Jamie

Weinstein

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January 13, 2009

Land for Peace a Total Failure; Let Israel Strike a Death Blow Against Hamas

Despite its evident failure, we still hear that cliché of a Middle East peace strategy promulgated by pundits and politicians: Land for Peace.  

This discredited peace policy should have long ago been relegated to the garbage dump of terrible ideas. Sadly, it has persisted. But with the current predicament in the Holy Land, is it too much to ask those who cling to the Land for Peace mantra – like little children cling to their favorite stuffed animals – to now concede that this tired slogan has been once and for all incinerated in the fires of Gaza?

To understand the Hamas-Israel war one must turn the clock back to 2005.

It was in 2005 that then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered Israeli troops to dismantle all Jewish settlements in the Gaza strip and remove all the settlers that called the settlements home. Each and every Israeli citizen, each and every Jew that was residing in Gaza, left on their own accord or was forced out by their own government. This was not an easy decision for Sharon to make and it was a terribly difficult decision for Israel as a nation to implement. Jews forcing other Jews from their homes, from the land where their parents and grandparents were buried, was no easy task.

But leave Gaza Israel did. In so doing, Israel gave Palestinian Arabs in Gaza a chance to rule themselves, an opportunity to finally build what would in effect be a template for a state of their own. This is an opportunity that no Arab country or Muslim polity had ever given the Arabs of Palestine – not the Ottoman Turks when that territory was a part of the Ottoman Empire, not the Egyptians when they controlled Gaza for nearly 20 years, not the Jordanians when they controlled the West Bank for the same time span.

Yes, for the first time in history, the Arabs of Gaza would be able to prove to the world that they were a responsible political community and could properly govern themselves. To ease the economic transition, American philanthropists even purchased more than 3,000 successful greenhouses from departing Jewish settlers to donate to the Gazan Arabs at a price of $14 million dollars.

And what happened when Israel left in September 2005? Immediately, the aforementioned  beautiful and economically beneficial greenhouses were destroyed and looted.  Soon thereafter, Palestinians elected the genocidal terrorist group Hamas as the majority party in their Palestinian legislature. Hamas then kicked out Fatah (the opposition party) from Gaza and turned the Gaza Strip into a territory of terror. Some governments whose territory borders the beautiful Mediterranean Sea like to encourage the creation of resorts so that tourists will come and spend money. Those who rule Gaza appear to much prefer terrorism to tourism.

From this base of terror, Hamas lobbed thousands of rockets into Israel, forcing innocent Israeli men, women and children to live on a constant state of alert. No responsible government can tolerate such a state of affairs. The United States wouldn't accept it, Britain wouldn't accept it, Egypt wouldn't accept it and neither should Israel be expected to accept it.

So what we are seeing in Gaza today is Israel finally taking decisive action in order to end the barrage of rockets that threaten its citizens. Unfortunately, the enemy they face in Gaza is of the cruelest kind. They hide their fighters among civilians and even hold leadership meetings in a Gazan hospital. While Israel tries to protect innocent civilians as much as humanly possible, Hamas hopes to maximize civilian casualties, both within Israel itself when it can and also among its own people. After all, Hamas does not see innocent Palestinian casualties as a tragedy like Israel does, but instead a propaganda victory. 

Taking a step back, one can see a larger trend. Instead of Land for Peace, we have seen a policy of Land for War. Israel turned over Gaza to the Palestinians in the hopes of fostering peace in 2005, and the territory was turned into a base of terror to foment war. Similarly, in 2000, Israel left Southern Lebanon and hoped for a peaceful border with its neighbor. Instead, the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah moved into the void Israel left and turned that territory into a sanctuary of terror and war – the culmination of which was the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War. It is only a matter of time until Hezbollah instigates another war with Israel from Southern Lebanon where the terrorist group continues to stockpile rockets in preparation.

So not only has Land for Peace been proven a failure, but the opposite has occurred. Israel has unintentionally been following a doctrine of Land for War. Israel gives up land in the hope of peace and instead gets war. While it should not be overstated – after all, the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and from Southern Lebanon in 2000, were motivated by many other reasons than just a Pollyannaish hope for peace – the lessons of this current conflict are nevertheless instructive.

For now, the best hope for peace is for Israel to, if not completely destroy Hamas, deliver a catastrophic blow to the terror organization’s war-making ability. All peace loving people should pray they are successful.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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