Israel pulling out of Gaza

As anyone remotely interested in such things knows by now, Israel is going ahead with pulling its settlements out of the Gaza Strip. Benjamin Netanyahu, a former Prime Minister of Israel, resigned his position as Finance Minister in protest.

There have been many arguments, both for and against, on whether this withdrawal is a good idea. Netanyahu opposes it because he believes it will allow Gaza to become a stronghold for terrorists and result in even more bloodshed.

Hamas and the Palestinian authority see it as a victory for their side(s). They have been competing to see who can take the most credit and Hamas has even launched a contest to see who can come up with the best poster to "portray the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a victory for Palestinian groups."

I could very well be wrong about this but the first thought that comes to mind when I contemplate this withdrawal is that Prime Minister Sharon and his supporters in this plan expect that the Palenstinians will use Gaza as a base for terror. I see the sequence of events proceeding as follows:

• Israel removes all settlements and military personnel from Gaza.


• Hamas and probably other terrorist organizations begin to use Gaza as a staging ground for terror attacks into Israel.


• Israel launches a massive military operation into Gaza and essentially cleans it out.


• Israel is possibly able to take out a considerable portion of Hamas and the other organizations since they've probably concentrated a large portion of their personnel in the area.


• Israel justifies their actions (and rightly so) by noting that they basically gave Gaza to the Palestinians and in return got more terror attacks, not less.


• Optionally Israel sweeps all Palestinians out of Gaza and completely occupies it. I would have to say this unlikely, though.

Of course, I could be wrong. I freely admit that I'm not an experienced strategist in such matters and there is a lot about what is going on over there that I simply don't know. This is a pretty simple premise and I imagine that the Palestinian leadership has thought of this possibility as well. In any case, it's certainly going to be interesting to see what happens after the pull out. Unfortunately, the word "interesting" in this case will probably have the "Chinese" connotation.