I am going to risk predicting that, contrary to their boasting, a million Palestinians aren't going to succeed in invading Israel this week. And if I am already sticking my neck out I will share another prediction: The Gaza Strip could have become a burgeoning export dynamo exploiting its close proximity to European markets. That in the wake of this failure there are going to be talking heads suggesting that Israel must make concessions or gestures to the Palestinians to somehow compensate them for their humiliation. And there will be sophisticated talking heads suggesting that Israeli must make concessions or gestures to support the Palestinian leadership that ostensibly acted behind the scenes so that a million Palestinians didn't invade the Jewish State. Let's be clear.about this. The Palestinians are responsible for their humiliation. The Gaza Strip could have become a burgeoning export dynamo exploiting its close proximity to European markets. But Gaza opted to focus on participating in some grand scheme to destroy Israel. Last Friday, left-leaning columnist Ben Caspit noted in his weekly Hebrew newspaper Maariv column that Israel's a ction against Iran in Syria represents a departure from Israel's many decades long addiction to quiet. An addiction that we have paid for dearly in the form of massive arms buildups threatening us from Lebanon and Gaza. The time has come also to break with this addiction for quiet vis-à-vis the Gaza Strip. We don't need a hudna deal with Hamas. Nor does it serve our interests to take a role in handing over control of Gaza to 'West Bank' carpetbaggers. We need to think out of the box and come up with an essentially unilateral program that rids the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian military presence while setting into motion a clear path towards economic development with immediately tangible results. It's going to require some very smart, bold and yes, expensive, moves. But it will serve our interests. And in the absence of Israeli ideas, we will ultimately find ourselves having to contend with programs that do anything but serve our interests. Dr. Aaron Lerner founded IMRA, an accredited news organization providing an up to date digest of media, polls and significant interviews and events in the Middle East in 1992.
