August 2, 2005

THEY WERE A TACTIC, NOT A STRATEGY:

Gaza settlers face defeat, disillusion: Religious settlers gathered Tuesday to stop the Gaza pullout, but their mood darkened. (Joshua Mitnick, 8/03/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

In a last-ditch effort to stop the Israeli government from withdrawing from Gaza and portions of the West Bank later this month, tens of thousands of Jewish settlers gathered Tuesday, vowing to march toward the Gush Katif settlement enclave, and setting up a showdown with police.

But even as the battle escalates over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's landmark pullout from territories claimed by Palestinians as part of a future state, some settlers are already worrying about the evacuation's impact on a movement that has promoted the steady expansion of Jewish settlements for three decades.

For these religious Zionists who fanned out across the West Bank and Gaza, fancying themselves as model Israeli patriots, the calamity of the approaching withdrawal is provoking a soul-searching over whether they neglected reaching out to the country's mainstream while reclaiming what they considered a biblical birthright.

"We thought it was an Israeli national project and it really wasn't,'' says Rabbi Shlomo Bick, an instructor at the Har Etzion religious seminary in the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut. "There was sort of a disengagement - a mental disengagement and a social disengagement - with the majority of the people in the country.''


People want peace, not wider borders.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 2, 2005 6:43 PM
Comments

. . . unless wider borders are the only guarantee for that peace.

Posted by: obc at August 2, 2005 9:17 PM

They never are.

Posted by: oj at August 2, 2005 9:21 PM

Never say never.

Posted by: obc at August 2, 2005 10:14 PM

It's highly context dependent. I'd say the Golan heights are wider borders that contribute strongly to the peace. Gaze, on the other hand, is a negative contribution. Short of removing the original population, Gaza is a net negative for Israeli security.

On the other hand, OJ is completely correct to say wider borders never guarantee peace. Of course, nothing does, so that's not really a good criteria for making a judgement.

Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at August 2, 2005 11:20 PM

They'll give back the Golan too--the generals alreadsy said they don't need them.

Posted by: oj at August 2, 2005 11:46 PM

the new democratic government in damascus will happily accept the golan heights back.

Posted by: cjm at August 3, 2005 1:08 AM

I guess OJ is unfamiliar with the concept of 'strategic depth.'

That being said though, since the Israelis were unwilling to ethnically cleanse the Gaza, it made no sense to hold onto it. They should simply evacuate the settlements, blow up the structures they built, plow the fields with salt, move back Israel proper and hermetically seal the border. The region has no religious or historical significance for Jews. Let the so-called 'Palestinians' stew in their own juices.

No Israeli government could survive that would 'give back' the Golan, unless there were a huge DMZ pretty much all the way to Damascus. The traitor and murderer of Jews, Yitzhak Rabin, floated a proposal but it went nowhere.

Posted by: bart at August 3, 2005 8:34 AM

Sharon has already made clear it's going back.

http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/014863.html

Posted by: oj at August 3, 2005 9:38 AM

The Muslims want a borderless world -- all Dar al-Islam, no Dar al-Harb at all.

Furthermore, they've been promised it by their god.

Whatever may or may not be going on around Palestine is irrelevant to that.

Posted by: Harry Eagar at August 5, 2005 8:15 PM

It will be borderless, according to God's promise. Palestine will likely have been around a while by then.

Posted by: oj at August 5, 2005 8:54 PM
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