Rip-off
The officials that Bush sent to hammer out the final details of Sharon's disengagement plan have a brilliant idea.
What Israel gets:
The US wants the UN to release a statement following an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza that the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip has ended, a senior diplomatic official said Thursday night.
What Israel gives:
The official said this statement would be similar to what the UN released after Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, and would make it easier to market the disengagement plan to the Arab world. In order for this to happen, however, Israel will have to withdraw from the strategic Philadelphia Corridor that separates the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
What the Philadelphia Corridor is worth:
Only the persistent and heroic efforts of IDF soldiers to detect and destroy the tunnels [in the Corridor] have prevented the smuggling of Katyushas capable of threatening Ashkelon and Ashdod, and AA missiles that would threaten Israel's air space...
Yasser Arafat attaches tremendous importance to this smuggling route from Egypt. Only this week he lauded the battles there as Rafiahgrad...
Ceding the security of southern Gaza to Cairo after an Israeli withdrawal would endanger the cold peace [wth Egypt]. Not only would there be no peace with the Palestinians, but even the peace agreement with Egypt would be undermined. Israel would then return to square one, but under more dangerous conditions.
What UN certifications of full withdrawal are worth:
Hypocrisy at the United Nations is nothing new, and especially where Israel is concerned. But it reached new heights last week over a videotape taken by UNIFIL soldiers shortly after Hizbullah kidnapped three Israeli soldiers last October.
After months of denying that the video existed, the UN finally admitted 10 days ago that the tape was in its possession... the organization even agreed last week to let Israeli officials view it - but only after it had obscured the faces of the Hizbullah guerrillas that the tape is thought to show in the act of towing away the vehicles used in the kidnapping...
This decision is tantamount to a UN declaration that it sees no moral difference between a kidnapper and his victim - the one is entitled to as much consideration as the other...
But the UN's decision is equally astounding on a political level - because it has effectively declared that it is unwilling to take sides between a nation that has obeyed a UN resolution to the last centimeter and an organization that is shamelessly flouting it.
So yeah, I dunno about this trade...
What Israel gets:
The US wants the UN to release a statement following an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza that the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip has ended, a senior diplomatic official said Thursday night.
What Israel gives:
The official said this statement would be similar to what the UN released after Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, and would make it easier to market the disengagement plan to the Arab world. In order for this to happen, however, Israel will have to withdraw from the strategic Philadelphia Corridor that separates the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
What the Philadelphia Corridor is worth:
Only the persistent and heroic efforts of IDF soldiers to detect and destroy the tunnels [in the Corridor] have prevented the smuggling of Katyushas capable of threatening Ashkelon and Ashdod, and AA missiles that would threaten Israel's air space...
Yasser Arafat attaches tremendous importance to this smuggling route from Egypt. Only this week he lauded the battles there as Rafiahgrad...
Ceding the security of southern Gaza to Cairo after an Israeli withdrawal would endanger the cold peace [wth Egypt]. Not only would there be no peace with the Palestinians, but even the peace agreement with Egypt would be undermined. Israel would then return to square one, but under more dangerous conditions.
What UN certifications of full withdrawal are worth:
Hypocrisy at the United Nations is nothing new, and especially where Israel is concerned. But it reached new heights last week over a videotape taken by UNIFIL soldiers shortly after Hizbullah kidnapped three Israeli soldiers last October.
After months of denying that the video existed, the UN finally admitted 10 days ago that the tape was in its possession... the organization even agreed last week to let Israeli officials view it - but only after it had obscured the faces of the Hizbullah guerrillas that the tape is thought to show in the act of towing away the vehicles used in the kidnapping...
This decision is tantamount to a UN declaration that it sees no moral difference between a kidnapper and his victim - the one is entitled to as much consideration as the other...
But the UN's decision is equally astounding on a political level - because it has effectively declared that it is unwilling to take sides between a nation that has obeyed a UN resolution to the last centimeter and an organization that is shamelessly flouting it.
So yeah, I dunno about this trade...
