Thursday, July 20, 2006

I'm Quoted in Today's NYT

To date, the Palestinians have not fired rockets on Israel from the West Bank. However, such a development could pose an even greater threat than those created by attacks from Gaza and Lebanon.

The areas near those borders are thinly populated. Until the past few weeks, neither Hamas nor Hezbollah had hit large Israeli cities. But the West Bank border is just a short distance from virtually every large city in Israel, and rocket fire could easily be directed toward Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and other population centers.

“We’ve given over territory so our Arab enemies can now hit Haifa,” said Yisrael Medad, a spokesman for the Yesha Council, the main group representing settlers. “To put them even closer, where they could literally hit us by spitting over the fence, would be crazy.”

“Unilateral moves will never work,” he added, “because if you don’t have a mechanism in place to maintain security, groups like Hamas and Hezbollah will simply say, ‘We don’t have an agreement with you, and we will do what we like.’ ”



Full report here.

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