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Stop Terror at Its Source

(Wall Street Journal) Michael Oren - * By invading Gaza, Israel hopes to counter increasingly bold Palestinian attacks - such as the firing of some 1,000 Kassam rockets at Israeli border towns and the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Hamas earlier this week. The quandary Israel confronts today originated in the unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza last August. Infiltrations and rocket strikes began almost the day after the Gaza disengagement. Several Kassam rockets struck Ashkelon, Israel's major industrial city in the south - and the Palestinians elected a Hamas government sworn to escalate the violence. * By demonstrating that disengagement impaired rather than enhanced Israeli security, Hamas has dissuaded many Israelis from supporting a similar withdrawal from the West Bank, from where Kassams could be launched at Tel Aviv and the Ben-Gurion Airport. * After a few days of heated battles and accusations of Israeli atrocities, the government will be compelled to extract its forces from Gaza, and the rockets will keep raining on Sderot. Posing as defenders of the land, Hamas will be made more, not less, popular by the Israeli attack. There is, however, one way to avert a public relations disaster for Israel, to limit casualties, and to restore Israel's deterrence power. * Israel must return to the targeted-killing policy that enabled Mr. Sharon to triumph over terrorist organizations. Israel must target those Palestinians who order others to fire rockets from within civilian areas but whose families are located safely away from the firing zones. No Hamas or Islamic Jihad leader should be immune from such reprisals - neither Prime Minister Ismail Haniyah nor Khaled Mashaal, who masterminds Hamas from Damascus. * Those responsible for causing injury and death to both Israelis and Palestinians must pay the ultimate price. Only then can quiet be restored to Israel's borders and progress toward either unilateral or negotiated solutions resumed. The writer is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.
2006-06-28 00:00:00
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