June 24th, '07
Business as Usual?

With the new Hamas "government" fully in charge in the Gaza strip, an interview on local radio highlighted the absurdity of Israel's situation.

With hundreds of Gaza Palestinians begging to be allowed into Israeli territory - for medical help from Israeli hospitals, or just to escape the Islamic dictatorship that Gaza has become - the world focuses on Israel's compliance as a measure of its humanitarian bona fides. This, while completely forgetting that Gaza shares a border with Egypt, which pays fervent lip service to its commitment to the Palestinian people.

Israel continues to truck food to the Gaza border, and is discussing helicopter drops of emergency supplies into population centers to keep people from starving. All well and good, though we could wish that our Arab neighbors would get on the bandwagon and help as well.

Less rational is Israel's continued supply of gasoline and electricity to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. These utilities give Hamas the freedom to keep making and delivering the bombs that have been pounding the Western Negev and Sderot for years.

The interviewee on this program proposed something that seeks eminently reasonble to me. We should limit ourselves to pure humanitarian needs - and make "business as usual" contingent on a full cessation of the firing into our territory. At the first Kassam, we turn off the gas supply. If the firing continues, no more electricity. There is no reason to keep enabling a regime that loudly seeks the destruction of our country.

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