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By Bruce S. Ticker
June 16, 2006
Israel had a right to invade Gaza and the West Bank and do what it wants with this land, ever since February 2005 when a bomb took the lives of Israelis waiting in line outside a Tel Aviv club.
It was an act of war -- not on the scale of Pearl Harbor, but still an act of war. The Palestinian Authority had a responsibility to control terrorist activity that originates on its land.
Now Israel has far more of a right to conduct a full-scale war against the Palestinians than it ever did. I am not necessarily urging such a step, but nobody can blame Israel if it carpet-bombed every inch of the territories, sent in the troops, killed anyone who resists and evicted the entire population.
The Palestinians have declared war on Israel many times in both deed and word, but last week there could be absolutely no mistake as to where the leaders of the Palestinian Authority stood.
Never mind that nobody can say with certainty how eight people on a Gaza beach died last Friday. Never mind that there was no time for even a preliminary investigation when Palestinian leaders jumped to conclusions about the cause. Never mind that Israel now contends that none of its shells fell short at the time of the tragedy and it may well have been Palestinian arms that killed these victims. And never mind that even if Israel was responsible it would not have occurred had not the Palestinians been regularly committing acts of war on a daily basis.
Hamas declared in a statement: "The Israeli massacres represent a direct opening battle, and that means the earthquake in the Zionist cities will resume. We will respond at the appropriate place and time."
Ghazi Hamad, the spokesman for the Hamas-led government, added, "They killed innocent civilians who were enjoying their time on the beach and have nothing to do with military affairs," he told a New York Times reporter. "So I believe that we the Palestinians, including Hamas, have the right to respond and defend ourselves."
Even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a self-proclaimed moderate, dubbed the explosion "a bloody massacre."
This collection of responses amount to a declaration of war and defamatory accusations, all unsupported by facts. That means Israel has every right to move into Gaza and the West Bank in full military strength and do whatever it must to secure these lands.
Not only did the Palestinian Authority establish a state of war with Israel but it intensified a state of war that has raged since Israel became a sovereign nation 58 years ago and decades before then.
Like every other nation, Israel has a right to defend itself and to respond to acts of war in a likeminded manner. Each murderous bombing and each launched rocket is an act of war. This gives Israel the right to give them a war.
I am personally close to being a pacifist and hate even the notion of war, but I still recognize that war cannot always be avoided. This has been one of those situations. Both Gaza and the West Bank are geographic powder kegs ready to blow up. Israel is surely wary of that, and if invading Gaza and/or intensifying military operations in the West Bank is necessary, so be it.
I'm in partial agreement with those who claim Israel was wrong to withdraw from Gaza. They should have left troops there. The Palestinians have fired rockets from at least one former settlement. The retention of troops would have certainly prevented the rocket attacks from expanding.
As Ehud Barak quipped during a talk in center city Philadelphia last year, it is too bad that Israel is adjoined by a more civil neighbor like Canada.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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