Unilateral Reaction

UPDATE BELOW: Dr. Sanity, the WSJ and the Boston Globe, and MaxedOutMama.

The Economist supports it. As does the Washington Post and NY Times. So, reluctantly, do conservative Op-Ed writer Charles Krauthammer and a majority of one set of interested Americans. But will Prime Minister Sharon's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza work?

It depends on the meaning of "work." If success depends on ending Palestinian terrorism, the answer's no. First, negotiations have failed. The Oslo accords were supposed to halt the violence in return for negotiation for and recognition of a Palestinian state. Pressured by President Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Barak offered the Palestinians 94 percent of the West Bank and a share of Jerusalem. Arafat rejected the deal without any counteroffer. This from a man born to the culture that invented the bazaar. Two months later, Palestinians restarted their Intifada.

Unilateralism's also failed. Five years ago, Israel's unilateral pullout from southern Lebanon opened the door for Hezbollah to shell Israel at short range. And Syria obstinately insists Israel's still there.

Hamas, not Hezbollah (and not the emasculated Palestinian Authority), runs Gaza. What's their take on the pullout? More of the same:

Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas said on Saturday it would fight to drive Israel out of the West Bank and Jerusalem after the Jewish state completes its withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip this year.

"Gaza is not Palestine," a masked spokesman for Hamas's armed wing told a news conference in Gaza City.

"As for Jerusalem and the West Bank, we will seek to liberate them by resistance just as the Gaza Strip was liberated," said the spokesman, surrounded by gunmen and militants with rocket launchers.

Some peace. Some process.

Still, many sensible observers support exiting Gaza. Arabist David Pryce-Jones thinks unilateralism the only option:

Palestinians have proved themselves to be neighbors unwilling or unable to live on peaceful terms. In this dilemma, some Israelis conclude that they have to surrender more and more to Palestinian demands, others that they must be harsher still. These conflicting visions of the future tend to political paralysis, and Sharon is obliging the nation to make up its mind, and even to face its destiny. Israelis and Palestinians have to separate as much as possible, as he sees it, and go their own ways.

Krauthammer makes a similar case:

Gaza was simply a bridge too far: settlements too far-flung and small to justify the huge psychological and material cost of defending them. . . [U]nilateralism is both correct and necessary. Israel has no peace partner -- Mahmoud Abbas has nothing to offer and has offered nothing -- and in the absence of a partner, there is only one logical policy: Rationalize your defensive lines and prepare for a long wait.

And Krauthammer suggests a post-pullout policy that would salvage some advantage:

Israel should announce that henceforth any rocket launched from Palestinian territory will immediately trigger a mechanically automatic response in which five Israeli rockets will be fired back. There will be no human intervention in the loop. Every Palestinian rocket landing in Israel will instantly trigger sensors and preset counter-launchers. Any Palestinian terrorist firing up a rocket will know that he is triggering six: one Palestinian and five Israeli.

Israel would decide how these five would be programmed to respond. Perhaps three aimed at the launch site and vicinity and two at a list of predetermined military and strategic assets of the Palestinian militias.

I doubt retaliation could be strictly "mechanical" or "automatic." But even if such a response requires human intervention, would it deter Hamas? Or change international opinion? Hardly. Nothing could reverse Europe's "blame Israel for everything" policy or the UN's funding of terrorism--and Sharon isn't after either's approval. And Palestinian terrorists have always been heedless of the damage to their cause and their people. They want it all: continued Jew-killing, a state incorporating all of Israel and/or a "right" of return that would accomplish the same thing within a decade. With Jews gone from Gaza, disproportionate reprisals are Israel's new, and perhaps only, effective weapon.

Israel was founded as both a democracy and a Jewish State. With 9,000 Jews surrounded by 1.4 million Arabs, the Gaza strip forced the Prime Minister to choose between the two. The principal upside of the pullout may be this: Sharon's decision was the only way to preserve both.

More:

Dr. Sanity has a similar take.

Still More:

From Sunday's WSJ Opinion Journal:

The logic behind the withdrawal is clear. Prior to last weekend, there were only 8,500 Israeli settlers in an area that contained one million or more Palestinians. . . At the same time, the risks of withdrawal are also clear, the main one being that the Palestinians will view it as a sign of weakness. There are indications this is happening, with Hamas declaring in a slogan that "resistance wins, so let's go on." Gaza may yet become a kind of "Hamastan"--a regional terrorist enclave threatening not just Israel but also neighboring Egypt and perhaps Europe.

But Israel cannot be expected to make further wrenching withdrawals if the message from the international community is that they are never enough. And Palestine will have no hope of becoming a functional and civilized state if no serious demands are made of it to reform its institutions and eliminate its culture of terrorism and hooliganism.

The problem with Palestine today isn't the absence of land--Singapore isn't much larger than Gaza, and is four times as populous--but the poverty of expectations as to what it ought to be and might become. Israel has now done what it had to. It's time the Palestinians follow suit.

In Friday's Boston Globe, an idiot named H.D.S. Greenway says, "The Gaza situation, however, most brings to mind the French disengagement in Algeria. The French used force to beat down Algerian independence with the vigor Israel employed against Palestinians." But as estimable James Taranto observed in Friday's Best of the Web, "Yeah, it's just like it--except that the Algerians didn't aim to destroy France and make Paris their capital."

More³:

MaxedOutMama's excellent and more extensive analysis.

(via LGF; Instapundit; Wizbang)