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July 20, 2006
Good-bye to all that
Via Kesher Talk comes the question, "Could the Hamas/Hezbollah rocket attacks mean the end of a Palestinian state?"
One of the implications of the current fighting is that a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is no longer strategically viable for Israel. Missiles with a 40 kilometer (24 mile) range can strike most Israeli population centers from launching sites within the West Bank. Similar missiles fired from sites in the Gaza Strip could hit most of the remaining Israeli centers. Missiles with a 200 kilometer (120 mile) range can strike all of Israel from launching sites in the Palestinian West Bank.
The 40 kilometer missiles can be deployed and fired with no warning. The 200 kilometer missiles can be deployed and fired with only limited warning. The result is a viable Palestinian option to wage war on Israel via a missile siege that supplements the suicide bomber attacks. This also negates many of the security benefits Israel hoped to gain via withdrawal from Gaza and most of the West Bank and construction of barriers separating the two populations.
Hezbollah and evolving missile technology have just killed the two-state peace plan. There is now only room for one semi-strategically viable state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Indefensible borders provide a justification for an adjustment of same. We could see the Arabs having forced upon themselves the same fate inflicted upon the Sudeten Germans at the end of World War II, perhaps the most ironic of unintended consequences.
Posted by Mike Lief at July 20, 2006 07:56 AM
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