Hooray! A Writer after My Own Heart!
June 30, 2006
http://www.triobulationperiod.com/
Before I say anything about this Jerusalem Post article, let me remind you that I was never in favor, after the 1967 war, of Israel giving back one inch of the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.
I have always been in favor of what seems to most as cruel, inconsiderate, unchristian, without mercy, without human compassion, uncaring, unloving, downright mean, and full of hate. I was in favor of Israel running the Palestinians into the Arab countries, out of the country God gave Israel along with instructions to do just that, when he first gave them their orders to go in and possess it.
However, I knew, from biblical history and prophecy given by the same God who knew they would simply not do what he told them to do, that they were not going to do run all the Palestinians out of Israel. And, I also knew that, according to the same God, they would eventually try to give part of the land back to the Palestinians in exchange for peace, which, according to the same God, would in reality be only a brief false peace.
I Thessalonians 5:3,4 – For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. [4] But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
So, knowing they would not drive out the Palestinians, I began to reason as to how this time of false “Peace and safety,” would come to pass. It became clear when Ariel Sharon announced his “Unilateral Withdrawal Plan.” I have jumped for joy as I watched with glee the building of the Security Barrier, which will give Israel a false sense of security, once Palestinians are surrounded by it. The Unilateral Plan is the only way Israelis living on their side of the barrier can have a misguided sense of “Peace and safety.” The so-called “Realignment Plan” of the current government is basically the same plan, except it entails removing a greater number of Jewish settlements to the Jewish side of the barrier. I doubt if there is anyone more pro-Israel than myself, but until their Messiah returns to rescue them, they have determined their own fate by their unbelief in him. Israel is cruising for a bruising, followed by their Messiah returning to deliver them at his Second Advent.
Daniel 12:1 – And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
Jeremiah 30:7 – Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.
Zechariah 13:9 – And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God.
Malachi 4:1-3 – For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
[2] But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.
[3] And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts.
I said all that to say this: since I have always known that true peace in Israel between Israelis and Palestinians is a myth until Christ comes, and that Israel has to do something to at least get some temporary form of relief, I have, and am, 100 percent in favor of Ariel Sharon’s plan of Unilateral Withdrawal. I agree with the article by Larry Derfner in the Jerusalem Post, which follows.
Begin Jerusalem Post Article
Rattling The Cage: ‘Sharon’s Way is still the Right Way’
Larry Derfner, THE JERUSALEM POST
June 28, 2006
Now that Palestinian terror has gotten out of hand in Gaza, people like me who strongly favor unilateral Israeli withdrawal – from Gaza and northern Samaria last year and from the West Bank interior in the coming years – owe an accounting.
With the torrent of Kassams on Sderot in recent weeks and now
the killing of two IDF soldiers and the kidnapping of a third, this is obviously not what we hoped or expected the Palestinians to be doing in Gaza 10 months after Israel got out of there.
So was Ariel Sharon’s disengagement a mistake? Is Ehud Olmert’s realignment plan a mistake? Is Israel’ s whole po
st-Oslo policy of unilateralism a mistake
?
My answer, based on what’s happened in the last six years instead of just the last few weeks, is no, no and no.
For all the condemnations now being heard over last summer’s pullout from Gaza, I don’t think too many Israelis wish our settlers and soldiers were still in there. Very few Israelis regret that our flag no longer flies in a strip of territory where 9,000 Jews lived alongside 1.4 million Palestinians.
And if they think back, Israelis will remember that the Kassams on Sderot and attacks on IDF soldiers didn’t start only after Israel got out of Gaza. No, the terror in Gaza and from Gaza was much, much worse when Israeli settlers and soldiers were still inside the strip.
The two IDF soldiers killed at Kerem Shalom this week were the first two fatalities caused by Gazan Palestinians during the 10 months since disengagement.
By comparison, Gazan Palestinians killed 148 Israelis and 11 foreigners in the five years between the September 2000 start of the intifada and last September’s completion of the withdrawal, according to Foreign Ministry statistics.
The recent Kassams on Sderot, bad as they’ve been, haven’t killed anyone yet. In the five-year period leading up to disengagement, Kassams fired from Gaza killed five people in Sderot and one other Israeli in a nearby moshav.
REMEMBER THE Cohen children crippled by the attack on their school bus in Kfar Darom? The five hesder yeshiva students shot to death in Atzmona? The back-to-back bombings of APCs that killed 11 soldiers, and the two more who got killed searching for their remains
? Remember pregnant Tali Hatuel and her four children? Remember the two little Ethiopian cousins killed by Kassams while playing outdoors in Sderot?
ALL THESE plus dozens of other tragedies occurred while Israeli soldiers and settlers were dug in the Gaza Strip.
Stepping back from the bloodshed, anguish and fury of these days, and thinking back over recent years instead, there’s just no other conclusion but that unilateral withdrawal from Gaza has made Israel a vastly more secure country than it was before, not to mention a far more Jewish and democratic country.
To those who complain that “we got nothing in return” for disengagement, I’d say that the far-reaching improvement in our security, along with the removal of 1.4 million Palestinians from our demographics and occupation, are quite a bit more than nothing.
And for those who argue that we should have negotiated the withdrawal with the Palestinians and thereby prevented the Kassams and attacks like the one on Sunday, I’d say the leftists making that claim are grasping at straws, while the Likudniks making it are doing all they can to keep a straight face.
No realistic person believes that Mahmoud Abbas can control terror, or that Hamas would do so for anything less than Israel’s effective surrender.
SO WHERE do we go now? Should we plow ahead with the realignment plan and get ready to hand everything on the far side of the West Bank security barrier to the Palestinians? No. Not for now, at any rate.
Something has changed. Gaza has gotten out of control. While Palestinian terrorists there have become much less of a problem for Israel than they were before disengagement, they’ve become a much bigger problem than Israel should tolerate now that we’ve gone from their midst.
It’s one thing to deal with terror from Gazans under Israeli occupation; it’s another thing to deal with terror from Gazans who aren’t. There’s also a world of difference between Palestinian terror in the face of Israeli determination to hold onto the West Bank, and Palestinian terror in the face of Israeli determination to give up about 90% of the West Bank – and that’s even without a peace process.
GAZA HAS become too violent for Israel to go forward now with the realignment plan. I still support it, but it has to wait until Gaza is basically secured – until safety along the Gazan border
is at least comparable to that along the border with Lebanon, where unilateral withdrawal has proven a great success.
I think this is going to happen, too, because I think the government and the IDF are going to make it happen. In the last few years the IDF has worked wonders, beating down the intifada and forcing Hamas to call a truce, which held for 16 months until the current bloodletting.
Now it’s time for the IDF, especially the Air Force, to really go to work on the terrorists in Gaza. There will no doubt be more innocent Palestinian children killed accidentally – but such tragedies happen in the most justified of wars, and Israel’s war against Gazan terror is absolutely justified.
If there was another way to stop the gunmen and rocket-launchers, the Israeli government would take it, but the Gazans aren’t offering any other way.
They know, or should know, that as soon as they leave Israel alone, Israel will leave them alone.
And then, but only then, Israel will also be able to start leaving the West Bank and ending the occupation altogether.
I’m afraid I don’t have much confidence anymore that the Palestinians will do the right thing or the smart thing, but I do have a lot of confidence that the IDF will ultimately force them into it. The new Israeli unilateralism – “Sharon’s way,” as it’s called – is going through a terrible few weeks, but this is a setback, not a defeat.
Israel in 2006 has far too much strength, justice and smarts not to win this fight against the Palestinians. I think it’s only a matter of time.
End Jerusalem Post Article
I believe Israel will win this current fight temporarily by having the barrier in place and functional in 2008. It will be interesting to see what comes to pass between 2008 and 2012.
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