Israel won!

In today’s New York Times, Daniel Gavron writes of “Israel’s Secret Success.”

The Palestinian Hamas, which rules Gaza, refuses to recognize Israel, but even that movement seeks a long-term truce, which is tantamount to de facto recognition.

Tantamount? To what? Today’s New York Times reports:

Rocket fire from Gaza has killed 13 Israelis in the past seven years, many of them in Sderot. The attack on Saturday caused an uproar in part because of the youth of the wounded brothers. The rocket caught them in the street, and they had not had time to take shelter after the municipal alarm sounded.Part of one of the younger brother’s legs was amputated, doctors said, but the condition of both brothers had stabilized by Sunday. About 40 rockets were launched on Friday and Saturday, army officials said.

Elder of Ziyon concluded from a report at YNet that

1. Palestinian Arab terrorists remain depraved as ever, celebrating the pain of innocent civilians.
2. Islamic Jihad’s morale must be amazingly low, as they continue to lower the bar of what they consider “victory” just so they can have something to celebrate and not feel like total losers.
3. Mosques in Gaza are used, today, to promote terrorism.

Israel Matzav added that

Underground Kassam launching pads big enough to hold katyusha rockets were discoverd by IDF forces operating in northern Gaza early Thursday. Taking advantage of the breach in the Rafah border wall, Hamas has wasted no time in using the recent weeks to boost its weapons and explosives supplies, as well as receive training and instructions from foreign operatives who slipped into Gaza from Egypt after the Rafah border wall was blown up.

From these items we see that the Palestinians in Gaza have
1) stepped up their attacks on Israel.
2) celebrates the injury of civilians
3) have prepared more advanced weaponry.

Perhaps I’m missing something in the subtlety of international relations, but I would conclude that such behavior is tantamount to declaring war or to a commitment to continue fighting, not de facto recognition.

Gavron writes later:

Problems remain, of course. We Israelis have made a shambles of our Zionist enterprise by establishing settlements in the Palestinian territories we have occupied since 1967. Either we must disentangle ourselves from the Palestinians, or else create a structure for sharing the land with them. Many of the flagship Jewish settlements are so deep in Palestinian territory that no matter how the borders were to be redrawn, the settlements would be left inside Palestine.And the current talk of swapping “settlement blocs” in the West Bank for equivalent amounts of land in Israel near the border is unrealistic. For any “two-state solution” to work, we would need to conduct a complete withdrawal from the West Bank. Even so, the success of the Zionist enterprise would be astounding.

The problem isn’t, of course, the Palestinian desire to destroy Israel. No, it’s “settlements.” Maybe then Gavron could explain why in the one area where Israel evacuated all “settlements” – Gaza – the terror has persisted. Not suicide bombers, for the most part, the wall around Gaza has kept them out, but Qassams. Clearly the Kool-Aid he’s drinking has been spiked with lotus.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.