Hamas wants "open borders." Apparently in the Hamas definition, that means much more than open borders. It means the duty of Israel, a country of less than 8 million, to continue to supply electricity to Gaza, with its 1.5 million people. It means that the daily shipments of food and medicine and other supplies -- which have been coming in even during the last week, by the hundreds of thousands of pounds daily -- are to be resumed at the rate that Hamas deems appropriate.
It means that Gazan Arabs are to continue to be treated in Israeli hospitals. It means that Gazan Arabs can go, through those now "open" borders, into Israel -- though Egypt, of course, being a fellow Arab country, will continue to block the entry of Gazan Arabs at will -- and expect to be free of all harm. And they can do this while any Israeli who enters Gaza will be killed. For that matter, any Jew and most other Infidels should assume that unless he is a known collaborator with the Arabs -- say, an Israeli such as Amira Hass, or any non-Arab UNRWA official, or the truly off-the-charts demented Richard Falk -- he (or she) will be killed.
That's what "Open Borders" as demanded by Hamas means.
It's nonsense.
The lesson of Gaza, which has been completely unoccupied, in any sense, by Israel since late August 2005, is that this war is without end. The lesson of Gaza is that whether it is the Fast Jihadists of Hamas or the Slow Jihadists of Fatah, the war, the Jihad, against Israel goes on. Israelis should not worry about winning "Muslim hearts and minds" to the slightest, most feigned, and most temporary degree by giving up tangible assets (and complacently, idiotically thinking, as some terminally naive Israelis apparently do, that "we can always go back in"). That is, Israel should not give up the "West Bank" that gives Israel the tiniest strategic depth. Already, the Qassem rockets put a million Israelis under threat. They are required to live with the need to rush to bunkers and other shelters within 15 seconds, which is no way to live.
The current Israeli government, either Livni or Barak, has not understood the lesson of the war in Gaza. And while there is justifiable pride in Israel's military exploits and pinpoint bombing, the fact that the operation was necessary, after years of appeasement, and after the withdrawal from Gaza, a withdrawal that Barak so favored on terms so unfavorable, with results so predictable, should be kept in mind. Barak the war-planner should be praised, while Barak the geopolitician should be seen for the naïf that he is, permanently hopeful, permanently ignorant of Islam. And the same goes for Livni.
The lesson of Gaza is this: Israel cannot, if it is to survive in conditions of other than demoralizing permanent imperilment, give up control of a single dunam more in the "West Bank" -- as Jordan renamed the parts of Judea and Samaria. This land was formerly part of the territory assigned to the Jewish National Home by the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine, territory the British-trained and British-armed and British-officered Arab Legion (Glubb Pasha, Alec Kirkbride) managed to seize in the 1948-49 war, and held until June 1967.
The invasion routes, the aquifers on which Israel's people depend, the strategic depth, and the morale -- the essential morale -- would suffer a fatal blow if Israel were pushed back to the ludicrous lines of the 1949 Armistice because of some misguided notion that it was under some obligation to do so, that it "owed" the Arabs something, when anyone who studies the history of the area, or the history of the greater Middle East, knows perfectly well that the Arabs are better endowed with states (22 members of the Arab League) than any other people on earth. They are also better endowed with unearned wealth (some twelve trillion dollars since 1973 alone, and who always and everywhere, because of Islam, deny equal rights to all non-Muslim peoples in their midst, no matter how ancient (Maronites, Kurds, Copts, Mandeans, and many others). And they deny equal rights as well to all the Muslim, but non-Arab, peoples in their control (Berbers, Kurds, black Africans in Darfur) -- because Islam is, and must be seen to be, a vehicle for Arab supremacism.
The war in Gaza, whatever the military gains, should not be followed by the Israeli public deciding to reward those whose attitudes and false understandings made the war in Gaza necessary. They are determined to draw exactly the wrong conclusions, and "make up for Gaza" by not only continuing to press ahead with that idiotic "peace-processing" with the smyler with the knyf under his cloke, Mahmoud Abbas, but with whatever cheat-and-charmer who succeeds him.
With all this continuing Israeli idiocy in the political sphere, that always undoes the military triumphs -- basta, basta, basta.
It seems that there will always be naive western "leaders" who demand that Israel cede this or that concession in order to have peace. The only demand that is ever made of the Gazan Arabs (not just Hamas, but also the ordinary moms and dads who voted for them) is that they stop their belligerent behavior and leave Israel alone. When they need a hudna, the Gazan Arabs agree to this, but it doesn't last, it never does. The only way that there will ever be peace is for the Arabs to stop being pious Muslims, that is, to reject the supremacist teachings of Mohammed. They won't do this, so they need to be pushed back into Egypt, or re-settled into other Muslim countries. They have no presumed "right" to the land of Gaza and, in fact, have forfeited any claims that they may have had by their continued belligerency. Gaza is a nice area and could once again be made into a productive resource and even a vacation spot if the Israelis took over again. Hamas and those who support them, with all of their irrational hatred of all things non-Islamic, must go. To quote Ripley from the movie Aliens: "It's the only way to be sure."
Never submit.
This should be our policy towards any and all Islamic demands. It is just like dealing with the schoolyard bully. If they demand something from you, say No as loud as possible and walk away. It won't stop the bullying and harassment, but it sends a message to the other students that they, too, can stand up for their rights.