The illusion of cash in exchange for calm: The stick works, the carrot doesn't

• Published date: 06 October 2021
• Author: GILAD SHARON
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

More than 65 years have passed, yet despite the changes and developments that have occurred since then, Dayan's words are as apt today as they ever were. The possibility of wiping Israel off the face of the Earth may be less realistic than it once was, but the desire to do so hasn't waned. Anyone who thinks that concessions and economic development will take the edge off the hostility of Hamas and its desire to annihilate us doesn't know their neighbors. In this neighborhood, sticks work much better than carrots. Give them a carrot and they want 10 more. If they don't get them, they resort to aggression again.

Periodically, the warped idea of connecting Gaza to the West Bank is raised once more. What would we gain from it? Nothing at all. It's best to keep our enemy divided. That's the natural order of things in their world, and it's better for us as well. The division among the Palestinians was one of the reasons for our victory in the War of Independence. As I said, their fundamental desire to annihilate us hasn't changed. There's no point in trying to create an artificial unity where rifts naturally prevail, especially when it goes against our own interest.

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The throngs of Israeli tourists streaming to Dubai might get the wrong idea. The enormous wealth, grandeur, and pursuit of money and pleasure they see there is in no way comparable to what is happening here, where what the Palestinians pursue, obsessively, is our demise. The nightclubs in Ramallah and Al-Bireh are not representative of anything. They are merely the illusion of sanity under the aegis of the IDF. If we do not maintain a presence in Judea and Samaria, it will look like Gaza.

The Palestinians see the standard of living, progress, and success of Israel and it fills them with envy and loathing. They look at us and want two things: to live like us and to destroy us...