This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/552

Israel walking open -eyed into death trap : Deportation of Jews will increase terrorism and require army retaking West Bank

Missiles smuggled in to Gaza 'expected' to attack Askelon after Israeli surrender of Gaza
April 18, 2005

Israel walking open-eyed into death trap

By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff

April 18th, 2005

JERUSALEM - What will happen when the government moves to uproot thousands of Jews from their homes this summer is anyone's guess, but the IDF is certain the aftermath of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "disengagement" will be increased terrorist warfare.

The period of expected escalation of "Palestinian" violence following Israel's retreat from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria has been code named "Rainy Day" by the army, reported HaTzofeh military correspondent Haggai Huberman.

Terrorism is expected to reach such levels that "the IDF will be forced to re-take the cities of Judea and Samaria" that were recently handed over to PA security control, Arutz 7 quoted Huberman as saying.

Ha'aretz defense affairs expert Amir Oren concurred, adding, "The prediction [among military officials] is that by next January to March, after Palestinian terror has increased and become more sophisticated, the IDF will return to Gaza."

"The mind-boggling thing," Huberman wrote, "is that the State of Israel is advancing, knowingly and with its eyes open, towards this death trap."

"The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 was a surprise, but the war of October 2005 is totally known in advance."

Huberman noted that even if the diplomatic process were progressing, terrorism would still renew following the uprooting of Jewish Gaza, albeit at a "more moderate" level.

"These, then, are the two only post-expulsion possibilities the IDF is preparing for," he writes:"If there is an agreement, there will be terrorism, and if there is no agreement, there will be an escalation, i.e., war."

Arutz 7 Monday again reported on hugely increased efforts by the Palestinian Arabs to smuggle arms into PA-controlled areas in preparation for future anti-Jewish aggression.

"Standardized powerful dynamite, which has not been seen in Judea and Samaria since Operation Defensive Shield almost three years ago, is among the materials the terrorists are trying to smuggle in," the news agency reported.

Additionally, since the start of 2005 "Palestinian" smugglers have managed to bring over 1,000 assault rifles, dozens of RPGs and at least five anti-aircraft missiles into Gaza.

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http://imra.org.il/story.php3?id=24797
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
Israel preparing Ashkelon for post-disengagement rocket attacks
Israel preparing Ashkelon for post-disengagement rocket attacks

Aaron Lerner Date: 5
April 2005

Israel Television Channel Two News reported this evening that Israel is
preparing for the rocket attacks that are expected to hit Ashkelon after
Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip.

The radar system for tracking incoming rockets and loudspeaker system so
that the public can be warned to take cover a few seconds before the rockets
slam into the city are already being installed. In addition, the roofs of
school buildings are being reinforced.

It was not clear from the report as to what measures will protect the
strategic targets located in Ashkelon (tank farms, etc.).

It should be noted that the expectation of rocket attacks against Ashkelon
after the withdrawal was presented in the same tone as a report on
preparations for bad weather (inevitable).

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)

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http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2498

Ariel Sharon's Folly

by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
April 5, 2005

[NY Sun title: "Israel's Folly"]

With the passage last week of a budget bill in Israel, the government of Ariel Sharon appears to be ready to remove more than 8,000 Israelis living in Gaza with force, if necessary.

In addition to the legal dubiousness of this step and its historical unprecedented nature (challenge to the reader: name another democracy that has forcibly removed thousands its own citizens from their lawful homes), the planned withdrawal of all Israeli installations from Gaza amounts to an act of monumental political folly.

It also comes as an astounding surprise. After the Oslo round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations (1993-2001) ended in disaster, many Israelis looked back on Oslo's faulty assumptions, their own naïveté, and resolved not to repeat that bitter experience. Israelis awoke from the delusion that giving the Palestinians land, money, and arms in return for airy-fairy and fraudulent promises would lessen Palestinian hostility. They realized that, to the contrary, this imbalance enhanced Palestinian rejection of the very existence of the Jewish state.

By early 2001, a divided Israeli electorate had largely re-unified. When Mr. Sharon became prime minister in February 2001, a wiser leadership had apparently taken over in Jerusalem, one that recognized the need for Israel to return to toughness and deterrence.

These optimistic expectations were indeed fulfilled for nearly three years, 2001-03. Mr. Sharon engaged in a quite masterful double diplomacy in which he simultaneously showed a cheery face (toward the American government and his leftist coalition partners) and a tough one (toward his Likud constituents and the Palestinians). The purposefulness and underlying consistency of his premiership from the start impressed many observers, including this one; I assessed Sharon's record to be "a virtuoso performance of quietly tough actions mixed with voluble concessions."

Mr. Sharon decisively won re-election in January 2003 over Amram Mitzna, a Labor opponent who advocated an Oslo-style unilateral retreat from Gaza. Mr. Sharon unambiguously condemned this idea back then: "A unilateral withdrawal is not a recipe for peace. It is a recipe for war." After winning the election, his talks in February 2003 about forming a coalition government with Mr. Mitzna failed because Mr. Sharon so heavily emphasized the "strategic importance" of Israelis living in Gaza.

By December 2003, however, Mr. Sharon himself endorsed Mr. Mitzna's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. While he did so in a spirit very different from the prior Oslo diplomacy, his decision has the same two main characteristics.

First, because the decision to retreat from Gaza took place in the context of heightened violence against Israelis, it vindicates those Palestinian voices arguing for terrorism. The Gaza retreat is, in plain words, a military defeat. It follows on the ignominious Israeli abandonment of its positions and its allies in Lebanon in May 2000, a move which much eroded Arab respect for Israeli strength, with dire consequences. The Gaza withdrawal will almost certainly increase Palestinian reliance on terrorism.

Second, the retreat is heating up the political climate within Israel, bringing back the dangerous mood of exaggeration, incivility, hostility, and even lawlessness. The prospect of thousands of Israelis evicted from their homes under threat of force is rudely interrupting what had been a trend toward a healthier atmosphere during the relative calm of 2001-03.

Mr. Sharon's plans at least have a disillusioned quality to them, sparing Israel the wooly notions of a "new Middle East" that so harmed the country a decade ago. But in another way, Mr. Sharon's plans are worse than Oslo; at least that disaster was carried out by the clueless Left. A Right - led by Mr. Sharon – valiantly and staunchly opposed it. This time, it is the Right's hero who, allied with the far-Left, is himself leading the charge, reducing the opposition to marginality.

There are many theories for what reversed Mr. Sharon's views on the matter of a unilateral Gaza withdrawal in the 10 months between February and December 2003 – I have my own ideas about the hubris of elected Israeli prime ministers – but whatever the reason, its consequences are clear.

Mr. Sharon betrayed the voters who supported him, wounding Israeli democracy. He divided Israeli society in ways that may poison the body politic for decades hence. He aborted his own successful policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians. He delivered Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim rejectionists their greatest boost ever. And he failed his American ally by delivering a major victory to the forces of terrorism.

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For a discussion of the challenge in the second paragraph above, see "The Forcible Removal of Israelis from Gaza" For a discussion of the U.S. role, see "Sharon's Gaza Withdrawal and the United States."

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2524

The Forcible Removal of Israelis from Gaza

by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
April 11, 2005

My column last week, "Ariel Sharon's Folly," noted the likelihood that more than 8,000 Israelis living in Gaza will soon be removed by their own government, with force, if necessary. I called this step historically unprecedented and then challenged the reader to name "another democracy that has forcibly removed thousands its own citizens from their lawful homes."

Not surprisingly, readers took up the challenge, both by posting comments (such as here, here, here, and here) and sending me e-mails. Their responses fall into three main categories:

I don't see either any of these categories comparable to the case at hand. As one commentator says about eminent domain, it "applies to ALL citizens regardless of skin color, nationality or creed that live and own property in the area which is to be used for public development. … nothing of the sort is scheduled to happen [in Gaza]. Instead ONLY JEWISH residents are to be forcefully removed." Another reader concludes: "There is no conceptual equivalence whatever between what ‘eminent domain' means in terms of its core concepts of ‘development' and ‘benefit,' and what Sharon is planning." Precisely.

As for the Japanese internment, this involved the temporary relocation of citizens, not a permanent move nor the razing of their houses. Again, there is no comparison with what Sharon is doing.

Ethnic cleansing is hardly comparable to the Gaza situation, if only because the government and the evicted citizens are alike ethnically, and Israeli citizens are being returned to the heartland, not expelled.

Two other suggestions bear notice. General Charles de Gaulle, "elected under the slogan of Algerie française, immediately after his election began the withdrawal of French troops, thereby laying the basis for Algerian independence." This would count as a very close precedent had de Gaulle required French citizens in Algeria to leave, but he did not do that. In fact, the French government did not expect the exodus of nearly a million pieds noirs and Jews in just a few months in 1962:

The motto among the European and Jewish community was "Suitcase or coffin" ("La valise ou le cercueil"). The French government had not planned that such a massive number would leave, at the most it estimated that maybe 200,000 or 300,000 may chose to go to metropolitan France temporarily. Consequently, nothing was planned for their return, and many had to sleep in streets or abandoned farms on their arrival in metropolitan France.

De Gaulle let the French citizens in Algeria decide their own future, whether to stay or leave; this is a policy, incidentally, that I have recommended to the Israeli leadership for Israelis in Gaza.

The best analogy proposed was the razing of Africville, Nova Scotia. The authorities in 1965 bulldozed this, Canada's oldest and largest black settlement, to the ground, but it was done in the name of slum clearance, not relocation.

Reviewing these replies to my challenge confirms me in my view that what the Israeli authorities are about to do to their citizens in Gaza has no historical precedent

This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/552