Paving the way for Hamas
Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post reports on the peaceful protest by Israelis against the expulsion by their government of Jewish settlers from their farms and communities in Gaza and northern Samaria. She writes:
These people's homes will be either destroyed or turned over to the same Palestinian terrorist forces that have been attacking them continuously for the past five years. Their hothouses and livestock are set to be turned over to the Palestinians as well.
Israel, Glick notes, "receives nothing in return."
Israeli advocates of expelling their fellow Jewish citizens contend, for reasons I find unpersuasive, that this move is necessary to maintain Israel as a democratic, Jewish society. But Glick reports that
what the opponents of the expulsion plan experienced, in their efforts to even voice their opposition, is that in insisting on carrying out this plan – which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was reelected overwhelmingly in 2003 by promising to oppose – the government is trampling and endangering both Israel's democratic form of government and its character as a Jewish state.
According to Glick, the latest polling data from the left-leaning Herzog Institute show that less than 50 percent of Israelis support the plan to expel the Israeli settlers from Gaza and northern Samaria. But the Israeli government will proceed, and is contemplating doing so before the previously scheduled August 17 date. Secretary of State Rice is on-hand to make sure that Prime Minister Sharon follows through (see Scott's post just below for more on this point). For his part, Sharon dispatched 20,000 soldiers to lay seige on the peaceful protesters. All this despite the likelihood that the expulsion, in Glick's words, "all but ensures that Hamas will take over Gaza."
