What would the Americans do were the Mexicans to fire rockets on San Antonio? What would the Americans do were the Mexicans to fire rockets on San Antonio? What would the Russians do were the Ukrainians to fire rockets on Moscow? What would the Indians do were the Pakistanis to bomb New Delhi?

Would they also be prepared to take quietly what the residents of Sderot have had to take on a daily basis? Would they also make do with sending a plane to intercept a jeep carrying the rockets? Or would they bomb and shell and destroy and kill until the Mexicans, or the Ukrainians, or the Pakistanis stopped shooting and begged for a bit of peace and quiet? Is there any doubt about that?

Moreover, what would the Israelis do were 20 Kassam rockets to explode in Tel Aviv on a daily basis? Continue to go about business as usual? Make do with a ‘measured’ response? Or would they shell the ‘sources of fire’ until the Palestinians said uncle. Is there any doubt about that?

The demand that we enter Gaza and ‘put things in order’ there is foolish machismo. We’ve been there and we gathered up our soldiers’ body parts wearing plastic gloves. We weren’t able to put anything in order there. If we go in they’ll kill a few of our soldiers every day, and in the end we’ll withdraw in disgrace.

Because we are incapable of stopping the Kassam rocket fire. Only the Palestinians can do that. And they will do that only after they understand that firing Kassam rockets at the northern Negev isn’t worth the damage it causes. Only after they understand that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are causing the residents of Gaza agonies that they cannot and will not pay for the pleasure of having Sderot shelled.

In order for the Palestinian population to rise up against the people firing Kassam rockets we are going to have to respond to every Kassam rocket with massive bombing at the ‘sources of fire’. It is true that this course of action will cause damage, suffering and death among the civilian population. It is true that it runs against the grain of our humane sentiments. It is true that the television footage out of Gaza will raise an outcry in public opinion throughout the world against us. It is true that the UN and the other powers will apply heavy pressure on us.

All of those troubles put together do not outweigh the fact that a country ceases to be sovereign when it allows its neighbor to bomb it. There is something insane in the fact that we engage in debate with ourselves and the world, calm diplomatic debate over whether we are allowed to or forbidden to use everything – everything! – to put an end to the grave assault on our sovereignty, the destruction of our homes, the danger to our citizens’ lives.

If there were even the smallest chance that this enormous restraint would bring peace any closer I might think differently. But the fact that we regard with such indulgence attacks on our population in the northern Negev does not bring peace any closer; it pushes it farther away. Because it signals to the Palestinians that it is possible to attack us and ultimately to defeat us one step at a time, Kassam before Katyusha (which will soon be upon us), Sderot before Ashkelon, Ashkelon before Ben-Gurion Airport, Ben-Gurion Airport before Tel Aviv. That is no empty threat. It is the logic that stems from the dynamic of the process.

He who refrains today from using a heavy hand will need a far heavier hand in the future.

(Originally appeared in Ma’ariv)