The rocket is not the enemy. Hamas, its terrorists, and all those who attempt to harm Israel are the enemy, and it is they who must be defeated. Israel’s weak response invites more attempts to harm us.
The pursuit-of-quiet policy, while paying protection money to Hamas, leaves control over the height and intensity of the flames in the hands of the enemy. This is an unthinkable and unacceptable situation. Israel’s citizens, wherever they may be, do not have to accept any threat of any kind that endangers their well-being and the well-being of their children, and disrupts their daily routines, too.
The situation in southern Israel is not an inescapable fate. It is the result of the failed policy of the Israeli government. We understand that Zehut’s full solution will be difficult to apply from the position of a coalition partner – even a rightist coalition headed by Netanyahu. Nonetheless, if Israel is forced to send our soldiers into Gaza, Zehut will only support the incursion on condition that its goal is clear: Absolute defeat of Hamas and restoration of the pre-Oslo situation in Gaza. Absolute defeat – not a half-hearted skirmish.
We do not have extra children to contribute to unnecessary rounds of fighting.
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Crying Foul Won’t Help
The Israel that, with Oslo, recognized the existence of “another nation” in our land, the Israel that recognized that its Biblical heartland belongs to that other “nation,” does not – and cannot – have a solution for terror.
When both Rabin and later Netanyahu shook hands with the head of the Organization for the Liberation of the Entire Land of Israel from all its Jews (i.e., Arafat), they gave the terrorists the strongest weapon of all – the weapon of justice. The Oslo Accords turned a gang of despicable murderers into freedom fighters, and the IDF into a colonialist army, even a Nazi army in the eyes of Western universities.
It makes no difference how much we neuter our soldiers and endanger their lives in the hope for a pinch of legitimacy. The fact that they attack our civilians by hiding behind their civilians will not help, either. “True, it is not pleasant that they are killing you and that you are living under constant terror,” the Europeans say to us, “but don’t expect a nation that you have occupied and oppressed to play by the rules of the Geneva Conference.
“They were here before you. They are the indigenous population. You, the Zionists, are nothing more than an error on our part. The Balfour Declaration was a mistake. You are the new colonialists who have invaded the poor natives. So just get out of there. Get out of Gaza, get out of Sderot and get out of Tel Aviv. Rectify the mistake.”
That’s why all the blather about 48 hours to finish off Hamas and the automatic Right response and the automatic Left response are irrelevant. As long as Oslo has not been nullified, as long as we are not able to truthfully say, “This is our Land,” and restore the weapon of justice to our hands, the only solution for terror will continue to be… payment of protection money to the terrorists.