Weekly Commentary: Time for A Road Map for Cleaning Out the Gaza Strip.
Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 27 October 2011

Fact: A huge supply of rockets carrying various payloads already putting a
large part of Israel within range is already in place in the Gaza Strip.
And with each passing day there is an increase in the quantity and quality
of these weapons .

No one is denying this fact. Not Hamas in Gaza. Not the PA leadership in
the West Bank. Not the Arab states. Not Iran. Not the Quartet members.
No one.

What is Israel doing about it?

Our patrols in the waters off of the Gaza Strip do indeed make smuggling
from the sea more difficult, but there is an essentially open border between
the Egyptian Sinai and the Gaza Strip traversed by hundreds of broad
smuggling tunnels.

Add to that an ever growing domestic weapons production industry in Gaza.

So what is Israel doing about it?

Well, we keeps adding targets to our target bank so that when the Arabs fire
something at us we can bomb something back.

Can Israel do more?

Let’s take on faith for a moment that cold reasoning rather than inertia is
behind the decision so far not to order the IDF to clean out the Gaza Strip.

Can we do something in the absence of military action?

Let’s back up again and consider just how profound it is that there is a
universal consensus that the Gaza Strip is packed with rockets and missiles.

This when the Palestinian leadership applying to the UN for support for
statehood does not claim that either the current PA or even a sovereign
Palestinian state has the right to be armed with these rockets and missiles.

Absolutely incredible.

The whole world knows that these weapons are in the Gaza Strip and the PA
leadership itself concedes that these weapons aren’t supposed to be there.

The situation is ripe for a new “road map”.

A “road map” for cleaning out the Gaza Strip.

And with the simplest of arguments: a necessary condition for the
establishment of a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with
Israel is that the illegal weapons be cleared out of the Gaza Strip before
the state comes into existence.

Emphasis on “before”.

Because if and when a Palestinian state comes into existence with those
weapons in place there will be a thousand and one excuses for their failure
to disarm.

Anyone who supports the establishment of a Palestinian state living side by
side in peace with Israel should support the enforcement of a road map for
cleaning out the Gaza Strip now.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il