...Israel's operation in Gaza comes less than a year after its unilateral retreat last summer, when more than 8,000 Jews were expelled from the homes and communities some of them had lived in for decades. This, Israelis were told, would mean ``disengagement" from their enemies -- the Palestinians would have all of Gaza to themselves and violence would be thwarted by the security fence separating them from Israel. ``If this will be done, then everything will be changed," Ehud Olmert, a key architect of the plan, promised in a speech last June. Israel would be better off without Gaza than it ever was with it. But the surrender of Gaza didn't appease Hamas and Fatah. Instead, it convinced them that Israelis were weak, that terrorism worked -- and that more terrorism would work even better.

So more terrorism followed. ``In just the past two weeks," I wrote last September, ``a Palestinian knifed a Jewish student to death in Jerusalem's Old City, an Israeli policemen was stabbed in the throat by an Arab in Hebron, Kassam rockets were fired from Gaza into the southern Israeli town of Sderot, a suicide bomber blew himself up in Beersheba's crowded bus station, a Katyusha missile launched from Lebanon exploded in the Israeli village of Margaliot, a firebomb was thrown at an Israeli vehicle on a highway outside Jerusalem, and a 14-year-old boy from Nablus was caught with three bombs."

In the months since then, the Palestinian war against Israel has continued without letup. All that changed was the frontline -- with the Jewish settlements and soldiers gone, it moved right up to the border, making it easier than ever for attacks to penetrate Israeli territory. The Gaza security fence has been no panacea. Sderot and other towns in southern Israel have been bombarded by hundreds of rockets fired over the fence. The gunmen who abducted Shalit and killed two of his comrades entered Israel by tunneling under the fence...