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A Cease-Fire After a Palestinian Victory?

(Jerusalem Report) Ehud Ya'ari - * A new thesis is spreading through the Arab world, according to which Israel is approaching old age and is battling a long, drawn-out terminal illness. The implication is that there is no necessity for the Palestinians and their partners to storm Israel. All they have to do is carry out a stubborn and grinding campaign of attrition. * The heads of the terror organizations are now saying: There is nothing wrong with a pause in fighting or periods of cease-fire, so long as the dimensions of the struggle and the friction are preserved. * No spin master and no amount of words will ever be able to convince our neighbors that the disengagement was not an act of retreat, a sign of weakness, an invitation for more vigorous attack. The conclusion drawn by the other side is that maybe in the short term it will be difficult for them to resume the terror assault, but that is the prescription for the longer run. * If Israel is getting weaker and its epitaph is already written on the wall, then the Arabs' advantage of patience comes into play. All they have to do, they may believe, is to wait; to act as a constant annoyance, to create a kind of siege. And so, paradoxically, the belief the Palestinians are trying to instill about their great "victory" in Gaza and the "routing" of the Israelis could yet serve as a justification for a time-out.
2005-09-07 00:00:00
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