Caroline Glick: "Israel's new strategic environment"

Among other disturbing developments, Glick discusses the presence of al-Qaida in Gaza:

It is not at all insignificant that a new al-Qaida cell in Gaza just distributed its first leaflet over the weekend. Al-Qaida, with its global reach, has the ability, once seeded in Gaza to bring enormous resources in weapons, technologies and financing that can easily alter the terror nexus that comprises Israel's strategic environment. In the absence of control over the international border, again, the risks that Israel incurs by allowing any entry of people and goods from Gaza into Israel or Judea and Samaria are of a completely different order than the ones it incurred by enabling such traffic before the withdrawal.


ALL OF this means that Israel must reexamine its entire strategic rationale for contending with Palestinian and international demands for enabling traffic from the Gaza Strip into Israel, Judea and Samaria. Today, free passage from Gaza to Judea and Samaria constitutes an open conduit for international terrorists into the Israeli heartland, with no Israeli supervision whatsoever.

Glick might have added that in Gaza al-Qaida is likely to receive international support for its operations, which are going to be construed as resistance to oppression (which is not to say that leftists are not already construing al-Qaida operations as resistance to oppression).(hat tip: Jihad Watch)