If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us- from Ha-Aretz

"Cainii latra, caravana trece" este un adevar care sta la baza scurtei existente in istorie a Statului Israel. Astazi, acum aproape 40 de ani -"razboiul de sase zile"-, "razboiul pentru independenta" din 1948, si se pare si mai departe, pe drumul anevoios spre o existenta pasnica a neamului lui Israel.


The unilateral way

By Yoel Marcus (Ha -Aretz)


On his trips to America and Europe, Prime Minster Ehud Olmert was greeted with honor and a great deal of sympathy. They clapped him on the shoulder, but behind the gestures of respect and encouragement, they hid their disagreement with unilateral steps by Israel, which borders on a veto of the convergence (or "realignment") plan. Not a unilateral initiative, they said, but rather an agreement through dialogue and negotiations. But with Hamas in the Palestinian Authority government and terror organizations bombarding, fighting, shooting, killing and abducting, there is no partner for dialogue. Israel evacuated the Gaza Strip to the last millimeter of the 1967 lines. Was this not a sufficient signal to the Palestinians that there is something to discuss? After the ambush that was carried out by Hamas on Sunday and the kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, Olmert said to me that the test of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is here and now, the test of whether there can be a move of dialogue here. Contrary to the advice of his hosts across the sea, Olmert stressed that convergence is his only option. He is sticking to it, and he will implement it. From the establishment of the state till this day, most of the important decisions and moves by Israel's governments have been taken unilaterally, without listening to the advice of world leaders. David Ben-Gurion decided on the establishment of the state on May 14 contrary to the demand and pressures from the State Department "to postpone the date." From then until prime minister Ariel Sharon's turnaround to "shelve the dream of the Greater Land of Israel," most of Israel's big decisions have been unilateral, sometimes taken over domestic political opposition and sometimes over international objections.
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Jerusalem's liberation and the occupation of the Golan Heights in 1967 were against international public opinion. The Six Day War was carried out despite an ultimatum from Charles de Gaulle: "Don't fire the first shot." He punished us with an embargo on weapons shipments and reversed his pro-Israeli policy in favor of the Arabs. He could not forgive us for having won. The 1956 Sinai Campaign, which was aimed at putting an end to terror attacks from Gaza under Egyptian guidance, was carried out with opposition and threats by America and the Soviet Union. Within several months, we were compelled to withdraw from all of Sinai, but we achieved 10 years of quiet. We built our nuclear strength without the agreement of the United States, and the bombing of the Iraqi reactor was carried out solely based on our own judgment. The United States was not in the picture when Moshe Dayan and Menachem Begin secretly cooked up Egyptian president Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem - the administration, which was at the stage of convening an international summit, heard about Sadat's visit on Walter Cronkite's news broadcast. The administration, which had been massively assuring Israel it would not recognize the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat, did not know that at the same time, the Oslo agreement was cooking. And finally: Sharon's historic move of shelving the dream of the Greater Land of Israel - it was unilateral, without America's prior knowledge, without the knowledge of his party, and without the knowledge of his government. But most of the public accepted the unilateral disengagement with a sigh of relief. At long last a spark of hope. We are leaving unilaterally. If they want to, they will start to talk to us; if they don't want to, they will remain in the poverty and suffering they brought upon themselves. The convergence is not for the Palestinians, but for us. The more you are converged and cut off, the fewer the points of friction with the Palestinians. The Western countries fear that in this way we are establishing our permanent borders. But this is not the case. The intention is to converge into convenient temporary borders, until the Palestinians come to their senses. When Rabbi Ovadia Yosef asks what we are getting in return for the disengagement, he is proving that perhaps he is a great Torah scholar, but he hasn't got a clue about politics. It is the Palestinians who should be afraid of the continuation of the terror, of non-recognition of Israel, of laying down unreasonable conditions for dialogue, and in this, they are losing all their cards for negotiations. Israel cannot be in a situation in which every terrorist will dictate its agenda to it. The motto that emerges from Olmert's words is simple and logical: If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us.