It depends

Submitted by Meryl Arbing (United States), Aug 16, 2005 at 15:45

It depends on which war this battle is being fought in. If people think that the evacuation of the Gaza settlements will cause the militants to reconsider their murderous ways then it will fail. We have seen that there is nothing that Israel could do (positively or negatively) that will influence the terrorists. In fact, the [forced] relocation of the settlers has already been taken as evidence that the 'armed struggle' is working and therefore, efforts must be increased.

However, if nothing were done, the rationale would still be that terrorist activities must be increased. We know that there are already plans for Gaza terror cells to relocate to the West Bank...so, if the withdrawal from Gaza was meant to appease the terrorists..it is doomed.

Look at the attempts by israel to passively protect itself with the Security Wall! It was a much better alternative than having Israelis killed and young Palestinians killing themselves, and yet, the world condemned Israel. Even though we know that the terrorists are accomplished tunnel rats and there would have been a honeycomb of tunnels under the wall in relatively short order, Israel's efforts to protect itself without having to kill anyone was seen as another act of oppression. World opinion turned to the poor Palestinians.

So, the other war is the propaganda war...the war for the sympathy and support of the rest of the world and, at this, the Palestinians were masters at playing the victim. It didn't seem to matter how many old people and school children they blew up...Israel was still the 'oppressor'. Now, other nations can see that Israel is making concessions to the moderate Palestinian authorities and that they must now act to curb the activities of the militants. Will it work? I doubt that the real power rests in the hands of the Palestinian Authority anyway so they will not be moved but the rest of the world might see that Israel is trying and the Palestinians may NOT be the poor, oppressed victims that they pretend to be.

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