It will cost several hundred million dollars (or much more) to re-deploy the Israeli army out of the Gaza Strip. This is in addition to the billions of dollars Israel would have to pay to the pioneering settlers if Ariel Sharon succeeds in trying to force them out.



Every intelligence agency, including Israel's, already knows that Gaza will be a magnet for the mix of terrorists from all parts of the Middle East, those called "Mujahadeen" (fighters for Islam). Even the Europeans and the United Nations know there is no way to keep Gaza from becoming an operational base for the many terrorist groups, all with connecting wires to Syria, Iran, Egypt and Iraq.



Even before Sharon's plans succeed in driving the pioneering settlers and the soldiers out of Gush Katif, out of their homes, farms, schools, synagogues, factories, cemeteries, infrastructure and water resources, the Arab Muslim Palestinian terrorists have been launching Kassam rockets into Israeli cities and villages.



Let us assume Sharon fulfills his promises to the Bush Administration and its Arabist State Department. Let us assume Sharon succeeds in uprooting 8,000 men, women and children and transferring them out of their homes. When, not if, the Kassam rockets escalate to more advanced French, Chinese or Russian missiles, they will strike deeper and more accurately into Israel's major cities. On September 18th, Sharon threatened that after he retreats from the Gaza Strip and four northern Samaria villages, he will not hesitate to attack missile launchers even if they are located in civilian areas. Since the Kassam rockets and missiles are now being launched from civilian areas, his threats are meaningless.



Whoever replaces the elderly and confused Sharon as Prime Minister will inevitably have to attack and re-occupy the Gaza Strip.



Note that short-term attacks against the terrorists have only halted missile launches for days, even up to a week, but without re-occupation, checkpoints, road patrols and civilians living on site - keeping watch - the attacks against Israel will merely resume, as they always have.



What then will be the cost in lives and equipment to re-take Gaza and disrupt the continuing plans of the terrorists, who will have made Gaza a base of international Arab Muslim Terrorists from all over the world? Factor in the hue and cry from the Europeans, the UN and, yes, the US State Department, over Israel daring to attack those poor Arab Muslim Palestinians terrorists after they continue their pledged war of terrorism with more advanced weapons.



Not only will Israel have paid billions of unavailable dollars to leave, there is no doubt she will pay billions more to return. Remember that it cost Israel $17 billion to evacuate the Sinai Desert in April 1982, when there were only 3,500 Jews living there in the one city of Yamit and 10 farming villages. Much of that was infrastructure, including two advanced military bases and the irreplaceable Abu Rudeis oil fields.



No one has yet given an accurate accounting of the infrastructure costs Israel will incur when Sharon hands the 25 farming communities and two cities over to the Arab Muslim Palestinians. So far, the financial costs have been minimized to a few hundred thousand dollars for each of some 1,600 families. I'm sure that figure is way low. It doesn't include jobs, schools, synagogues, farmland, businesses, water and cemeteries - all of which will have to be duplicated somewhere else in the tiny Jewish State of Israel. The ultimate costs for Sharon's Gaza 'gesture' could exceed several billions of dollars, which Israel does not have unless she closes down all her schools and services to her citizens. If you add Sharon's plans to evacuate parts of Judea and Samaria, the cumulative costs could reach billions more.



What will it have cost the families in human terms to abandon all they worked to build for three generations, to make the sand dunes bloom?



We already have the experience through the Oslo Accords of abandoning seven major cities, which were turned over to the control of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Then the IDF had to return to re-establish control because of the constant Arab Muslim terror emanating from those areas. The costs of return were staggering. But the worst costs since Oslo were the 1,500 murdered Israelis (including some 45 Americans) and tens of thousands wounded, many maimed for life.



Protecting Israelis and re-taking control of areas that have spawned terror attacks has given the rabid international media countless opportunities to savage Israel. Remember Jenin and the lies that the Arab Muslim Palestinians offered to a media eager to print anything the Arabs told them with zero checking? Even after providing eyewitness accounts by Arabs that there was no atrocity in Jenin, the Leftist media continued to howl that Israel committed atrocities.



The cost of again returning to Gaza to eliminate what will surely become the most efficient operational base of international terror in the world will be staggering. Sharon, as a far-sighted tactician in matters of war, already knows that the Israeli army will have to return, merely to save the cities deep inside Israel. But since Sharon has certain political plans in mind, he prefers not to share what he already knows with the Israeli people or the Knesset. His agenda is slaved to the political/business needs of Israel's best friend, but that 'best friend' has its own interests in pacifying the Arab oil markets.



The legacy of Sharon and President George W. Bush will be that they were godfathers to what will be the greatest state of terror on this planet. By now, Bush is experienced in being double-crossed by both the Iraqi people and the Mujahadeen terrorists on a rampage, forcing US troops to return and re-take cities they had abandoned to Islamists in Iraq. This is exactly what Israel will have to do in the Gaza Strip.



Hopefully, President Bush will begin to understand that the mix of Muslim terrorists who came all over the world to kill Americans in Iraq are the same terrorists Israel has been fighting for 100 years. Many of these same Mujahadeen will immigrate to Gaza when they are driven out of Iraq.



Since the so-called Arab Palestinian refugees have been held hostage by Yasser Arafat for years in squalid refugee camps - and paid for by the UN, EU and the US with no end in sight - Gaza and the entire neo-Palestinian State Arafat demands will become a permanent charity case, only a lot bigger and more dangerous, organizing terror attacks against the tiny State of Israel and the entire free world.