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Monday 4 February 2008

Gaza Redux Third Time Around

Contribution from the "Council for the National Interest Foundation" (CNI Foundation)

In mid-May, President Bush will be making another tour of the battlefields of peace in
the Arab-Israeli dispute and will join in the celebrations for Israel's sixtieth year of
independence. Meanwhile, in Gaza we are witnessing the destruction of the slim
chance for peace and a two-state solution.

Gaza has been the issue causing wars between Israel and the Arab world twice
before. The first Israeli invasion and occupation of Gaza occurred in 1956 during the
Suez Crisis, but lasted only four months. Heavy international pressure forced Israel
to return the territory to Egyptian administrative control in 1957. The second invasion
of Gaza occurred during the Six-Day War in 1967, and Israeli military control lasted
for 38 years, until 2005. The Prime Minister of Israel and George W. seem equally
shortsighted. Will it happen again as we seek to implement a clumsy policy that
seems at times to be led by two blind men?

This is the third time during those 60 years that the Israel/Palestine disagreement
over splitting up the land west of the Jordan River has stumbled into making Gaza the
centerpiece of that struggle between the two peoples. What began in Gaza in
1956/57 has now repeated itself in somewhat different ways.

In 1967, Israel went to war over the demand by Egypt that they be allowed back into
Gaza under the original armistice agreements of 1948. The six-day war was a huge
success for Israel, more than quadrupling its territory. Yet in Gaza, over the years
of the occupation, the Israelis consistently met the stubborn resistance of the
population being held in this maximum security prison and denied even charity to
maintain their existence. More