[Wall Street Journal, 24 Jan 09] Bret Stephens - "I don't think Israel can accept an Iranian terror base next to its major cities any more than the United States could accept an al-Qaeda base next to New York City." "Notwithstanding the blows to Hamas, it's still in Gaza, it's still ruling Gaza, and the Philadelphi corridor [which runs along Gaza's border with Egypt] is still porous, and...Hamas can smuggle new rockets unless it's closed, to fire at Israel in the future." Iran is the "mother regime" both of Hamas, against which Israel has just fought a war, as well as Hizbullah, against which it fought a war in 2006. "The arming of Iran with nuclear weapons may portend an irreversible process, because these regimes assume a kind of immortality....[This] will pose an existential threat to Israel directly, but also could give a nuclear umbrella to these terrorist bases." "Most of the approaches to peace between Israel and the Palestinians have been directed at trying to resolve the most complex problems, like refugees and Jerusalem, which is akin to building the pyramid from the top down. It's much better to build it layer by layer, in a deliberate, purposeful pattern that changes the reality for both Palestinians and Israelis." "We're not going to redivide Jerusalem, or get off the Golan Heights, or go back to the 1967 boundaries....We won't repeat the mistake...of unilateral retreats to merely vacate territory that is then taken up by Hamas or Iran." "Peace is purchased from strength. It's not purchased from weakness or unilateral retreats. It just doesn't happen that way. That perhaps is the greatest lesson that has been impressed on the mind of the Israeli public in the last few years."
2009-04-01 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive