quids pro quo-s, so to speak
Reader comment on item: Palestinians Who Cling to Israel

Submitted by john w. mcginley (United States), Jul 7, 2005 at 17:09

In about six weeks or so the Sharon government will have, God willing, rid Israel of a destructively costly (in money, military resources, and lives of the IDF) monkey from its back.

Only sophistry and culpable intellectual dishonesty -- practiced by many in the Relgious Right and their strange bedfellows motivated by hatred of Sharon from the political left -- sustains the argumentation that Sharon's action is in any way parallel to Barak's "cut and run" withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 which was the true proximate cause for the second intifada.

On the other hand, maximizing the amount of the West Bank to be annexed (as is Israel's right having gained the territroy in a self-defensive war) into the state of Israel is both worthy in its own right as well as being the Sharon policy.

I speak of Ariel (and not much else in the northern part of the West Bank); the "suburbs" of the already expanded city limits of Jerusalem; and a, say, ten mile swath of land contiguous to Israel's epanded holdings stretching south/southeast of Jerusaelm past Gush Etsion all the way down to Qiryat Arba and the Jewish settlement in the city of Hebron proper.

To bring this about it may very well be useful to cede some land from the south/central Galilee continguous to the northern part of the West Bank. Arabs living there who choose to stay as Israel citizens could be relocated at Government expense to other areas, just as the Jewish settlers from the Gaza and the four small settlements in the West Bank which are also scheduled to be evacuated in mid-August. Of course it won't be easy.

Has ANYTHING AT ALL been easy in Israel's history been easy? But it can be done and should be done.

John W. McGinley

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