Andrew: I thought Alan Philipps’s piece, from which you quoted, completely

wrong-headed. it sounded as is it was written by Warren Christopher.

“If the Israelis do indeed pull out of Gaza, who is now to take control of

the territory?”

Who cares? I doubt there can be many greater misfortunes than to be born a

“citizen” of the Gaza Strip (being born Haitian comes close, I suppose); but

it is hard to see how things could be any worse there than they were under

the PA. It is the fate of these unhappy people to be ruled by gangsters and

thugs of their own nationality and religion. I can’t see that there is any

more to worry about if the thugs are called “Hamas” than if they are called

“PA,” and I don’t see that Israel should be expected to do anything about it

anyway.

“It will not be lost on the Arab world that the killing of Yassin took place

after King Abdullah of Jordan came to meet Mr Sharon at his farm in the

Negev. This was a sort of reward for Mr Sharon’s proclaimed desire to leave

Gaza. Who now among the leaders of the Arab world will dare to shake Mr

Sharon’s hand?”

Who was going to? Bashir Assad? King Fahd? Abdullah’s sole interest is to

stop the West Bank Arabs from swarming across the River Jordan into his

country. If he has to kiss Sharon’s ring to accomplish that, he will. The

rest of them are all annihilationists. Sharon lost nothing here with the

“leaders of the Arab world.” He had nothing to lose.

“The outside world is even more confused than before.”

Well, **I** am not confused. Sharon wanted to say: “If you organize, plan,

inspire, or condone terror attacks against our people, we will find you and

kill you.” Seems pretty un-confusing to me. The only thing I don’t

understand is how, when thousands of terrorist supporters came out on the

streets of Gaza next day for the old guy’s funeral, Sharon was able to

restrain himself from sending in the air force with a few tons of napalm.

Israel, like ourselves, is fighting a war on terror. The way you do this

is, you identify your enemies, then you kill them. Which part of this does

Philipps not understand?