By Ted belman
Last month I had a talk with an Israel who was against any more give aways and she argued against the fence. It was dividing the country and was an eye sore. She argued that the reason the terrorists attacks had greatly decreased was not because of the fence but because of the greater effectiveness of the IDF.
Today I read IDF: Drop in Israeli casualties despite increased terror activity.
According to the senior officer, the greatest asset in the arsenal of the security forces is the ability to operate freely in Palestinian cities.
During the period of tahdiye (calm), between January and September of 2005, the IDF avoided entering Palestinian towns, but once the agreement that led to the calm collapsed, it was necessary to use greater numbers of troops in order to renew operations inside the cities.
“We used to deploy an entire battalion in the town of Qabatiya, near Jenin, and we would still encounter heavy fire,” the officer says, to describe the situation following the tahdiye hiatus. “Now we have gone back to a situation in which we can carry out arrests using troops in two jeeps,” he added.
In March ’06 I wrote The ‘Occupation’ is the solution not the problem
Yoram Ettinger recently wrote to me,
“The 1994 “disengagement†from Gaza quadrupled the number of security persons stationed in/around the Gaza area, but the public is uninformed about it. When you’re inside Gaza, you enhance intelligence, deterrence and operability, and therefore you can manage with fewer personnel. When you’re out of Gaza, you regress on all these accounts; hence you need to offset the damage by increased personnel/budget.â€
To put it another way, the more you suppress terror, the less terror there is and therefore the fewer soldiers needed to deal with it.
Thus the IDF are confirming this principle. So when the disengagement groupies argue that less troops will be needed if we disengage, you know what to tell them.
This is also another argument for annexing Judea and Samaria. The IDF will be better able to secure it if we are sovereign and there will be a reduced level of terrorism.
Way to go, Ted.