The Line Must Be Drawn Here

As you may know, Israel is withdrawing from Gaza, a thin strip of land on the Mediteranean coast. Some 8,000 Israeli settlers are being removed from some 26 settlements, in Israel's hope that it would lead to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

However, I fear that this move will do nothing to stop the bloodletting. It reminds me of a line from a Star Trek movie [First Contact]:

Weve made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further! And *I* will make them pay for what they've done.

Now some Palestinian supporters would claim that it is Israel who has invaded and claimed land that was not their own. And they would be wrong. Israel has captured land in fighting for its very survival after each successive wave of violence inflicted on it by neighbors who did not want a Jewish state in their midst. The Arabs sought to destroy Israel from its very inception, and only two of Israel's neighbors have engaged in a peace treaty with Israel after 60 years - Egypt and Jordan, both of whom were soundly defeated in every conflict. The basis for those peace treaties - land for peace.

Israel has conceded land at every opportunity and each time the Palestinians seek more, pushing Israel further into a corner without any tangible sign that the Palestinians ever intend a peaceful coexistence.

Israel's leaders may believe that by withdrawing from Israel, it would leave the nation more easily defensible, by easing the burden on the IDF to defend scattered outposts in Gaza, and that is true. However, it also means that Israel would have no presence in Gaza, which would be free to expand its terrorist activities towards Israel unfettered by Israeli convoys, troop deployments and roadblocks. This could also set up an ultimate confrontation between the Palestinian Authority and Israel should the Palestinians attack from Gaza. With no Israelis in Gaza, the attack would signify that Palestinians have absolutely no inclination to coexist with Israel, and could push the conflict into an open war, which the Palestinians cannot hope to win (except that the Palestinians would be able to rely upon the moral equivalent tones and media bias against Israel to win the propaganda war while losing on the battlefields as Arab armies have done in each conflict against Israel).