Wednesday, August 10, 2005

ramifications of the withdrawal

It might be thought that sitting here in the Galilee, a four hour drive from south central gaza, the withdrawal from Jewish Gaza strip would have little to no real effect on me. The argument may be theoretical , based on a conceptual right or wrong, rather then a feeling that it will directly effect me. Nothng can be further from the truth.

Just to get a picture as to the way the police have been trained to deal with the citizens who pay their salaries, read this article by ynet detailing how a training exercise was stopped because the police were being too vicious to the soldiers they were training with. After the disengagement, these police officers will return to their home cities, including those here in the Galilee, with a new understanding in the brutal methods they can employ against citizens who get stopped for a traffic violation. They have seen that the punishment for a senior officer telling his men to "shit on them like you know how" was simply that he could not be part of the disengagement anymore.

Aside from this being a training ground for our police to learn new methods of "permitted" violence, we have to worry about our buddies across the border, the hizballah. Now when we moved here one of our stated reasons is because we prefer the Hizballah to all the other terrorist groups opperating in the country. This is because we have a good understanding of how they operate and what drives them. As it is written, "Know thine enemy." We are slightly concerned that a barrage of rockets will be on their way towards us, what with all the security forces in the country hanging out in the south trying to evict 9,000 Jews from their homes. Hizballah knows how to play the game, both politically and militarily.

When it comes down to it, the ketyusha is the father of the kassam. Hamas saw how the mighty ketyusha drove the imperial zionist from the land of the lebanon, and decided to employ the same tactics to remove the zionist from the shores of the gaza strip. Guess what, it worked there as well. I somehow don't see this stopping. Remmeber that the stated goal of the arabs is not a peacefull palestinian state coexisting in economic harmony and brotherly love with Israel. On the contrary, the stated goal is to remove every Jew from this side of the Mediterranean. They have declared exactly what they are doing many times in various public forums: A little piece here and a little piece there until they are weakened enough to actually lose a war. They realized after a number of wars that they can't win that way, so they are getting into poisition for the next war. Oh. and Egypt is putting troops on the "demilitarized" border to they can "help" with the palestinians. CAN ANYONE SAY TROJAN HORSE?

One big problem for us is that our car has been drafted by the armed forces in case they run out of tanks. I was surprised to hear that, but in case the last tank gets shot up, I am supposed to drive my minivan to the supermarket parking lot where it will be sworn in to service and shot at.

In short, this is the middle of a big mess that should have been cleaned up a long time ago. We Galileans are rightfully concerned.

2 comments:

Robyn said...

Personally I find that the question came up to be amusing in and of itself. A four hour drive is nothing. A country this small not only cannot afford regionalism, it's almost laughable.

rockofgalilee said...

In Israel if it's not within a 20 minute walk it is considered far away.