June 29, 2006

Israel’s Wakeup Call

During the first few months of his administration, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has traveled the globe to garner support from world leaders for his plan to uproot Jewish communities in the West Bank, Israel’s biblical heartland. The prime minister firmly believes that further Israeli pullouts are the logical follow-up to last summer’s destruction of 21 Jewish communities in the Gush Katif Settlement Block in Gaza and four in northern Samaria.

Olmert is convinced that more withdrawal will pave the way for the two-state solution called for in the U.S.-backed Road Map for Peace Plan, bringing stability to the region.But this week, the government’s focus has shifted.

Following a three-pronged, pre-dawn attack Sunday morning on an Israeli outpost near the Gaza border, in which two soldiers were killed, four wounded, and another kidnapped, the government and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are focused on securing the return of the kidnapped soldier. In fact, the whole country is praying for his safe return.

While Israel is continuing its diplomatic efforts to secure the release of 19-year-old Corporal Galid Shalit, called for by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the IDF began “Operation Summer Rains,” a major ground and air offensive into the Gaza Strip late Tuesday night.

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) took out three strategic bridges in central Gaza and knocked out a power station, both operations aimed at deterring the terrorists’ free movement and preventing them from taking the captured soldier across the border into Egypt.

Since Sunday’s attack, the IDF has been building up its presence on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza. After months of maximum restraint in the face of unrelenting Kassam rockets launched from former Israeli communities in Gaza, along with increasing threats of kidnapping soldiers and civilians, Sunday’s attack has convinced the government that Israel must restore a level of deterrence with Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorist groups.

And while the country is divided over the Prime Minister’s plan to uproot thousands of Jews from their homes and communities in Judea and Samaria, they’re united in support of Israel’s efforts to rescue Shalit from the hands of the terrorists.

Even ultra-dovish Labor MK (Member of Knesset, Israel’s parliament) Ophir Pines-Pas admitted that it was no longer business as usual. “Israel may not merely continue with its regular agenda after this incident,” he said.

And Likud MK Binyamin Netanyahu, former prime minister and head of the opposition, said, “We need an aggressive approach and not the groveling of the government.”

As the nation struggled with the reality of a wounded soldier in the hands of terrorists, Monday evening brought more disheartening news. The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a militant Palestinian network that has perpetrated countless terrorist attacks against Israelis, announced a second kidnapping—this time claiming the abduction of an Israeli settler. When the father of 18-year Eliyahu Asheri, a student at a pre-military yeshiva (religious school) filed a missing person report, Israeli intelligence began piecing together sufficient information to verify the PRC’s claims.

Asheri was last seen on Sunday when he left a friend’s home in Beitar Illit, southwest of Bethlehem, to join fellow students for a hiking trip in the Golan Heights. Wednesday, the PRC held a press conference to display the missing student’s national identity card.

Earlier that day, PRC spokesperson, Abu Abir, announced on Al-Jazeera TV that Asheri would be “butchered in front of TV cameras” if Israel didn’t halt its incursion into the Gaza Strip. Abir also informed the audience that the PRC has specially trained units whose sole purpose is to kidnap Israeli soldiers and settlers. The kidnapping operation is code-named “Cavalier’s Wrath.” 

And in the midst of it all, on Tuesday, the PA’s Fatah faction and Hamas, which a few short weeks ago were gunning each other down in the streets of Gaza, announced they had worked out their differences and were close to forming a unity government that would establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  It takes a real stretch of the imagination for the average Israeli to envision any kind of peaceful co-existence with neighbors such as this.

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