterated some 2-3 city blocks within seconds to minutes.
Rather they really have it in place or not isn’t important, in the meantime they can plan and implement such a similar system. Or something that accomplishes the same effect:
Each time one of these jackals launches rockets from say a daycare center, it’s proven that the missle batteris are only triggered and target launch sites, ahead of time, not purposefully or under IDF or Israeli Air Force control. In other words, the system only targets offensive launch sites in a defensive net. It’s not therefore seen as retaliatory strikes, rather neutralizing incoming kassam rocket attacks.
Each launch releases a barrage of 10 rockets to destroy the site and the terorists in the vacinity. Manned teams can maintain the system and reload launch racks.
Seal the borders and tell the U.N. to get busy NOW with humanitarian aid and do their damn job but Israel no longer occupies that bit of arab territory, will defend herself but has washed it’s hands of the Gaza problem once and for all!
The best that Israel can hope for is to completely cut off Gaza from anything from Israel. Then either the Gazans go to Egypt, or Egypt comes to Gaza.
Israel can then position four or five Phalanx CIWS to shoot down any projectile thrown over the wall with airburst 20mm rounds, and begin reinforcement of the wall itself, to diminish any chance for it being easily destroyed or penetrated.
Then they should erect 100 foot observation towers on the Israeli side, giving them the ability to observed organized mass attacks on the Gaza side.
Except for the Phalanx CIWS, this is comparatively inexpensive. And by shutting off any flow of anything between Gaza and Israel, the Gazans again become solely an Egyptian problem.
TV showed one family bringing back what looked like a harley!
Ahhhh...this has the sweet scent of “chickens coming home to roost”.
I’m sure this analogy isn’t PC, but I love it’s many possible interpretations.
Probably was ~ much better choice than an automobile ~ you can more readily lock a Harley up inside the house and it’ll be there in the morning.
but didn’t Egypt say they would not turn aways ‘refugees’?
Well their contention now is Hamas will slip in with them, they actually hate Hamas and they have a point of course.
What ticks me off is they’ve (and every other arab country and Iran) mostly been allied with Hamas, directly or indirectly, in the destruction of Israel since ‘48!
Now they’re hypocritically essentially proclaiming Hamas IS indeed a terror group with their actions at the border, but have denounced Israel for that very position for some 60 years or so now!
But I’m thinking this is a good come uppance, now it’s (Gaza) Egypt’s problem!
What does Hamas loose on the Sinai mean for the safety of the tourist town Sharm el-Sheikh ?
Or Hamas loose anywhere?
Israel needs to call Turbanex..
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