Playing Taps Over Israel
How did Israel ever sink so low?
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Thursday that he had no intention of providing maximal protection to all residents of Gaza periphery communities. “A country cannot protect itself ad infinitum, because there would be no end to it.”
The prime minister added that stepping up protection would be “just as [ineffective] as the demand to solve Sderot’s Kassam problem by wiping Beit Hanun and other towns in Gaza off the face of the earth.
The prime minister appealed to the residents of the Gaza periphery: “In the short term we cannot supply you with all of the personal security that we would like to provide, because such protection would draw from expensive resources that are needed for other critical security needs.”
He cannot defend Israel because he is too busy defending Israel???
Either Beit Hanun is wiped off the map or Sderot is—experience has proved there’s no other way. Except residents of Beit Hanun won’t be shelled out of their homes, playgrounds, schools, and houses of worship. Israel should, and under a more heroic government would, set up a security perimeter in Gaza, as deep as necessary to prevent Qassam attacks. And if the Palestinians switch to Katyushas, or other longer range missiles, the perimeter should expand accordingly, even if it reached all the way to the Egyptian border. Then the Palestinians would have to deal with the Egyptian military, not just the Israeli, whom they’d soon miss.
The abdication of Gaza, the proposed ceding of Golan, the potential for cutting loose Judea and Samaria—is it me, or is this noose getting tighter?