Stop the Bulldozers

Stop the Bulldozers, Now!

By Paula R. Stern, World Jewish News Agency Columnist

On Thursday, I visited Gush Katif for what was probably the last time. I arrived in Netzer Hazani and saw a surrealistic scene of rubble amidst beautiful gardens, ruined benches that once offered a weary traveler a place to sit for a moment. The trees remain, the houses gone. The pathways to the houses are there, but they lead to a mountain of rubble.

Some of the settlements were eerily quiet, a guard or two at the gates, or a camp of soldiers remaining to protect the synagogue and perhaps a public building or two. Other settlements were in the process of being destroyed, with heavy equipment tearing through the heart and gardens. Signs remained, orange ribbons were found in abundance, a symbol of the anti-disengagement struggle that was fought by hundreds of thousands and ignored by our government. I watched the house of someone I know being collapsed by a bulldozer flying an Israeli flag and wondered what good would come out of such an incredible sacrifice. Little did I know that I would receive an answer so quickly. Today, as we “orange” people had long suspected, bombs started going off in Israel again, only 5 days after the last expulsion and while Jews are still packing their belongings and bulldozers are ramming into the lives and communities that remain. A Jew was murdered in the Old City last week, another stabbed in Hebron. Today, doxens more were injured in the first, but surely not the last, suicide attack against an Israeli bus station, in an Israeli city. Israelis have been injured. Stop the bulldozers. The target was actually not the bus station, nor the buses coming and going from the busy morning rush hour traffic. The actual target was, once again, the Soroka Hospital, which treats thousands of Palestinian and Bedouin patients on a regular basis. When I was there, it seemed as if at least half the hospital traffic included Arabs, who were treated with respect, attended to professionally, and offered equal treatment for any number of serious and not-so serious ailments. In short, a regular hospital, doing regular things. In June, a former patient who owes her life to the hospital burn unit, attempted to show her gratitude by exploding a bomb in the emergency room. Today, another Arab calmly asked directions to the same hospital. Luckily, the guards at the bus station quickly pieced together the image before them. Something about the young Palestinian with a backpack aroused their suspicions, and with their bodies, they stopped him from proceeding. The two guards are in serious condition at the hospital they saved, and dozens of people, probably considerably shaken and upset, are, nevertheless, alive, because of the quick thinking of the guards. Stop the bulldozers.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was elected on a platform of peace and security. He has delivered neither. He tried to convince a weary population that capitulation and surrender would deliver what he once promised a strong hand and a policy of not withdrawing under fire would. The ironies are almost too much to bear. On a day when a Palestinian seeks to blow up an Israeli hospital, again, reports are reaching the Israeli press that Senior Palestinian Authority Minister Mohammed Dahlan has been admitted to a Tel Aviv hospital with back pains. According to the Ministry of Health website of the “State of Palestine,” there are 78 hospitals in their territories, apparently none of them good enough for Minister Dahlan. I wonder whether he will issue a strong condemnation and realize that it could just as easily have been the hospital in which he is currently a patient. Stop the bulldozers. Nothing can be done for the devastated communities of Netzer Hazani, Gadid, Slav, Ganei Tal and so many others, but Neve Dekalim and Atzmona still stand. Stop the bulldozers. We cannot continue on a road to madness when we know, from the mouths and actions of our enemies, that they have no intention of letting us live in peace, security or even relative safety. They are so thirsty for our blood, they cannot even wait for us to hand them territory before continuing the attacks. Until they are ready for peace, as Egypt and Jordan were after years of warfare, it is madness, utter insanity to continue destroying the homes and communities we have built in exchange for nothing. Stop the bulldozers.

Israel has bungled the evacuation. Yonatan Bassi, rather than being rewarded for his conflicts of interest with 150,000 shekels, should be jailed for corruption and incompetence. Ariel Sharon should admit he has lost his mind. He is incapable of leading this country in a coherent and meaningful way. Stop the bulldozers. Let the people return to their land and homes and call elections now. Let Sharon run on a platform or weakness, surrender and collaboration with terrorists. Let Mitzna, Barak or Peres or Burg run on a platform of withdrawal under fire and negotiation with terrorists. Let a strong leader arise who will admit publicly what we have known all along. There will be no peace in the Middle East until the Arabs want it. Terrorism will only stop, when negotiation is seen by the Palestinians as a more effective way of achieving results. Until that time, until we bring the future of Israel back to the people where it belongs, and from whom it was stolen by Ariel Sharon, stop the bulldozers.

More articles by Paula R. Stern: 1-It All Comes Down to the Buses. 2-Color Me Orange. 3-Civil Disobedience, not Civil War. 4-Different lives, different lessons. 5-Clueless in Jerusalem. 6-When Lions are Led by Asses.