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Ryan Jones is a Gentile believer from the United States who has lived and worked in Israel for the past six years. He is the News Editor of .
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By Ryan Jones
March 11, 2004
Courtesy of Jerusalem Newswire.
Media reports this week of a new Hamas "popular army" poised to take control of the Gaza Strip upon Israel's departure kept in sharp focus the folly of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral "disengagement" plan.
The plan's key component - a total evacuation of all Jews from the Gaza Strip - is sure to be seen by Arabs throughout the region as weakness and an incentive to up the stakes in the war against the Jewish state.
If this were a one-time experiment, then perhaps Sharon and his backers could be excused for putting in motion what is sure to be a monumental mistake. However, Israel has tread this path before, with its unilateral, tail-between-its-legs retreat from southern Lebanon just a few short years ago.
That Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon under Hizbullah fire sparked the current "Palestinian" terror offensive is widely held to be true. And with good reason - prior to May 2000, direct Arab terrorism had failed for decades to force Israel's hand.
(PLO terrorism was indeed a key factor in forcing Israel into the fated Oslo Accords, but international pressure and Yasser Arafat's feigned conciliatory position also contributed heavily.)
For the first decades following its rebirth, Israel had mercilessly pursued the forces of terror to the ends of the earth, never offering even the slightest concession in order to pay off the murderers.
This is why the retreat from southern Lebanon was such a significant event, and one that affected the Arab-Israeli conflict in a way most Israelis at the time failed to realize.
Finally, after so many years, the Arabs had succeeded in forcing Israel to pay too dear a price for standing up to terrorist aggression. The constant loss of young Israeli soldiers and the continuous cross-border missile barrages became unbearable for a nation caught up in the progressive liberalism of the age.
Hizbullah had proven that unrelenting violence would eventually wear Israel down, forcing the Jewish state to pony up for "security."
Nothing could have had a greater psychological effect on the "Palestinians." Nothing could have more emboldened their determination to again put in motion the Arab dream of pushing Israel into the sea.
If Hizbullah's perceived "defeat" of the mighty IDF could result in such disastrous consequences, what will Israel's retreat from Gaza - an image of Israel being defeated by local "Palestinian" forces - do for the situation?
Israel's most tragic mistake has been its failure to learn that for Islam, this is a fight to the finish, not a precursor to peace. Israel could unilaterally, tomorrow, leave all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, return to its 1967 borders, and it would not make one ounce of difference.
Muslim terrorism against the Jewish people would continue unabated, new demands would come to the forefront in the absence of any "occupation," and Israel would still be required by the world to sit still and take its lumps.
Nearly 1,000 Israeli Jews have paid for the unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon with their lives. Only God knows how many more will suffer as a result of Israel's retreat from Gaza.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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