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Dr. Aaron Lerner is co-founder of , Independent Media Review and Analysis, an Israel-based news organization which provides an extensive digest of media, polls and significant interviews and events relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict.
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By Dr. Aaron Lerner
February 25, 2005
How would Israeli officials react if Egypt announced that it would not even go through the motions of making a serious effort to stop the flow of weapons from the Egyptian Sinai to the Gaza Strip unless Israel forfeited its control of the border?
Would Foreign Minister Shalom quickly call his Egyptian counterpart to express his disappointment over Egypt's gross violation of its treaty obligations - and then immediately let the press know about the call?
Would Prime Minister Sharon get on the phone to Secretary of State Rice, sharing his concern that Egypt is undermining efforts to stabilize the situation?
Would Sharon's team let the "inner circle" of Israeli and foreign columnists know that the time has come for Egypt's free ride to come to an end?
Unfortunately, this is not a theoretical question.
This Wednesday Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu al-Ghait told reporters in Cairo that "Israel must withdraw from the Salaheddin (Philadelphi) corridor before Egyptian forces move into the Egyptian-Palestinian border line."
Over 24 hours later the Israeli response remains stone silence.
Not an outward silence hiding a flurry of diplomatic activity but instead the kind of cavalier "yihyeh b'seder" (it will be OK) silence that cost the Jewish State so dearly in the past.
Here's the line-up:
Egypt's central "contribution" to "progress" in Palestinian-Israeli relations has been to push for arrangements to insure that the most radical Palestinian militiamen in the Gaza Strip remain armed.
PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas has made it clear that he intends to turn all the Palestinian gunmen into PA security men.
Thanks to an Israeli policy vacuum, for the foreseeable future, any weapons system - regardless of its sophistication - "seized" by the PA from Palestinian sources can be added to the PA's armories. That's PA armories that will serve the radical gunmen turned cops.
Given the above, it comes as no wonder that Egypt is so keen on pressing Israel to clear out from the border area - a move that would make it even easier for large scale weapons transfers to the Palestinians.
Why the Israeli silence? Yihyeh b'seder
After all, in truth Mr. Sharon originally wanted to unconditionally retreat from the Philadelphi Corridor as part of his disengagement plan. He was stopped at the time by a vocal IDF Chief of Staff Ya'alon. But Ya'alon is now to be replaced by former air force commander Halutz.
The air force thinks that whatever mess Israel may face after a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip can be addressed from the sky.
Ironically, when Eliezer Shkedy, the current air force commander, described this approach he explained that it would follow the South Lebanon model. That's an area that is now bristling with enough Katyusha rockets to carpet bomb northern Israel and where even innocuous Israeli monitoring over flights are roundly condemned in the UN.
Let's face it. Regardless of what Palestinian "enemies of peace" may fire into Israel, will the UN, Quartet, etc. countenance Israeli air strikes after the withdrawal to silence the Palestinian sources of fire if they are protected by human shields?
Yihyeh b'seder.
Yihyeh b'seder?
The Yihyeh b'seder brought us to the brink of destruction in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
The Yihyeh b'seder brought us the madness of Oslo with the largest number of civilian casualties since founding of the Jewish State.
It is not the time for Yihyeh b'seder.
Egypt should be honoring its treaty obligations and stopping the flow of weapons across its border.
The Palestinians should be disarming the gunmen - not giving them dog tags.
And Israel should not be effectively forfeiting its right to control its security envelope.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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