Stopping a Mass Invasion of Israel from Gaza

Ha’aretz reports today, “The Israel Defense Forces beefed up troops along the border with Gaza, fearing thousands of Palestinians may march on the border in protest of Israel's economic sanctions. Israel fears that crowds of Palestinians might rush the border, and that large numbers of casualties will result from the army's attempts to stop them. Israel believes” the report continued, “that Hamas is now planning a new action, directed at Israel, to break the siege on the Gaza Strip and draw global attention to the plight of Gaza's impoverished residents.”

LATE BREAKING NEWS: Hamas announced it will hold a 40,000 “human-chain rally” on Monday that will span 31 miles from Rafah in the south to the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun. This is dangerous. Will masses break through the fences? Will terrorists use the event as a diversion to sail boats from Gaza to the Israeli coast or emerge from tunnels under the border?

Speaking at the Jerusalem Conference last week, Maj. Gen.(res) Doron Almog, a former commander of Israel’s southern front, related that his troops planned for such a contingency a decade ago.

Israel was faced with a similar threat exactly 20 years ago when the PLO started to outfit a ship, Sol Phryne, and renamed it the al Awda (the Return). Some 200 Palestinian refugees and international “dignitaries” were slated to board the ship and provocatively sail into Haifa, in a voyage reminiscent of the voyage of the Exodus bearing Jewish refugees in 1947. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir called the voyage ''a declaration of war.'' The voyage had been scheduled to sail on Feb. 9, 1988 from the port of Athens.

The ship never made it. On Feb. 16, 1988 The ship was damaged by a mine attached below the waterline at Limassol, Cyprus, which ripped a huge hole in the ferry's hull. No one was injured.

The timing of the blast was critical. The first Intifada had erupted and Yasser Arafat was attempting to gain control of the violence from afar. “By sabotaging the ship before it ever weighed anchor,” wrote analyst Ehud Ya’ari at the time, “Israel turned what was meant to be a dazzling media extravaganza into a public relations fiasco for the PLO. What's more, Arafat had planned to use the ship both to regain full command of events [the Intifada] and to pull in the 700,000 Arab citizens of Israel, who had clearly expressed their solidarity with the residents of the territories but had stopped short of actively joining in the uprising.”

Will Israel’s leadership have the foresight, the smarts, and the cojones to thwart another Palestinian public relations show?

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