Zephaniah Ch. 2; verses 4-7 (addressed to the nations in the Land of Israel):
4. For Gaza shall be forsaken [Hebrew pun: aza... azuvah], and Ashkelon a desolation; they shall drive out Ashdod at the noonday, and Ekron shall be rooted up [Hebrew pun: Ekron... tei'aker].
5. Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea-coast, the nation of the Cherethites [Hebrew Pun: Kreitim; part of the Philistine nation; from the word to cut off, tear away]! the word of the Lord is against you, O Canaan, the land of the Philistines; I will even destroy thee, that there shall be no inhabitant.
6. And the sea-coast shall be pastures, even meadows for shepherds, and folds for flocks.
7. And it shall be a portion for the remnant of the house of Judah, whereon they shall feed; in the houses of Ashkelon shall they lie down in the evening; for the Lord their God will remember them, and turn their captivity.
There are three main schools of thought when it comes to Ariel Sharon.
One is that he is simply being bullied and extorted by the U.S. State Department and the Bush administration. According to this view, Sharon is unable or unwilling to stand up to Bush and Powell, who are twisting his arm mercilessly and coercing him to act like the-other-Shimon-Peres. This school of thought believes that Sharon knows better, understands perfectly well that driving the Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip will escalate violence and not bring tranquility, and that the whole set of "goodwill gestures" and "painful concessions" his government regularly rains down upon Palestinian Arab gunmen will only be seen as proofs of Israeli weakness and as catalysts for far worse Arab terrorism.
The second school of thought holds that Sharon is simply exhausted or senile. This school argues that Sharon truly has come to believe in the fantasies of the "New Middle East", the mindless pursuit of Xanadu initiated by Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin, based on denial of all reality. Or, maybe worse still, if he does not, he is simply so old and worn-out that he no longer has the stomach to resist the forces of Israeli self-annihilation. In part, this school believes, his throwing up his hands in surrender is due to his being targeted in a national corruption investigation, directed at him and his family. He has himself largely to blame, both because of the sleaze of his campaign finances and his having left the Left's Dream Team to operate the Attorney General's offices. The slogan that best sums up this school of thought is the one running around the Likud these days, regarding Sharon's new Gaza "policy": Is this a Program for a Statesman or a Statesman under Interrogation? To appreciate the deliciousness of the slogan though, you have to say it in Hebrew, where "program" and "interrogation" have the same Hebrew roots and resemble one another.
There is a third school of thought that argues that Sharon is a wily strategist who knows exactly what he is doing, that he will take the heat off Israel on other issues and especially Judea and Samaria if he preemptively surrenders in Gaza, removing all Israeli settlements. Uri Dan, a veteran Israeli journalist and close confidant of Sharon, may be the leading exponent of this point of view (see, for example, the New York Post of February 3 and the Jerusalem Post of February 5). But the Wily Coyote School for explaining Sharon's behavior suffers from numerous problems, apart from the fact that Wily generally gets stomped and out-maneuvered by the Road Runner he chases.
Every set of concessions by Israel has resulted in escalated demands for new concessions, as well as renewed accusations that Israel is obstinately blocking peace.
The Wily Coyote axiom that Israel can take the pressure off itself by making concessions is belied by all of modern history. Every set of concessions by Israel has resulted in escalated demands for new concessions, as well as renewed accusations that Israel is obstinately blocking peace. Ehud Barak's suicidal offer to the PLO at Camp David II resulted not in congratulatory telegrams for Israel's demonstration of generosity but only triggered new demonizations of Israel, new assaults on Israeli legitimacy, and new outbreaks of anti-Semitism all over the planet.
Israeli demonstrations of generosity are nothing more than precedents for even more acts of open-ended generosity and appeasement. They never trigger quid pro quos from the Arabs and they never defuse the pressures on Israel. They simply fuel greater pressures and escalated demands. When the Likud government of Yitzhak Shamir generously agreed to grant the Palestinian Arabs autonomy, within years it was taken as a foregone conclusion that Israel would be willing to grant them a state. And when Israel was signalling it might grant them a state, it was taken as obvious that this state should
[(Continued on p.4)]
March 2004 - 3 - Outpost