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Stan Goodenough is an experienced journalist who has written about politics in South Africa and the Middle East for such organizations as The Daily Dispatch of East London, South Africa, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, The Jerusalem Post, and the Virtual HolyLand website. He has been a South African gentile resident in Israel for 12 years. Stan is editor of and .
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By Stan Goodenough
March 23, 2006
Kadima will bring Kassams to Tel Aviv
It's insane, but if the myriad polls assaulting us in the final countdown to March 28 convey anything like an accurate forecast, most Israelis are poised to vote for parties that will place the country's largest population centers directly in the line of Arab fire.
As we hear daily, the left wing parties -- Kadima, Labor and Meretz -- together with the vacillating ultra-orthodox parties -- Shas and United Torah Judaism -- and the rising Israel Our Home party are virtually guaranteed to garner a majority of the mandates.
According to the pundits, Kadima head Ehud Olmert will almost certainly be asked to form the next government.
And yesterday he insisted that he will not allow any parties that do not support his "convergence plan" to join. Most if not all of the above listed parties are ready to comply.
This "convergence" plan (Olmert's version of Ariel Sharon's "disengagement") will see Israel's "final borders" unilaterally drawn in the coming months.
Outside those borders will be Palestine/Hamastan -- a nascent Arab state the majority of whose people lust after the land Olmert insists he will keep as "only Israel's." From behind the wall and fence that will mark this boundary line, rockets and mortars will soon begin to fall on Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Netanya -- the cities on Israel's coastal plain.
What's so bizarre about this is that far and away the majority of those who vote left live in this coastal plain -- a 60 km-long stretch of land that runs up the Mediterranean from just south of Tel Aviv to just north of Netanya. Narrow, its width shrinks from a little over 20km at its widest point to just 15 km at its narrowest. Also located here is Israel's sole international airport, in a very real sense its lifeline with the rest of the world.
It's a plain -- flat land. Looming over it are the mountains of Samaria and Judea -- the high ground Olmert has decided to abandon once and for all.
A full 75 percent of the entire population of Israel lives in this small coastal area. The rocket rain that, since last August, has daily tormented the people living near the Gaza Strip will soon be falling on their heads.
We need only take a brief look at recent history to see what Kadima & Co.'s supporters will be voting for:
Ehud Barak's unilateral withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon opened the way for thousands of rockets to be deployed, bringing the Galilee and Haifa into range. Katyusha rockets have been fired into Israel from there.
Ariel Sharon's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza opened the way for untold quantities of weaponry to enter the Strip. Hundreds of rockets have been fired at Israeli targets from there.
Ehud Olmert's unilateral withdrawal from most of Judea and Samaria will open the way for a flood of weaponry to flow into "Palestinian" hands. It will not be long before Kassam rockets are sent winging towards Netanya and Tel Aviv. And it will not be long before shoulder-launched missiles aimed at jetliners coming into Ben Gurion Airport deal a death blow to tourism and the economy of the Jewish state.
Olmert's vows Wednesday that Israel will deal strongly with Hamas after it has set its borders mean nothing.
We heard the same thing from Barak about how Israel would respond strongly if Hizballah continued to threaten Israel in the north.
We heard the same thing from Sharon about how Israel's response would be unprecedented and harsh if Arab terrorism continued to threaten Israel from the south.
Soon the undiminished threat from north and south will be supplemented by the new threat from the east; a threat made possible by Olmert's Kadima together with Labor and other non-Zionist parties that despise Israel's illustrious history and are willing to scorn her God-given birthright. The country will be attacked on three fronts.
Tel Aviv's Jews have by and large shown little interest in, and demonstrated little sympathy for, the threatened Israeli populations in the north and the south.
If they succeed in putting Olmert into office, they will soon be endangered too.
And they'll have brought it upon themselves.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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