Jerusalem Cloakroom #161

The Case Against Disengagement from Gaza and No. Samaria

by Yoram Ettinger
yoramtex@netvision.net.il

May 28, 2004 

1. Disengagement feeds terrorism. Each area ceded to the Palestinian Authority (PA), by Israel, SINCE 1993 (Gaza and 40% of Judea&Samaria) has become a platform of PA hate-education, PA hate-sermons and PA hate-media, producing cadres of homicide bombers. 250 Israelis were murdered by Palestinian terrorists during 15 years PRIOR to 1993; 1,400 Israeli were murdered by Palestinian terrorists DURING the 11 years of the Oslo-driven disengagements (proportionally equal to 70,000 Americans or 23 Twin Towers!).
    

2. Disengagement fuels anti-US terrorism. The 1993 disengagement (“Gaza and Jericho First”) created the PA, the largest terrorist base in the world, composed of graduates of terrorist camps in Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Libya and Tunisia. It has assisted Palestinians fighting the US in Afghanistan and Iraq. The July 2000 disengagement from So. Lebanon has propelled Hizballah from local to regional stature, plaguing US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Palestinian and Hizballah terrorists have severely undermined the stability of Jordan’s Hashemite regime, an ally of the US.
    

3. Disengagement feeds hope-driven terrorism. PA terrorism has not been triggered (since 1993) by despair, but rather by sweeping Israeli concessions, including disengagements: snatching the PLO out of oblivion in terror camps, according the PLO/PA global legitimacy, providing the PLO/PA with territory at the heart of Israel, supplying the PLO/PA with weaponry (which no Arab regime does!), tolerating PLO/PA hate-education, hate-sermons and hate-media and PLO/PA manufacturing and smuggling of explosives and missiles, AND THAT’S WHEN PALESTINIAN TERRORISM – and not peaceful coexistence – BURST UNPRECEDENTLY. Israeli concessions have fed PLO/PA terrorism, which has been driven by hopes for the disintegration of the Jewish state.
    

4. Existential and not a territorial conflict. The Palestinian-Israeli (and the Arab-Israeli) conflict has been existential and not territorial, as evidenced by the PA and Arab school textbooks, sermons and media, which have fed uniquely horrific terrorism. The conflict has preceded the 1948 establishment of Israel and the 1967 War (which accorded Israel control of Judea, Samaria and Gaza). Therefore, another disengagement will not resolve, but will fuel, the conflict.
    

5. Clash of civilization and not a territorial conflict. Israel’s enemies in the Mideast have considered Western civilization (Judeo-Christian values, Western democracy, free election, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, free minds, free markets) as an illegitimate entity – a chief threat to their reign. The Jewish state has been perceived by the Arabs, since 1948, as an outpost planted by Western civilization at the abode of Islam. The Jewish state has been branded, by the enemies of Western civilization as The Little Satan, the proxy of the US, The Big Satan. The Jewish state has been targeted by Palestinian, Arab and Islamic terrorism – just like the USA and other Western societies – primarily for what it is and secondarily for what it does. The Jewish state has been depicted, by the Arabs, as “another Crusader State”, which must be annihilated, rather than integrated.
    

6. Cut & run from Iraq and Afghanistan (7,000 miles from the US) would fuel more anti-US terrorism, chasing a retreating US to the mainland. So would cut&run from Gaza (1 hour ride from Tel Aviv). The few cases of peace in the Mideast have been driven by deterrence and not by concessions. Retreats have fueled violence. The Mideast defines “disengagement” as retreat, cave-in, surrender, appeasement, cut & run – a setback to durable peace through deterrence.
    

7. Disengagement undermines Palestinian moderation. The post-1993 series of disengagements have been perceived as a reward to PLO/PA/Hamas terrorism, thus deterring any potential moderate Palestinian alternative to the PA. A US disengagement from Iraq would doom any chance for a moderate Iraq. The Mideast has remained the bastion of post-Cold War tyranny, because most of its tyrants have been tolerated/appeased by the West, thus dooming most Mideast moderates to oblivion.
    

8. General Earl Wheeler, former Chairman of the Joint C-o-S: Israel’s control of the population of Gaza would deter and significantly reduce terrorism. It would minimize the capability to incite, organize, recruit, train and deploy terrorists. “Occupation of the Gaza Strip by Israel would reduce the hostile border by a factor of five, and eliminate a source for raids and training of [Palestinian terrorists]...The Strip serves as a salient for introduction of Arab subversion and terrorism, and its retention would be to Israel’s military advantage...By occupying the Strip, Israel would trade 45 miles of hostile border for eight.” (June 29, 1967 Memorandum to the Pentagon on Israel’s minimal requirements for security). Wheeler’s determination is doubly relevant to 2004, since the world of 2004 is more threatening than 1967, the Mideast is more explosive, terrorism has become more horrific and the PLO/PA has been established as a systematic and terroristic violator of all commitments.
    

9. Disengagement undermines peace. If the PLO/PA gets territory in return for its own terrorism, why should the PLO/PA conduct any negotiation?!
    

10. The alternative to the status quo is – for the first time since 1993 – to set the goal of winning the war on (rather than coexisting with) PA terrorism:

• To adopt moral clarity, defining the PA as a role-model of terrorism and an enemy to be crashed and not a partner to be appeased;
   

• To shift from defensive, limited-surgical-local and retaliatory mode to offensive, comprehensive and preemptive mode, by controlling the enemies’ own ground;
   

• To end the protracted war-of-low-intensity and launch a swift and a decisive war, in order to overwhelm the enemy to submission (through disproportional means, as defined by the Powell Doctrine);
   

• To end co-existence with terrorism through a series of ceasefires, and destroy the political, financial, ideological and (then) the operational infrastructures, which fuel the fire of terrorism;
   

• To desist from attempts to conclude further agreements with those who systematically and violently abrogate agreements;
   

• To stop watering, fertilizing and pruning the PA poison ivy, and uproot it (the PA infrastructure, which has been imported from terrorist camps throughout the Mideast).