Jerusalem Post-11/09/2007

TBC, (Jerusalem Post)

"Before dawn on Tuesday morning, a Palestinian Kassam rocket slammed into the IDF's Zikim training base, wounding 69 soldiers, three seriously and one critically. The rocket hit an empty tent, but came very close to causing many fatalities.

The same, of course, can be said of the missiles that have been striking Sderot, which often barely miss schools full of children. We are not only allowing unprovoked and unacceptable attacks on our sovereign territory, we are waiting for our luck to run out, and for many of our citizens, soldiers or civilians, to be killed.

The rush, after every attack, to demand that military bases and even whole towns be physically hardened to withstand rocket barrages misses the point. There is certainly no place for parents of soldiers to demonstrate outside the stricken base and verbally abuse IDF commanders. The address is not such officers, but our government, which simply throws up its hands on the matter and refuses to take basic steps to defend the country.

It is not true, as some analysts argue and the government would have us believe, that nothing can be done. Everyone knows that a whole host of actions would be taken if, as is inevitable at this rate, a Kassam attack produces multiple fatalities. The time to take those actions is now, not after people have paid with their lives for government indifference.

Yet, contrary to what some opposition politicians are saying, the list of steps does not begin with a massive ground operation into Gaza. Such an action, along the lines of Operation Defensive Shield in Judea and Samaria in 2002, would be temporarily effective at the cost of significant IDF casualties. This is not yet warranted, because it would be like trying to clean up spilled water without first turning off the faucet.

The faucet is the continuous flow of terrorists and weaponry in and out of Gaza over the Egyptian border. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has never demanded that Egypt stop this flow, either by digging a moat or by policing the border at least as effectively as Jordan guards its border with Israel.

Egypt has paid no diplomatic or financial price for its negligence, which even if not deliberate, produces the same result as Syria's support for Hizbullah across its border with Lebanon. Furthermore, the US and Israel continue to treat Egypt as a mediator and a regional player in good standing, as if nothing is wrong.

While the US should not be doing this, we can hardly expect America to be more exercised about Egypt's allowing a massive weapons buildup in Hamastan than Israel."

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