Inter-State Warfare

I don't blog much about Israel's battle with Palestinian terrorism. I could blog 24/7 and have insufficient time to address it and figure the Israelis can handle the threat. They have my sympathies and best wishes.

As the Israelis pull out of Gaza, nobody should think that the Israelis have solved their problems. They just cleared the decks, eliminated potential hostages with the settlers removed, and made it easier to strike back without worrying about the safety of Israeli settlers and soldiers protecting them.

The Israelis shouldn't expect any sympathy from Europe, of course.

But plans to strike back should be easier, now. Now any damage will be the responsibility of the Palestinians to repair and in time, even the Palestinians might tire of lack of jobs and sanitation in exchange for the privilege of being the only Arabs to fight the Israelis. Yeah, Arab sympathies lie with supporting that fight but they never support direct action lest they get their own personal butts whipped. As long as Israel occupied the Palestinian territories, the Palestinians wouldn't notice this little fact. Now, this cannon fodder aspect of their people will come to the fore, I think.

The Israelis have one disadvantage in fighting the Palestinian Authority, however. Having withdrawn from the Gaza Strip and planning for West Bank withdrawal, the Israelis have shown that actually occupying Palestinian territory is not an option. So the Palestinians know that no matter what they do, the Israelis won't recoccupy them. That's a heck of an advantage (and one the Taiwanese would love to have, I should add).

It will be a long time before the Palestinians tire of fighting. But I think on this path they can tire.

On a related matter, with settlers pulled out of Gaza, shouldn't the settlers reconsider their mission? When their own state seemed the only way to preserve the safety of Jews after the Holocaust, it made sense to have a state that could protect Jews if nobody else would. But when the threat of nuclear weapons held by Islamofascist nutballs looms over Israel, is massing in one small state the safest thing to do? Settlers providing buffer zones against Arab armies makes no sense now. Israel is conventionally superior to any conceivable combination of invaders.

Really, the settlers might want to consider scattering across the globe in communites that can rebuild Israel just in case jihadis get a few nukes into Israel.