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Israelis Have Good Reason to Be Fearful of Regional Change

(Commentary) Evelyn Gordon - Over the past two decades, Israelis have lived through numerous regional changes, each of which, we were confidently assured, would benefit us greatly. We were told that the 1993 Oslo Accords would bring us peace and international legitimacy. Instead, the first four years of the Second Intifada alone produced more Israeli victims of terror than the entire preceding 53 years. We were told that withdrawing from Lebanon in 2000 would eliminate Beirut's casus belli. Instead, it allowed Hizbullah to take over southern Lebanon, build an arsenal far superior to anything it had before Israel left Lebanon, and launch cross-border attacks. One of those sparked the Second Lebanon War, which caused unprecedented destruction to northern Israel, more casualties than Israel averaged in six years pre-withdrawal, and massive international condemnation - of Israel. Leaving Gaza in 2005 brought a Hamas takeover and incessant rocket fire on southern Israel. And when Israel finally struck back, in December 2008, international condemnation hit new heights, culminating in the infamous Goldstone report. While nobody could lament Saddam Hussein's demise from a moral standpoint, from a security standpoint it's far from clear that Israel is safer with Iran as the uncontested regional power than it was with Iran and Iraq containing each other.
2011-03-04 00:00:00
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