Author: Aron Heller & Matti Friedman
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 1, 2009
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/147328/Hamas-rockets-target-peace.html
As Arab rockets reach ever deeper into Israel,
they may be weakening what for years has been a cornerstone of West Asian
peace efforts - an exchange of land for peace. Israeli hard-liners have long
warned that any territories Israel vacates will be used to attack it. They
can now point to the Hamas missile that slammed into a bus stop in the port
city of Ashdod, killing a 39-year-old woman. It was fired from the Gaza Strip,
which Israel gave up in 2005 and is now ruled by Hamas militants who reject
the very existence of the Jewish state.
Even in the midst of the war, many Israelis
still argue that a peace deal with the Palestinians, which would require a
withdrawal from virtually all the West Bank, is Israel's only real security
guarantee. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, in defending the Gaza offensive in
a speech to Knesset, said Israel remains committed to the idea of a Palestinian
state alongside it.
Yet the missile that hit Ashdod, a city of
200,000 people, drove home a grim new reality for Ms Alin Ben-Yosef, who fled
to Tel Aviv for the night with her two young daughters after Ashdod was struck.
"Tel Aviv is the safest place we have," said Ms Ben-Yosef, who works
at a clothing store. "But it is starting to feel as if there are no safe
places anymore."
At least one-tenth of Israel's seven million
citizens and some of its largest cities are now in range of Hamas missiles,
and millions more live within reach of Hizbullah rockets from Lebanon. This
has implications for the West Bank, where US-led diplomacy long focussed on
a withdrawal that would make way for a Palestinian state at peace with Israel.
Israeli opponents of this strategy argue that
such a peace would be too fragile to survive, and would bring Tel Aviv, Jerusalem
and the nation's international airport within rocket range. Cities under missiles
are nothing new to Israelis. Tel Aviv, the metropolitan heartland, was bombarded
by Saddam Hussein's rockets in the 1991 Gulf War. Haifa, the third biggest
city, was hit by Hizbullah in its 2006 war with Israel, and after Hamas took
over Gaza, rocket fire at nearby towns promptly increased.
Israeli historian Michael Oren, a Georgetown
University professor and fellow at the Shalem Center think tank in Jerusalem,
said the events of recent days, and especially the international criticism
of Israel's response, are likely to "compound Israelis' reluctance"
to support further withdrawals. "This has become a recurring nightmare
for Israelis and has made them reluctant to give up strategically vital territory,"
he said.
