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Terrorism

Minister: Price for abandoning Gaza set to get much worse


By Stan Goodenough
December 09, 2007

More than 2000 rockets have been fired on the Israeli town of Sderot this year, killing and wounding its people, terrorizing its citizens, destroying its children's education and playing havoc with its economy.

And yet, the Israelis living in the south of the country have seen nothing yet, according to Interior Security Minister Avi Dichter.

Dichter told the cabinet Sunday the price its people are paying for the Kadima-led government's unilateral abandonment of the Gaza Strip in 2005 will increase tenfold.

Instead of "just" 25,000 Jews being affected, a "war of attrition" will engulf as many as a quarter of a million Israelis in the Negev if the "Palestinian" terrorists who control Gaza increase the range of their Kassam and other rockets to reach Ashkelon and nearby Jewish communities.

The Arabs are known to be working hard at upgrading their missiles, and have also taken delivery of "Grad" rockets which have a range of about 13 miles.

Ashkelon, Israel's 13th largest city with a population of about 108,000, sits just 10 miles from the northern edge of the Gaza Strip.

The last two years have seen a number of "Palestinian"-fired rockets slamming into the southern parts of the city, with at least one hitting an empty school building inside the city.

Referring to Israel's unilateral "disengagement" from Gaza which directly contributed to the increased and increasing threat, Dichter said the government "must check to see where we went wrong and deal with the problem of Sderot if we do not want to face the same problem when Ashkelon, Ofakim and Netivot will enter the cycle of rocket fire and terror."

Restrained by the Olmert government, which in turn has allowed itself to be restrained by the Bush administration, the IDF has failed - despite its overwhelming military might - to put a decisive end to the rocket rain.

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