Rice iterated… concurred that [the US and Israel] would need to work together to figure out how that will happen, Rice said.
They can dance on the rubble and raise their unimaginative little Hamas flags over the ruins – that’s more symbolic of a future Palestinian state anyway.
And in the same article, we get this resentful and petulant tidbit from the Palestinians:
On Saturday, PA leaders warned that the disengagement plan would fail if Israel refused to relinquish control of all the border crossings into the Gaza Strip and if it did not allow the PA to reopen the international airport in the southern Gaza Strip.
Idle threats. If Israel doesn’t relinquish control of the border crossings, will the Palestinians forcibly move settlers back into un-strategic and indefensible settlements? If Israel doesn’t allow the reopening of the Gaza airport, will Hamas suddenly open fire at non-existent soldiers guarding non-existent walls? Disengagement is for Israel’s health, not for the Palestinians.
That said, what he was doing was ham-fistedly implying that the Palestinians would use their lack of border crossing control as a pretext for continued violence against Israeli civilians. Of course that’s going to happen – of course it is. But that’s a reason for an Operation Defensive Shield in Gaza after disengagement (or before, I’m agnostic on the timing), not for halting disengagement.
