Posted on 02/24/2008 8:20:34 AM PST by SJackson
I was listening to Israel radio last week when the talkback presenter commented that an Arab is an Arab is an Arab. Wow. There is nothing racist about this. One is really what one is. What he was talking about was their allegiances to their own kind.
The stated aim of Hamas, which was voted in as representing the national aspirations of Arabs in the area, is the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel. Whenever there are suicide bombings of Jews, Arabs dance atop of the roofs of their houses.
The Gazan Arabs are not Jews. Not a single one of them. The majority of them originally came from Algeria and Egypt, looking for an improvement in their economic situation. The opening of the border to Egypt has put them back where they really belong: they have moved house to being part of the Arab people.
Opening up the border between Gaza and Egypt initially appeared to be a strategic problem for Israel. Now, Hamas's insistence that Egypt provide all food, water, and supply of goods and services could be a windfall as well: a part-solution for Israel, absolving her from the moral responsibility of the health and welfare of its own enemy.
The idea of a Palestinian state is looking more and more remote as the Gazans are taken right out of the equation. It looks as if they have cut off their nose to spite their face. As Gazans flee back to Egypt and other Arab countries, they are voting with their feet against the idea of Palestine that has been promoted by Arab leaders as an alternative to the State of Israel. They are leaving for better economic prospects, to study, to marry in Egypt, and hoping to get to Europe and America. They want to live out their lives without being used as pawns in a hopeless war against the Jews. They did not all only do their shopping in nearby towns. Some got as far as the Suez Canal, where their flight onwards was temporarily blocked by closing crossings.
Why has Israel put up with this situation for so long? Supplying the PA's sick and wounded with hospital services and their war machine with fuel whilst pandering to world opinion is beyond imagination. It could have been a reaction to the Holocaust in Israel's attempts to be a moral state. However, from a military point of view, an enemy cannot be allowed to manipulate goodwill during battle, particularly when the incursion is coming from Hamas in Gaza in the form of rockets being fired into Israel's cities to kill civilians. Hamas has a policy of cowardly firing these rockets from school yards, apartment buildings and other populated areas. They then complain about civilian casualties when Israel carries out precision strikes in an attempt to minimize deaths when striking rocket launchers or their instigators.
Hamas's orchestration of a disaster made by them, manipulation of world opinion and their continued military strikes against civilian men, women and children in Israel is now the business of the Arab world. It will be Egypt who will have to contend with extremism, suicide bombers, and aversion to peace and democracy. Egyptian leaders, their hands full with Muslim extremists, will now have to feed and provide for an extra million and a half of their own who have been brought up as a generation of potential murderers. Egypt will have to deal with mothers who swell with pride as they tell worldwide TV audiences of their sons and daughters killing exploits, and as they bring up another generation to believe that death is the preferred option to life.
Israel needs to have economic ties with these people like it needs a hole in the head.
True, it will not be easy sailing in dealing with Egypt and its long border with Israel as extremism takes hold throughout the government and the military over the coming years. We are talking about that part of the world where if you do not want a particular member of parliament, then you just bump him off. Indeed, the whole of Egypt could turn into an active enemy of Israel at any time. On the other hand, peace could bring economic prosperity benefiting large sections of Arab populations. The whole area was once a major trading area and could easily be again with the Israeli powerhouse at its centre.
The future of the Gazans, and now of Egypt, will depend entirely upon the supply of money and arms by the Americans, the European Union, the Saudis and the Russians. The international donors will decide the conditions of that supply. Now that Israel is morally out of the picture it will be interesting to see if other countries will jump to help. Because war is the biggest industry of all, count on countries fighting each other to supply war materiel.
As for humanitarian assistance, no country can easily manage the upkeep of one and a half-million basket cases with no economy of their own being dumped on their doorstep.
Will the women, the children, the sick and the elderly left in Gaza get the help that they need? When it comes to humanitarian assistance, don't bet on it.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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Because some of the people who fund the socialists long for its demise?
“Hamas has a policy of cowardly firing these rockets from school yards, apartment buildings and other populated areas.” And what did we do during WWII when the Germans hid in their cities buildings and schools? We leveled them. It’s sad but it’s war. They will complain and then it will be forgotten as we and the world has forgotten about WWII, but it will end the wars.
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