The Sri Lankan option
Historian Lawrence Hart argues that Israel should consider taking Sri Lanka's approach to fighting terrorism. I could not agree more. It was bloody and dirty, and they took a lot of criticism for it. The UN estimates that during the final months of fighting in Sri Lanka, at least 7,000 Tamil civilians were killed and 13,000 were wounded. But they also wiped out the scourge of terror, not stopping until total victory was declared last May. Today, Sri Lankans can once again walk the streets of their cities, visit the marketplaces and conduct business without the fear of being murdered in such gruesome ways that not even their loved ones can identify their bodies. It is a new dawn for Sri Lanka.Read the whole thing. And stick around for the comments on this one. If the moonbats and the trolls come around and I let their comments through, it could be fun.
Israel can take a real lesson from this experience. The threat facing the Jewish state from the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon is no different than the threat to the north of Sri Lanka, and its coastline into the south that the Tamils occupied before the Sri Lankan army began its war of elimination.
THE TIME has come to admit that there might not be a solution to the Palestinian problem, but there is a way to end it. The next time terror forces Israel to take military action, this option should be considered. Israel must realize that there will be no peace with an intransigent enemy that refuses to act in good faith. Palestinian rejectionism and Iranian-backed Hizbullah threats to our existence will never be placated; they will not stop until Israel is destroyed. Once the population realizes this unfortunate reality, there is only one way to change it. Israel must take the Sri Lankan initiative and move into these areas one by one, cornering, enveloping and killing off all armed resistance.
Bending over backward to make peace with the Palestinians has proven fruitless. It's time to make the choice of a better life for all. More than 60 years of living with this is enough. When we have completely wiped out this enemy, a new dynamic will rise. Without the Muslim thugs holding their own people back, there will be nothing to stop them from negotiating genuine peace. There might be a Palestinian, a Lebanese, a Syrian, maybe even an Iranian peace partner which will transform the Middle East from a charnel house of hatred and bloodshed to a prosperous community of nations working together to make the daily lives of all their citizens better.
The picture at the top is a Sri Lankan military unit marching in a victory parade on June 2 of this year.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:25 PM
3 Comments:
And Goldstone has amply demonstrated that if you try as hard as Israel did to NOT take the Sri Lankan option, you will face worldwide censure anyway.
In that case, there is a clear demonstration to Israel that they might as well ignore world opinion and just deal with the problem in the best interests of Israel.
Which is NOT the best interests of the Arabs living there. Which is a shame, but not really Israels problem now, is it?
There IS a military solution to terror. It worked in Operation Cast Lead. But a stupid and short-sighted Israeli government is now working to sweep away even the limited gains from that war by giving Hamas what it couldn't win on the battlefield: a victory.
Its time to try the Sri Lankan option one day.
It always amazes me when you ask someone arguing for a negotiated settlement to provide one single example of such a thing. Go back in history and you will see that in most if not all cases, negotiations only start once one side has been militarily defeated or is close to it.
Go back to '73, '67, Vietnam, WW1, WW2, etc...in all cases, negotiations started and succeeded because one side had crushed the other militarily.
So it is now inclumbant on Israel to put itself in that position before negotiations can start and succeed. Palestinians must be defeated militarily so that their current leadership can be wiped out and replaced by people who truly want peace and who understand that the military option has now played itself out.
Start with cleaning the cesspool in Gaza, then move to the West Bank.
Then sit down and talk.
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