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Condoleezza's Next Disaster


"50 trucks of supplies were forced to turn back as a result of the barrage." These were fifty Israeli trucks attempting to deliver fuel and food supplies through Nahal Oz and Karni on the frontier between Gaza and the Negev. This was not all: As Ethan Bronner reported in the Times, "In addition, a mortar shell hit the Nahal Oz fuel terminal on Israel's border with Gaza as badly needed fuel was being transferred into the Palestinian area to supply the local power station, the military said."

The result, as you read above, was that the deliveries were ended. Stopped. Finis. Kaput.

Hamas will soon find that there is a human catastrophe already happening (the Gaza folks on TV look pretty healthy to me...and pretty pugnacious), plus the E.U. and the U.N. will demand...  Well, you know what they'll demand. And Condoleezza Rice will see her doomed peace plan unraveling a bit sooner than she expected. So she will put the arm on Israel etc.

In case you don't know where I stand on this: Jerusalem should not endanger one Israeli life to deliver anything to Gaza. It shouldn't have been making deliveries during the last two years when Hamas and comrades were firing missiles and rockets into the towns and kibbutzim of the Negev and into the ancient port city of Ashkelon.  Gaza can get all the fuel and food it needs from Egypt, if the Egyptians want to provide it. 

Ms. Rice was a none-too-passive party to the 2005 full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Full, full. You know what that turned into: a disaster.

Now she is working on her next disaster and trying to trim from the borders of Israel some measly bits of territory to grease the wheels. But everybody understood and really understands that Israel would retain a few large settlement blocks and the land between Jerusalem and the 40,000-plus people in Ma'aleh Adumin. A "return to the 1967 borders" is a slogan. It is not a peace map. First of all, those are not borders. They were never recognized as borders by any of the Arabs; they were fragile cease-fire lines. Second of all, history doesn't stop for the convenience of the Palestinians. They have to deal with history as it was made, mostly because these Palestinians hope against all the odds that Israel would disappear by itself.