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The Jewish Voice and Opinion
Dangers of a PA State
of similar actions coming from Judea and Samaria. “There is a 100 percent guaranteed likelihood that there will be Palestinian Katyusha rockets from the West Bank into Israel proper, which means, eventually, there might be an Israeli reinvasion, which must be taken into consideration by the military calculus of a West Bank Palestinian State,” he said. Targets The biggest differences between the rockets from Gaza and those that will be directed from the West Bank are their targets. “There isn’t much raw political push for Israel to reinvade Gaza. Crudely put, this means there aren’t a lot of Israeli businessmen or American tourists living in or visiting Sderot, and most of the rockets, fortunately, have hit nothing and no one,” said Mr. Langfan. However, he pointed out, from the West Bank, 220mm
September 2011
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rockets would “shred Israel’s upper-crust” if they hit in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. If rockets hit Ben-Gurion Airport, they could “set Al-El 747s and tourists on flame.” “It would be like Al-Qaeda terrorists firing katyushas from Brooklyn into Manhattan,” he said. “From the West Bank, every ‘inaccurate’ Palestinian rocket can’t miss hitting dense Jewish populations, or strategic and highly flammable targets.” One Solution As a result, he said, even if far-left icon former-MK Shulamit Aloni were Prime Minister, after such a West Bank Katyusha rocket blitz into Tel Aviv, “Israel would have to reinvade the entire West Bank.” Nor does he think the greatly touted Iron Dome missile defense system will be the solution. “The Palestinians have already figured out there are only a few Iron Domes. The
system cannot intercept rockets with a short range whose flight time is shorter than 30 seconds, and can’t defend against large barrages of missiles very well,” he said. Not an Answer Iron Dome’s 93 percent accuracy “is great for Beersheva,” he said, but it would be “total failure defending Tel Aviv, where four million people would have to scurry to their bomb shelters.” In addition, from Gaza, rockets have only one generalized vectored direction into Israel: due north from their launching point to Ashkelon or Sderot. But Mr. Langfan said that Palestinians in the West Bank would need no more than 30 seconds to hit “incredibly dense Israeli populated areas within 10 kilometers of the Green Line.” “The terrorists could fire simultaneous barrages of rockets from different launching points and different trajectories into the Tel Aviv coastal plain, where 70 percent of Israel’s population lives and 80 percent of Israel’s industrial base is situated,” he said. “Such a barrage of rockets would necessitate an immediate Israeli reinvasion of the West Bank.” Flood after a Storm However, Israeli security forces would find many more Palestinians in the West Bank
after a full or even partial Israeli retreat than there are now. According to Mr. Langfan, first, there would be “a massive influx of new Palestinians into the newly formed West Bank Palestinian State.” “Like it was in Gaza, among these new Palestinians, there would also be massive numbers of new terrorists, including some from among the millions of ‘returning’ Palestinians from refugee camps into the West Bank,” said Mr. Langfan. Hard Choices He estimated that the current number of Palestinians in the West Bank is 2.4 million with a three percent birth rate. But the newcomers, including some from Hamas, he estimated, will bring the total to something like 3.1 million. “The leftists claim that if Israel remains in the West Bank it means facing a Palestinian demographic bomb shell, but, in fact, the real danger is an increased number of Palestinians arriving on the scene after Israel vacates. Gaza’s rockets have conclusively proven it is better to deal with the smaller Palestinian population currently operating in the West Bank than it would be to retreat, allow the terrorists to gain an upper hand, and then to have to reinvade and reoccupy the much larger population,” said Mr. Langfan. S.L.R.