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Palestinians Targeting Pre-1967 Israel

(bitterlemons.org) Maj.-Gen. (res.) Shlomo Gazit - * Nearly a year has passed since the Israeli settlements were removed and the Israel Defense Forces withdrew from Gaza. Israel hoped that, once its disengagement was completed, the Palestinians would have no cause to continue carrying out terrorist acts once the rationale of removing the occupation was gone, and that the urgent need to organize the lives of the local Palestinian population would alter domestic Palestinian priorities. Neither of these things happened. * In Palestinian eyes, the evacuation from the Strip was an unequivocal victory for armed struggle, and what "succeeded" in Gaza in their view would produce a similar success in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and - why not - in Beersheba, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. * In the absence of IDF forces, and with the Sinai border virtually wide open, the Gaza Strip has become a giant depot for the development, manufacture, and import of ordnance that fuels an unending attack on Sderot and the other Israeli towns and villages around the Strip. Today Palestinian fire is directed, without exception, at targets within the "green line," where there is no controversy regarding Israel's sovereignty. * The Palestinian objective is to attack and kill any Jew, indiscriminately, within Israel. Palestinian terrorists prefer to attack innocent civilians, particularly in crowded population centers. The terrorist organizations don't care whether, where, and how many innocent Israelis they hit; on the contrary, this is their objective. They have never lost any sleep over the massive murder of Israeli boys and girls who just wanted to have fun in a Tel Aviv beach disco or the dead and wounded among hundreds of guests who came to celebrate Pesach at a hotel in Netanya. * This is not the case with Israel and the IDF: if and when Israeli fire hits an innocent Palestinian, Israel is called upon to prove and, what is even more difficult, to convince the world that the victim indeed chanced to be positioned next to terrorists who were defined as legitimate targets by any standard. The writer was Israel's first Coordinator of Government Operations in the Administered Territories (1967-1974), and Head of Military Intelligence (1974-1979).
2006-06-30 00:00:00
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