A world gone mad

Caroline B. Glick wrote in JWR Last week it was reported that the US has given the Palestinian Authority $4.4 million dollars to pay the salaries of terrorists from Fatah's Al Aksa Brigades. For its part, the terror group showed its gratitude to the US by becoming the first Palestinian terror organization to publicly endorse Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's call for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

No further payments should be made until they at least disarm the other terrorist groups.

Then we have the latest machinations of the Sharon-Peres government regarding Israel's policies now that we have vacated Gaza.

This week the IDF announced that it was removing non-essential personnel from bases bordering Gaza. The move is being made due to information that terrorists are digging tunnels beneath the bases for the purpose of either bombing the bases or infiltrating Israel for the purpose of bombing civilians. Since the withdrawal, 16 bombs have been discovered along the new border.

The fence is a good idea, but it is not enough, there needs to be a second parallel fence 1 mile inside the other, and the area between the two needs to be patrolled by soldiers with equipment to look for tunnels.

As critics of the withdrawal from Gaza warned, the Palestinians have smuggled shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles into Gaza from the Sinai Peninsula. After denying these reports for six weeks, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz finally acknowledged that these missiles have in fact been brought in during testimony before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday.

Firecontrol radar needs to be mounted on the fence, and armed UAVs used to target anyone with a rocket, sholder fired or Katyusha or other.

Air Force commanders, whose forces are the only ones that remain active in Gaza, told the media last week that they are revising their operational methods over Gaza in light of the presence of these missiles. That is, the IAF considers these missiles to be a threat to its aircraft.

If these missiles manage to find their way into Judea and Samaria they will threaten not only IAF aircraft but civilian aircraft taking off and landing at Ben Gurion Airport. The fact that al-Qaida — whose presence in the Sinai is enormous, according to IDF Intelligence Analysis Chief Brig.-Gen. Yossi Kupperwasser — and its Palestinian allies wish to attack Israeli civilian aircraft was made clear this summer with the Katyusha rocket attack on Eilat's international airport as well as in the 2002 attack on the Israeli jetliner in Mombassa, Kenya.

Since late 2002 when then Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna put forward the notion of a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip replete with the uprooting of Israeli communities from the area, critics of the move argued that such a plan would open Israel to grave security risks. These warnings became increasingly detailed and specific as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in late 2003 adopted Mitzna's plan after basing his campaign for the premiership on laughing at it.

The withdrawal made sense. There were too many military being used to protect too few settlers outside the border wall/fence.

Critics of the plan explained that a unilateral departure from Gaza, particularly if such a withdrawal included vacating Gaza's border with Egypt and surrendering control over the airspace over Gaza and its coastline, would enable and indeed invite international terrorists to use Gaza as a new international terror base. Critics further warned that terrorists in Gaza would transfer their center of operations to Judea and Samaria and place the major population centers of Israel at risk of rocket and mortar attacks. The communities in Gush Katif and northern Gaza stoically absorbed some 6,000 such attacks over the past five years. In their absence, and as the critics warned, those rockets and mortars have already become the scourge of residents of some 40 communities surrounding Gaza in the western Negev. Just last week the IDF arrested two terrorists attempting to transfer rockets to Judea and Samaria.