Grisley Hamas Tactics

The following is a column written by Alan Dershowitz, a law professor at Harvard, that appeared in the South Florida Sun Sentinel:
WORLD STILL TOLERATES GRISLEY HAMAS TACTIC

The current temporary cease-fire - whether it lasts a week or a year - will save lives in the short run, but it may end up costing more lives if it is not accompanied by an unequivocal rejection of the Hamas tactic that provoked this war. Unless Hamas is permanently disarmed and rendered incapable of smuggling more rockets into Gaza, this terrorist group will always have the upper hand. Whenever it chooses, it can provoke Israel into retaliating by firing rockets indiscriminately into Israeli civilian areas and playing Russian roulette with the lives of its children. It can also cause Israel to kill Palestinian children by simply continuing to use civilians as human shields. Many Israelis today share a view expressed by Golda Meir many years ago when she said toPalestinian terrorists: "We can perhaps someday forgive you for killing our children, but we can never forgive you for making us kill your children." That, in a nutshell, is the difference between the morality of Israel and the immorality of Hamas. Israel mourns the death of every child, Palestinian as well as Israeli, whereas Hamas celebrates the death of everychild, whether an Israeli killed by one of their rockets or Palestinian made a martyr by Hamas using him or her as a human shield. The best we can hope for is an interim two-state solution between the Palestinian Authoritywhich governs the West Bank, and Israel. The West Bank could be turned into a "WestBerlin" as contrasted with Gaza's "East Berlin". A Marshall Plan for a peaceful West Bank might then demonstrate to the citizens of Gaza the peace dividend they could reap fromgiving up their futile dreams of destroying Israel. This is a propitious time to explore this option. President Obama. because of his heritage, is likely to be trusted more than his predecessor by the Muslim world. It is also a propitious time because Israel has dealt a devastating blow to the Hamas, even if it has not completely destroyed their capacity to launch rockets. Israel can only make peace from aposition of strength, and the Palestinians will only make peace from a position of weakness.