Subscribe to our daily e-mail newsletter

E-mail:

Israel News Feed Or subscribe to our RSS feed | What is RSS?
Israel News from Jerusalem Newswire
Terrorism

Disengagement claims its first victims


By Ryan Jones
May 02, 2004

"You are my flowers and I will not forget you."

Those were the last words out of the mouth of a sobbing David Hatuel as he stood over the fresh graves of his wife, four daughters and unborn son Sunday evening.

They were taken from him in a merciless roadside shooting attack by bloodthirsty Palestinian Arabs.

The level of evil that is necessary to allow someone to peer into a vehicle, see a pregnant woman and four young girls, and kill them in cold blood is simply incomprehensible.

But that kind of brutality has become all too common in the "Palestinian" terrorist war against the Jewish state.

What made Sunday’s murder stand out was its close ties to the Likud referendum on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to uproot the Hatuel’s and their 8,000 Jewish neighbors from their Gaza Strip homes.

In a way, Tali and her daughters were the "disengagement" plan’s first victims.

They were killed, according to media reports, while driving to a Likud polling station. And David Hatuel was not with them at the time because he was forced to campaign in order to save his family’s home.

Sharon said the attack was carried out because the "Palestinians" want to thwart his pullout plan.

He was right that the attack was linked to his plan, but the Hatuel’s were not murdered because the Palestinian Arabs wanted them to stay in Gaza.

Rather, the "Palestinians" want to ensure that when Sharon’s withdrawal is implemented, it is implemented as a retreat under fire.

Nothing would give the terrorists greater pleasure, nor provide a greater boost to their morale than to have Israel forced to carry out its retreat despite the mounting body count.

Sharon and the other proponents of the disengagement plan say the "Palestinians" are being dealt a heavy blow with the Gaza retreat, and that they know it.

I would challenge Israel’s leadership to find one armed Gazan Palestinian Arab who, on the day Israel actually runs from Gaza, is not dancing, singing and firing his gun in the air as he enters the abandoned Jewish settlements to desecrate the synagogues.

If that day does come, the Arabs of Gaza will be celebrating victory, not wallowing in defeat. For it would mark an unprecedented event in the Israeli-Arab conflict – Israel would have retreated and uprooted its population as a direct result of terrorism. Certainly that’s the way the Arabs will see it.

How could that not lead to more terrorism?

At a time when Hamas leaders were dropping like flies, and the IDF finally had the "Palestinian" terrorist machine on the run, Sharon breathed new life into Islamic terror by offering a reward for the nearly four year Palestinian Arab campaign of violence.

No one expects the terror to end overnight, no matter how successful the IDF is. But boosting the morale of the terrorists by withdrawing in the face of what Sharon-confidante Ehud Olmert indicated was insurmountable security problems can only increase the violence.

The terrorists must now be more motivated than ever.

Until Sharon’s retreat plan is officially shelved for good, more and more of the Hatuel’s neighbors are in danger of joining them as victims of their leaders’ shortsightedness.

Like the article?
Help spread the word:
Jnewswire updates
Never miss another story
  • Inbox already too full?
    Subscribe to our
    RSS feed instead!