<http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jeffjacoby/printjj20050401.shtml>
Townhall.com
Sharon's retreat is a victory for terrorists
Jeff Jacoby (back to web version) | Send
April 1, 2005
In January 2003, Ariel Sharon won a second term as Israel's prime minister
by crushing the Labor Party's Amram Mitzna, who had campaigned on a promise
of uprooting Jewish settlements in Gaza and surrendering the territory to
the Palestinians. Sharon firmly opposed that idea, which he had long
regarded as a prescription for disaster. ''Evacuating Netzarim," he had
said in 2002, referring to one of the Gaza communities, ''will only
encourage terrorism and increase the pressure upon us."
But within a year of his landslide victory, Sharon turned 180 degrees. To
the shock of friend and foe alike, he embraced Mitzna's plan for a
unilateral withdrawal. There was no better option, he insisted. As painful
as it might be to force 8,000 Jews out of the homes and communities they
had built with the encouragement of successive Israeli governments,
continuing the status quo would be even worse.
Sharon claims that a majority of Israelis agree with him, but it is
impossible to know, since he has refused to put the issue to a popular
vote. On Monday, Israel's parliament backed him up, voting down a proposal
to hold a national referendum on what Sharon calls the Gaza
''disengagement." Barring the unexpected, then, the Jews of Gaza will be
expelled this summer as Israel's prime minister carries out the very plan
he was elected to prevent.
The supporters of withdrawal make a plausible case. Defending the Gaza
settlements exacts a heavy military and financial cost, they say, tying
down far too many soldiers to protect relatively few civilians. Pulling out
of the territory will shorten Israel's line of defense. And once Gaza's
Jews depart, the terrorists will be deprived of victims to attack, thanks
to the security fence that seals off the territory from Israel proper.
To many Israelis, leaving Gaza also promises psychological relief -- an
end to the exhausting and unwanted burden of militarily ruling a hostile
population. Norman Podhoretz, writing in the current issue of Commentary,
quotes the blunt comment made to him by one Israeli at a high-level
conference in 2003: ''Why should we keep trying to negotiate peace with
people who want only to murder as many of us as they can? Instead of going
on with this charade, the best thing we can do is cut ourselves off from
them with the fence and then let them stew in their own juices."
But the world doesn't work that way.
To retreat in the face of terror is to invite more of it, not less.
Handing Gaza over to the gangsters of Hamas and the PLO will not leave them
''stewing in their own juices" but celebrating their victory. As they take
over the houses, farms, and schools of the people they demonized and
terrorized for years, they will draw the obvious conclusion: Violence
works, and the Jews are on the run.
Listen to Ahmed al-Bahar, a top Hamas operative. ''Israel has never
been in such a state of retreat and weakness as it is today following more
than four years of the intifadah," he exulted last week. ''The withdrawal
marks the end of the Zionist dream and is a sign of the moral and
psychological decline of the Jewish state."
Just as Israel's unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000
proved a triumph for Hezbollah, so will Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad
revel in Israel's surrender of Gaza. The Lebanon retreat inspired the
Palestinian Authority to launch a murderous terror war, the so-called
''second intifadah." What fresh hell will the Gaza disengagement inspire?
A few days ago, Israeli officials learned that Palestinians had
smuggled SA-7 antiaircraft missiles into Gaza from Egypt. Mahmoud Abbas,
the ''moderate" Palestinian president, announced plans to release two
hard-core terrorists from custody. Far from cracking down on Hamas and
Islamic Jihad, Abbas is taking them on as partners: The official
Palestinian media reported this week that the two terror organizations
intend to formally join the PLO. ''What's happening now isn't considered a
calm," the leader of yet another terror squad, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade,
told an Israeli newspaper. ''It's merely a warrior's rest."
If the terrorists are this brazen now, when Israeli troops are still on
the ground, what will happen when those troops are gone and Gaza becomes a
safe haven for killers and radicals?
It isn't only Israel that will pay the price. ''A Hamas flag over Netzarim
will justify 37 years of terrorism," writes Michael Rubin, the editor of
the Middle East Quarterly. An Israeli withdrawal will embolden
rejectionists across the region. ''If terrorism can free Gaza, why not the
West Bank, the Galilee, Indian Kashmir, or democratic Iraq?"
Wars are not won by retreats, or with fences, or through the ethnic
cleansing of Jews. Difficult as the Gaza status quo may be, what is
scheduled to take place this summer will prove far worse. Sharon -- the old
Sharon -- had it right: Unilateral withdrawal is a prescription for
disaster.
©2005 B
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experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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