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DANGERS OF CAPITULATION

by Louis Rene Beres

If you liked what happened in London on July 7, you'll love what is now planned for Gaza. Next month, the forcible expulsion of Jews from this tiny piece of territory will set the stage for further Arab terror attacks in Europe and the United States. While President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair have high hopes that carving up Israel will protect their own countries, they have neglected to understand that a "disengaged" Gaza will quickly become the site for expanded terror violence against the West. They should have learned by now that the smell of carrion always inflames the vulture.

On the eve of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement from Gaza, Israel continues to ignore the obvious. The official map of Palestine remains clear and explicit. Gaza is merely the start of a long-established and never-revoked plan to dismantle Israel in "phases." This carefully-constructed cartography defines the emergent 23rd Arab state to include all of Judea/Samaria (the West Bank), Gaza and the entire state of Israel. A small slice of Jordan is also included on the map, which purposefully excludes any references to Jewish populations.

If you liked London, you'll love Israel's planned August deportation of Jews -- the prime minister's incomprehensible plan of "Land For Nothing." Following this deportation, the Palestinian Authority and its many collaborators will turn Gaza into an organized area for more ferocious Islamic attacks against selected targets in Europe and the United States. The terrorists who are responsible for the July 7 London bombings are in very close association with the terrorists of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. In essence, in spite of widely-presumed distinctions, they are simply different wings of the same overarching Jihadi movement.

Manifestly delighted that Britain and America have unhesitatingly agreed to turn Israel into a present-day Czechoslovakia, al Qaeda and its various Palestinian cousins fully understand that capitulation has been the West's predictable response to Islamic terror. Yes, of course America and England fight together in Iraq and Afghanistan, but this often heroic effort is strangely coincident with offering tiny Israel as a sacrificial lamb to the very same terrorist enemies. In time, this unforgivable surrender of Israel in pieces will create pieces of terrorist devastation within our own European and American heartlands.

Now London has become Tel Aviv. Tomorrow it could be New York (again), Los Angeles or Chicago. For years, British newspapers and TV news journalists have referred euphemistically to Palestinian suicide bombers as "militants." Today, however, when the victims are not just Jewish women and children in Israel, but English mothers and daughters on London buses and subways, the militants are finally called "terrorists." How desperately human beings always want to ignore what is true.

Soon the body parts will have been properly collected in London, and the affected streets and rails hosed down to a pre-incident state of cleanliness. Soon, London, like Tel Aviv, will return to "normal." Driven by an unstoppable passion for both commerce and self-delusion, British authorities will take prudent steps to ensure that the hotels stay filled and the air charters keep flying. But London, like Tel Aviv, will never return to normal until it understands exactly who is responsible for defiling its people.

Moreover, for the foreseeable future, England, like America and Israel, will also have to prepare for previously unimaginable attacks on civilians involving weaponized pathogens (bioterror) and "dirty bombs" -- that is, nuclear materials dispersed over cities by conventional high explosives.

In Pericles' Funeral Speech, as recorded by Thucydides, Athens' wartime leader commented: "What I fear more than the strategies of our enemies is our own mistakes." Understood in terms of our stubborn march to repeated misfortune in America, in Europe and in Israel, Pericles' wisdom points to the mistake of underestimating one's own national vulnerabilities. For England, for America, for Israel, the only true refuge now lies in a sober awareness that we face a distinctly common enemy and that we should not capitulate to this enemy on one front while combating him on another.

For us, paradise has been bolted shut. No American, Englishman or Israeli can force an entrance there. The persisting Sharon/Peres dream of a New Middle East is based on a theoretical impossibility. Nurtured also in London and Washington, this immature dream is a curious counterpoint to reason, a childlike vision that points determinedly to mass-destruction terrorism on several fronts.

A dying civilization compromises with its disease, sometimes even nurturing the virus that produces the infection. So it is today with Israel and its supposed allies in England and the United States. If you don't like what just happened in London, you will not like what is about to take place in Gaza. "Disengagement" is a virulent compromise that will further endanger us all.

Louis Rene Beres graduated from Princeton University. He is the author of many books and articles dealing with strategic issues and international law.

This article appeared as an Op-Ed piece in the Washington Times on July 11, 2005. It is archived at http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20050710-100556-5537r.htm