Former Mideast negotiator Dennis Ross is reported to have said that “the Israeli homeland is now vulnerable,’ with wars no longer waged on distant battlefields but rather with tens of thousands of rockets — from Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south — aimed at the entire civilian population of the country” (“Ross Urges Israel To Be ‘Proactive’ With PA,” Between The Lines, Aug. 24).
What Ross didn’t say was that this is largely the result of a flawed peace process in which he was a central figure. Had there not been the series of withdrawals from Judea, Samaria and Gaza and the handing over of these territories to an unreconstructed terrorist-sponsoring Palestinian Authority (PA), the Israeli homeland would not have become vulnerable to the terrorism that has claimed over 1,500 Israeli lives in the past 19 years.
More Israeli civilians were murdered by Palestinian terrorists in the 18 years since the 1993 Oslo Accords than in the entire 45 years of Israel’s national existence that preceded them. That is why Ross’s advice for Israel to establish a PA-run Palestinian state on its doorstep under current conditions is heedless and dangerous.
National President, Zionist Organization of America
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