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Why They Fight

[Washington Post] Charles Krauthammer - For four decades we have been told that the cause of the anger, violence, and terror against Israel is its occupation of the territories seized in the Six-Day War. The problem with this claim was that before Israel came into possession of the West Bank and Gaza, every Arab state had rejected Israel's right to exist and declared Israel's pre-1967 borders - now deemed sacred - to be nothing more than the armistice lines suspending, and not ending, the 1948-49 war to exterminate Israel. Just last September, Israel evacuated Gaza completely. Gaza became the first independent Palestinian territory in history. Yet the Gazans continued the war. They turned Gaza into a base for launching rocket attacks against Israel and for digging tunnels under the border to conduct attacks. Hizballah, which has representation in the Lebanese parliament and in the cabinet, launched an attack into Israel on Wednesday that resulted in the deaths of eight soldiers and the taking of two others as hostages. What's the grievance here? Israel withdrew from Lebanon completely in 2000, as verified by the UN. The issue is, and has always been, Israel's existence. That is what is at stake.
2006-07-14 01:00:00
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