Yair Netanyahu in Samaria
Yair Netanyahu in SamariaRoi Hadi

Yair Netanyahu, son of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, on Monday published an op-ed on the Breitbart website in which he sharply criticized the leftist concept of "land for peace."

“Imagine the southern half of the United States being bombarded by missiles for days at a time. Conceptualize the populations of Miami, Los Angeles and Dallas running into bomb shelters as rocket sirens blare. This is the reality here in Israel as I write these words,” wrote Netanyahu.

“For the last three days, more than 600 terror missiles have been indiscriminately fired upon some of Israel’s largest cities. Almost half of Israel’s population is currently inside the line of rocket fire while our capital, Jerusalem, and the economical hub of Tel Aviv could be the next targets. Once the rocket alert system is activated, the people of Israel have only a few seconds to find refuge as Gaza missiles target their cities,” he continued.

“Four Israeli civilians were murdered on Sunday (reportedly including an Israeli Arab Bedouin) by the Palestinian missiles. A pregnant Palestinian woman and her 14-month old baby were reportedly killed by a Hamas rocket launched toward Israeli civilians that accidentally fell inside the Gaza Strip,” wrote Netanyahu, who pointed out that the “Palestinian Islamists in Gaza are routinely committing a double war crime — deliberately aiming their missiles at Israeli civilian targets while hiding behind their own civilians. Many of the Gaza missiles fired toward Israel are launched from mosques, hospital and schools (often UN schools), cynically utilizing the coastal enclave’s population as human shields.”

“Stunningly, the left in Israel, Europe and America often attempts to excuse the terror from Gaza by claiming that the ‘root cause’ of the mayhem is the poverty and despair of the local population. They ignore that the Palestinian population has received billions in economic and humanitarian aid,” continued the Prime Minister’s son.

“The reason the people of Gaza live in poverty is because their terrorist government utilizes the foreign aid that they receive to build their missile infrastructure and construct terror tunnels with the aim of waging war on the Jewish state,” he pointed out.

“Another claim often propagated by the left is that the terror from Gaza is prompted by the so-called ‘economic blockade’ of the Gaza Strip. This is another myth. There is no such blockade of Gaza. Every day, hundreds of Israeli trucks filled with tons of goods cross the border into Gaza. Israel supplies about two-thirds of Gaza’s electricity as well as its fuel despite those provisions being utilized to power Hamas’s missile factories and terror facilities,” noted Netanyahu.

“If Israel wouldn’t apply this naval blockade,” he added, “Iran would ship virtually unlimited weapons directly to Gaza, thereby endangering Israel’s existence.”

The Prime Minister’s son also explained Israel reached the current situation on the southern border.

“Until 14 years ago, there were about ten thousand Israelis living in prosperous and beautiful towns inside the Gaza Strip. For decades the left in Israel, Europe and America demanded that Israel apply the formula of ‘Land for Peace’ and give away its crucial strategic and historical lands to the local Arabs who took on the name of ‘Palestinians,’” wrote Netanyahu.

“In 2005, the Israeli government decided to do just that. It announced a plan to expel every single Jew living in the Gaza Strip and pull out the Israeli army. The Israeli left – with the media as their sounding board – infamously promised that Gaza would become ‘the Singapore of the Middle East’ and that on the land of the former Israeli communities will be established peace camps. After all, if we withdraw to the very last inch of Palestinian demands and give them their own state in the whole of the Gaza Strip, why would they continue waging terror against us?”

The results, wrote Netanyahu, were disastrous. “Hamas took control of the Strip and ever since Israel finds itself facing waves of terror and missiles from the territory that was supposed to become peaceful. The Gaza Strip is tiny, flat and about 50 miles away from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Judea and Samaria is much bigger and runs alongside central Israel, directly adjacent to the heart of Jerusalem and a stone’s throw from Tel Aviv.

“There are more than half a million Jews living in Judea and Samaria, unlike the ten thousand evicted from the Gaza Strip. Much of the international community and the left in Israel, Europe and America demand that Israel do in Judea and Samaria what it did in Gaza in 2005.”

“Such a move will lead to the destruction of Israel. The ‘Land for Peace’ formula leads in reality to ‘Land for War,’” he concluded.