The Bane of the Gazan Experience (Zephaniah 2:1-5)

Submitted by M. Tovey (United States), Nov 28, 2012 at 11:45

As the situation facing Israel moves from dealing with the potential of a variety of attack modes from her myriad enemies to the inevitability of yet another all-out conflict, trying to understand the mindset of why the Israeli leadership allowed certain things to happen the way they did in recent times is disconcerting. It sometimes reaches into a stress filled recrimination of why they did what they did in order to find a way back from the precipice that Israel is apparently being pushed to by the global community and certain of the Israeli leadership seems willing to acquiesce.

By certain frames of thought, Israel ceding Gaza was a complete forfeiture of a sovereign responsibility to protect the Israeli population in the south, replacing a relatively quiet, though restless, relationship with Mubarak's Egypt with the antipathies of the Muslim Brotherhood backed extremists that have but one goal in life, to exact the toll necessary to exterminate Israel. Who would be willing to do that?

As an American who has the interests of Israel at heart and a desire for peace in the Middle East, it was quite disconcerting to see President Bush's America vacillate, then take a course of indiscriminate power pedaling in trying to enforce a 'Two State Solution' which had all of the antagonism of Israel's enemies pushing Israel back from maintaining a sovereign integrity in order to weaken her for future actions aimed at her eventual demise. Why would an American president do that?

But apparently it took the political insensitivity of Ariel Sharon to finally determine that ceding Gaza might provide relief from the intense international pressure to give the 'Palestinian' statehood process some sort of chance. Evidently, it was a ruse cloaked behind the pretense of hudna that gave the world a warm fuzzy feeling that progress towards peace in the Middle East was in transit. Why would an Israeli member of government do that?

A Philadelphi 'corridor' has all the tactical issues of a mistake in the making. It is an inadequate answer for a more compelling problem, how to get an enemy of inexplicable resolve to concede to a failed strategic policy. You cannot solve that by making strategic errors of your own as Israel did with Gaza.

A Philidelphi 'corridor' is nearly an indefensible posture militarily; exposure of the flanks, cover support and materiel supply similarly exposed and the lack of continued international support of a 'demilitarized zone' (an oxymoron if ever there was one in this instance) make for a situation that is guaranteed to escalate at any convenient break of the hudna the enemy might chose.

There is only one recourse to solve the tactical issues of Gaza; but the chances for that are excruciatingly minimal, if existent at all: that is to take back Gaza. Worse yet, the international issues will not be solved in the same move. All things considered, Gaza will continue to be a thorn in Israel's back side; but worse still, it is likely to be a source of diverting attention from Israel's more ominous threat, eventually coming from the north. So, in that frame of reference, Gaza needs a definitive solution quickly and a Philidelphi 'corridor' does not provide enough security for those purposes, even as Egypt's posture continues to change and make such things plain.

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