(Jerusalem Post) Hillel Frisch - Israel's policy toward Hamas has been one which minimizes the sticks and maximizes the carrots for keeping the peace. Yet any carrots offered to Hamas will be used to enhance its military capabilities in the future. Rest assured that as the welfare of Gaza's population improves, Hamas will dig more and deeper tunnels and storage centers within Gaza itself, improve the firepower and payloads of its missiles, and try to dig offensive tunnels into Israel. This means scuttling the visions of those who argue that Israeli sticks should be accompanied by a Marshall Plan of goodies to improve the welfare of Gaza's inhabitants. That only worked after Germany and Japan were totally defeated and a mutual threat to the Western alliance, the Soviet Union, emerged. The writer is a professor of political and Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University and a senior research associate at its Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
2019-11-22 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive