Hamas Calls for Israel to Disengage from Sederot

World Net Daily reports that Hamas has called for all Israelis to evacuate the town of Sederot, a town of 20,000 located some three miles within the border between Israel and Gaza.

"Only the departure of residents from Sderot will stop the rocket fire," Abu Abaida, spokesman for Hamas' so-called military wing, said in a statement to reporters.
"There are no limits on our rocket attacks and we will prove that in coming days. We advise residents of Sderot to evacuate," the Hamas spokesman said.

Who can argue with the logic of Hamas? The call for Israel to give up Sederot follows very consistently from the whole "land for peace" concept, and with the disengagement from Gaza implemented by the Sharon-Olmert governments. As a Palestinian once said, "Land for peace means that as long as you keep giving us land you'll have peace." This is how the Arabs have always understood "land for peace."

True, the application of the concept to land within the 1967 borders of Israel may seem novel to the "Peace Now" camp in Israel and the United States. However, soon they will get used to the idea, and even advocate it. After all, if Israel is willing to "disengage" from Gaza after 38 years, why stop there? The current "border" is no more than the 1949 ceasefire line, following Israel's War of Independence, marking the line of advance of the invading Egyptian army at the moment the ceasefire took effect. Why should southern Israel be sacrosanct? The Arabs regard Sederot, and Tel Aviv for that matter, as land stolen from the Palestinian Arabs, no less than Gaza. Already one occasionally comes across opinion columns by mainstream pundits, such as this piece by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post, stating that the creation of the State of Israel was a mistake.

It is hardly a giant step from that position to disengagement from Sederot, from Beersheva, from Asheklon, from Ashdod, from Jerusalem, from Haifa, from Tel Aviv, from the entire land that God promised to the Jewish people as their eternal possession. Because if Israelis and the Jewish people as a whole cease to believe that the land of Israel is the God-given inheritance of the Children of Israel, then Israel will not have the spiritual strength to resist Hamas.