Now what might take the place of the Arabs governing Gaza? I’d suggest an international government. Get some competent European administrator and a small number of aids to run the government there. Raise a force of paramilitary police from European and other outside, non-Arab sources so that they will not be connected to any factions within Gaza, and have them impose order and run the place after Israel pulls out again, with the understanding that if Gaza collapses into anarchy or Islamism again the IDF will be back with an attitude. The Euros love to give money to the Palis; I suspect they think of it as Danegeld. Let them give the money to support such a halfway decent government in Gaza.

Ooh, that would be evil colonialism. Yeah, and the problem is? The Palis have amply demonstrated their incompetence to rule themselves without becoming a pain in the ass to themselves and everybody else. Here is a decent alternative to a secular (Arafat) or theocratic (Hamas) tyrant.

And Eli, if you don’t realize that its the partisan political smears and attacks that have exhausted the Bush Administration you haven’t been paying attention. Bush came into office intending to govern in a spirit of bipartisanship, as he had in Texas. The national Democratic Party has had its knives out for him since before the 2000 election and have consistently put their partisan selfishness above the good of the country. Now they are acting like the Copperheads, seeking the defeat of the USA in the war on the jihadi terrorists (not just in Iraq), again out of nothing more than partisan selfishness. But the jihadis are not at war with the Republican Party or George Bush, they are at war with the United States of America, and the Copperheads in the Democratic Party will end up just as dead or oppressed as we dreaded neocons if the jihadis win.

The suggestion is silly. So then Hamas drops its guns. Then what? You’ve reoccupied Gaza. You’ve got a restive population eager to see you dead. You pull out. They pick up their guns again. Yada. Yada. Yada. Ad infinitum.

What happens depends on the courage and determination Israel and American leaders show. If Israelis are willing to endure the shrieks of faux outrage from the Euros and the UN Israel should strike soon and hard. The question is will the USA support Israel in this. Frankly I think we should, but the exhaustion of the Bushies from seven years of endless and relentless political attacks has led to them accepting idiot conventional wisdom on many things, and the CW of the State Department is appeasement of our enemies.

The action I think Israel should take is to go into Gaza soon and kill every Hamas gunman they can find. No prisoners. If they hide behind civilians so that some civilians are killed too, tough. The Geneva Conventions are quite clear that in such circumstances responsibility for such deaths belong to the side hiding behind the civilians, that is to say Hamas in this case. Seal the Egyptian border so that none escape and kill all the Hamas “militants”.

I would make a small exception to the no prisoners idea. Any Hamas members who come forward with Gilad Shalit, safe and unharmed, can be offered clemency. Not one other of Hamas’ genocidal wannabes though.

Waiting to give the enemy the initiative, with Israel threatened from Lebanon by Hezbollah, from Syria by the Dorktator’s army, and from Gaza by Hamas, all of them the proxies of Iran, is bad strategy. Hit them now, and take them on piecmeil, Hamas first before it digs in.

“Any chance you will acknowledge that the Arabs are failing as well?”

A 100% chance, I’d say.

Of course the Arabs are failing. I doubt we disagree about how badly the Arabs are failing.

My point is: everyone is now worse off. Israelis, Americans, Palestinians, Gazans.

We can sit here and blame the Arabs all we want, while the situation keeps deteriorating.

I’d rather figure out how to solve the problem.

Any chance you will acknowledge that the Arabs are failing as well? Your last sentence is just the typical knee-jerk crapola we see routinely in the MSM: when something goes wrong in the Arab world we have to blame it on Bush, or Israel, anyone but the Arabs themselves.

I’m not claiming that the policies of the US and Israel have been so great; these have been rehashed many times here and elsewhere. But frankly, I doubt if there is much anyone could have done to prevent this situation given the dysfunctionality of Palestinian politics that stretches back long before even the birth of Israel. And don’t tell me how “oppressed” they are. There have been tens of millions of people in recent history who had it much worse than the Palestinians but somehow managed to restrain themselves from blowing up innocent people with suicide bombing, or throwing their fellow countrymen off the roofs of buildings.

“ISRAELI SOLDIER, PALESTINIAN KID & A STONE.”
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/40037.html

Exactly right. The situation just got much worse, not better. Since the trajectory here is unfavorable, how should we reconsider our policies?

Because right now, the US and Israel are failing.