Olmert's Peace in Our Time

Lynn-B and  Yael have must-read posts (here, here, and here) about the daily rocket attacks against Sderot, which accelerated once Israel withdrew from Gaza so the Palestinians could “live side by side, in peace and security.”®

It is apparent that Israel has no effective response to what was predictable -- and was in fact predicted by Israelis on the right, left and center, including Yossi Alpher, Yossi Klein Halevi, Naomi Blumenthal, Benjamin Netanyahu, Danny Rubenstein, among others. 

It has played out exactly as predicted by Maj.-Gen. Yaakov Amidror (former commander of Israel's National Defense College) and Col. Shuki Rinsky (former deputy of the IDF Gaza division).  It has proceeded just as predicted to the Knesset last year by Robert Aumann, Israel’s 2005 Nobel Prize winner in game theory.

Now, in the wake of the Palestinians’ first organized attack into Israel from Gaza, using smuggled-in automatic weapons, grenades and anti-tank missiles, with tunnels built with “motorized excavation tools and young children to provide cheap labor,” emerging behind Israeli military positions -- and as the Aksa Martyrs' Brigades announce they have chemical and biological weapons to be used against Israel -- it is worth reading, one more time, what Ehud Olmert predicted in his “Peace in Our Time” address on June 9, 2005:  

What the government of Ariel Sharon is doing is a dramatic change that will have an enormous impact on everything that will happen thereafter, in the State of Israel and in the Middle East. . . . It will bring more security, greater safety, much more prosperity, and a lot of joy for all the people that live in the Middle East.

And we all desperately need it. We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies . . . .

I’ll tell you, the disengagement is so important, is so crucial, and is so sensitive, that at this time what we have to do is first and foremost make sure that it will be carried out as planned . . . .  If this will be carried out as planned, and I believe that it will be carried out as planned because we will not allow anything to interfere with our plans, and with our commitment to carry it out. If this will be done, than everything will be changed. . . . a new morning of great hope will emerge in our part of the world.

He then led Israel into peace without a plan to win the war.

Several years ago, Ruth Wisse wrote about Oslo that it made Israel “the first state in human history that armed its enemies, in the expectation of gaining security.”  With Olmert’s plan, Israel is now the first state in human history that handed strategic territory to its enemies twice -- the first time for a promise of peace, the second time for the predictable result of war. 

Olmert is currently planning to do it a third time.  What is the name of the stage that comes after tragedy and farce?

Comments

[J. Lichty]

Rick:

Something about the Olmert response to the kidnapping has struck me as peculiar, and it seems to be something Sharon and others have done as well.

They seem to regard attacks on IDF soldiers as acts of terrorism (debatable), occasionally acts of war, and usually worthy of Israeli "harsh retaliation."

On the other hand, theses "centrists" are rarely able to muster such outrage when Israeli civilians are murdered or are subject to a daily barrage of rockets.

It seems to me that the only logical and coherent policy is:

1) attacks against IDF are not terrorism, but are acts of war. We consider it a declaration of war and will act as such;

2) acts against civilians are acts of terrorism and we will find and kill all terrorists and those who harbor them.

In each case the Hamas government (and Its PA predecessor, Fatah) should be held responsible, but are not.

It is right to be outraged, but the response usually seems misplaced and reactive.