Netanyahu and the Gaza pullout

Was watching the BBC tonight (sorry, no link) and they were interviewing Netanyahu. I didn’t catch the whole interview but Netanyahu was saying the reason he resigned was in protest over the Gaza pullout. He claims that by pulling out of Gaza the Palestinians and other terrorist groups are going to claim a victory for terror…i.e. (and this is my interperation of what he was saying so take with grain of salt) the terrorists think that the Israeli ‘unilateral’ pullout of Gaza was accomplished because of their terror attacks so the message being sent to these groups is…terror works. He thinks that terrorists of all stripes are going to redouble their efforts and he points at the attacks today of several US ships (as well as Israeli targets) by old Soviet rockets (rockets used by Palestinians…as well as others).

Netanyahu thinks that though many people feel that this pullout will bring about peace, that unfortunately it will have the exact opposite effect and the terror attacks will only increase as the terrorists scent victory. What says everyone? I don’t really want to hear how wacked Netanyahu may or may not be, or even talk about him at all, but to debate his point…IS this a likely outcome? If not, why not? If I have the interview muddled though feel free to set me straight…as I said this is from memory and I only caught the story while eating dinner.

-XT

I’d say he has a fairly accurate grasp of the situation.

Here’s a link you may find interesting

After years of killing and blowing up Israeli people and children at random, Israel made a giant move to hopefully stop the fighting between the Palestinians and the Israeli peoples.

The danger in doing this is that with the Gaza strip AND the West Bank occupied by Palestinians…they could easily divide israel into 2 parts by taking over the narrow area between the Strip and the West Bank.

However, if the Hamas and other militants “cooperate”, giving back the Gaza strip might work. In any event, Israel made the first real gesture at obtaining peace. Whether it is successful or not, we will have to wait and see.

There is naturally the problem of trying to second guess what is good or not for the terrorists… and base yourself on that.

Naturally one should avoid giving “prizes”… but policies should happen despite its appearances. If the Gaza pullout overall helps peace then its good for Israel.

It’s not the terrorists that this plan is set to appease.

It is a way to cut the legs from underneith them. You are always going to have your whacko hardliners, but if there is an honest effort at showing of faith by Israel then the flow of modrate Palestinian support for these groups dries up. Once that happens it becomes harder for these groups to mount any effective campaign.

If the policies of the last decade were maintained there would remain a steady flow of willing suicide bombers and (worse yet) average people willing to turn a blind eye or offer shelter and refuge to them to set up. If they can be made to feel that progress can be made and that there is hope then it is less likely they will continue to support the hardliners. The hard liners will go out of favour once they begin to be seen as jeapordizing any future advances.

Take away some of the edge to the anger and discussions can begin.

This is, by no means, going to fix everything overnight but for the first time in years one side is showing good faith. That is always a chance for eventual peace.

Israel isn’t showing “good faith.” It’s a cynical tactic to keep the West Bank settlements and strengthen their hold on them. Israel is essentially ceding a less important front in order to shorten and strengthen the lines on the other front. If it was a true good faith effort, then Israel wouldn’t be expanding the West Bank settlements as they are now.

Israel put itself in a no-lose situation. If Gaza collapses (which is likely given its complete lack of infrastructure and the PA’s inability to exert control over there, since Israel stripped it of most of its equipment), then Israel rolls in again with the tanks. And as a bonus, they can point and say, see, can’t trust them Palestinians.

If Gaza becomes relatively stable, then they get a stable and relatively peaceful southern border, with absolutely no obligation to give anything up in the West Bank since this isn’t a part of any plan. When the pressure is increased to give the Palestinians an independent West Bank state, as well, they can say - well, we already unilaterally gave up the settlements in Gaza and make the case that they were the ones who started the peace process this time, so their show of “good faith” should be rewarded by getting to keep the expanded West Bank settlements.

It’s a very shrewd tactic by Sharon, and I tip my cap to him. But let’s not get confused about what this is, by calling it a “good faith” gesture.

Historically, Israel regained its own real estate during the 6 day war…gave it back again to the Palestinians and now Israel gives the Gaza Strip awayagain as a peace gesture. Would you have Israel give the West Bank and Jerusalem as well to the Palestinians? Would that also be considered by you as a very shrewd tactic? Come on, now…How many nations give away land to neighboring countries as a very shrewd tactic?

The element of Israeli disengagement that everyone, including Mr. Netanyahu, seem to be forgetting about is the wall. Israel disengaged only after taking steps to ensure that they feel secure without having negotiated anything with the Palestinians. There’s a wall that it’s difficult to get through. Not impossible, but not the green light terrorists would have thought they had without it.

Unilateral disengagement with a wall protecting Israel is not a victory for terrorists. It’s essentially put the terrorists in a prison of their own making, and left innocent Palestinians in charge of making sure they don’t get out of line.

Which is quite frankly what Israel would have loved to do for years without a wall, if only the Palestinians had seemed like trustworthy neighbors.

Historically, shmistorically. It was two-fucking-thousand years ago.

Except, of course, it’s not a peace gesture. It’s not attached to any conditions. It’s not done in Israel with the expecation that it will cause peace.

Of course not. In fact, I wouldn’t consider it a cynical tactic if the Israelis simply gave away Gaza and stopped building new settlements in the West Bank. But, of course, they haven’t. They are expanding settlements in the West Bank. So, that tells me (along with anyone capable of critical thinking), that this isn’t actually anything more than a cynical ploy to strengthen their hand in the West Bank.

A critical thinker like yourself believes Israel loves new settlements in the West Bank and the need for extra Israeli troops to protect them? I don’t think so. All Israel would like is to live its life peacefully…And they are willing to give up the Gaza Strip to hopefully accomplish this goal.

If they don’t love them, why are they building them? Really, that’s just a silly argument that they aren’t in favor of them.

Of course they are. The Gaza Strip has never been important in terms of population, resources or manifest destiny. That’s all the West Bank. So, by giving up their least important settlements and pulling out of Gaza the Israelis are in a no-lose situation. If Gaza collapses, they can always roll in with the army and put things down - similar to today. Plus, they get to use it as evidence that the Palestinians aren’t fit to govern their own state and can continue with the West Bank settlement expansion with little argument. When you factor in the Gaza wall, there’s really very little risk involved here for Israel.

On the other hand, if Gaza becomes stable and is a basis for future negotiations, the Israelis can point to this huge “act of trust” that they performed “in good faith” and claim that keeping the West Bank settlements is a small sacrifice for the Palestinians to make in return for that “act of trust.” If the Palestinians refuse this and go back to the intifada, we go back to the “If Gaza collapses” scenario and everything is shelved.

You really ought to put down the rosy glasses and admire this for what it is. You very rarely see a diplomatic checkmate as well performed as this in this day and age.

I believe it is a totally unilateral move intended to remove all the Israelis who would otherwise continue to require military intervention in Gaza to protect them from the Palestinians, so that they can then pull out completely. If the Gaza strip then collapses into anarchy because the Palestinians are unwilling to govern themselves, that’s no longer Israel’s problem.

I believe the current Israeli government has basically decided that negotiation with the Palestinians is useless, as the ones who are willing to negotiate in good faith have no ability to enforce any agreement. I don’t believe it sends the message that terror and violence work. The Palestinians seem to be receiving the message that terror and violence work regardless of what Israel does or doesn’t do.

While the Israelis have certainly been no plaster saints in their current occupation of the formerly Egyptian/Jordanian occupied territories, the main obstacle to peace in the region since 1948 has been the insistance of the Palestinians and the Arab states that Israel has no right to exist.

So do you think the Palestinians were not clever enough to see this shrewd move by Israel?

Plenty of Palestinians are professors, Drs., teachers, lawyers and believe it or not smart enough to read deeply into Israel’s move. If the critical thinkers on the Palestinian side thought they would be f#$ked over, they would not have agreed to Israel’s plans.

Uh, they didn’t agree to it. It was a unilateral decision made by Israel to pull out. Israel didn’t ask for their permission to move out the settlers. The Palestinians had no choice in the matter.

Seriously, do you know anything about what just happened?

I must admit, Neurotic, that I didn’t sit in on the Israeili discussions regarding removal of settlements from the Gaza Strip. Since you know so much about he Why, the reasons, and the purpose of withdrawal from Gaza, are you now saying that the Palestinians were against the Israeli pullout?

So just saying hypothetically, that if in the early 1990s the Palestinians had recognised the state of Israel, you’d then have a different view of whether the Israelis had been the main obstacle to peace?

Netanyahu – for all that he’s a politician angling for Sharon’s job – is right about the pullout. Without Palestinian terror and other forms of resistance, Israel would have never seen the costs rise so high that they felt they had to leave. So in that sense, terrorism is seen to have worked, and that’s what Netanyahu and others like him are complaining about.

But here’s the irony – Israel doesn’t want to show that terrorism works, but it doesn’t want to show that anything else works either. It’s not like Israel was prepared at any point to grant the Gazans voting or other citizenship rights. Israel had 30-plus years to come up with some arrangement, and offered nothing at all. If the Gazans had been content to remain rightless without complaint, yielding up land to the settlers when demanded, and continuing to furnish cheap labor in Gaza’s greenhouses and Israel’s factories, then Israel would have been over the moon, and would never have left Gaza at all.

The point is, if you don’t want to show that terrorism works, then you have to show what does work. And not in Israel’s vague, “Well, we’ll see” terms either. There’s no reason on earth Israel can’t spell out exactly what it means by “behave,” and spell out exactly what it means to do in return.

Before we blame Israel for everything that’s happened to the Palestinians, it might be worth considering WHY Israel is hesitant to turn Gaza, which carves a big chunk out of the heart of Israel, over to the Palestinians.

It might have something to do with the fact that Gaza was used to attack Israel in 1967, makng clear to Israel that it was in a precarious security situation with Gaza full of enemies.

It might have something to do with the Palestinian people swearing that they wanted the complete destruction of Israel. Not just Gaza and the West Bank returned to them, but Israel wiped off the map. It’s pretty hard to deal in good faith with people who claim to want your utter destruction.

It might have something to do with the fact that terrorists are still attacking Israel, and that Gaza puts Israeli cities within range of shell and rocket attacks.

But of course, we all really know it’s about using Palestinians as cheap labor. Somthing that could never be done if Palestine was a free state next door, right? :rolleyes:

And how is Israel supposed to unilaterally ‘show what works’, other than by doing what they’ve just done?

FYI: Gaza has never been “part of Israel”, much less in “its heart”.

So, Sam Stone, it comes down to an assertion that Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, are, without exception, terrorists who deserve no rights, as a matter of ethnic definition. This is exactly what I’m complaining about – no distinction whatever is made between individuals who commit terrorist acts, and the ethnic group they are said to belong to.

So you get a situation like what you have in Gaza – 1.4 million Arabs, who, when Israel assumed control of the territory, irrevocably lost their rights. Why? Wrong ethnicity, that’s why. And what can they do to get their rights back? Who knows? Israel never made any plans for their getting their rights back. Even now, with the settlers out of Gaza, it’s not like the Palestinians there have acquired any rights. They don’t have sovereignty, they don’t have citizenship in anything.

And what has Israel proposed for them going forward? Nothing, beyond, “Well, try to be good, and then we’ll see.”