Amid the extensive coverage of the latest flareup in Gaza, there is one critical
issue that has been all but ignored by most of the mainstream press. For all the
talk over the past few days regarding whether the IDF should return to Gaza, no
one seems to be asking the most obvious of questions: Why did Israel leave in
the first place? This is more than just a matter of historical curiosity. It
goes to the very heart of the dilemma currently confronting Israel’s decision
makers: is it better to have a physical military presence in Gaza or not? The
experience of the past seven years, since then-prime minister Ariel Sharon
ordered the forcible expulsion of Gaza’s Jews and the withdrawal of all Israeli
forces from the area, demonstrates quite clearly that a permanent IDF presence
is the most effective way to combat Palestinian terror in the
Strip.
Remember: prior to the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, a host of
politicians, pundits and experts lined up to persuade the Israeli public that
pulling back was really just a means of moving forward. At the time, the air was
thick with promises of the new day that would dawn over the Middle East, and
pledges that Sharon’s bold move would bring about an improvement in the security
situation.
How quickly those assurances proved empty! Consider the
following: In the three years prior to the Israeli withdrawal, from 2002 to
2004, Palestinians in Gaza fired a total of 3,037 mortars and rockets at the
Jewish state, according to data compiled by the IDF. But in the three years
after the pullout, from 2006-2008, that figure more than doubled, soaring to
6,828.
After Operation Cast Lead was launched in late December 2008, the
number of attacks on Israel dropped for two years, until the recent upsurge of
violence began, with more than 1,435 rockets fired at Israel thus far in
2012.
The simple arithmetic is clear. Pulling out of Gaza was clearly a
grave strategic error, one that continues to haunt Israel and the millions of
citizens living within range of Palestinian rockets.
Replicating
operations such as Cast Lead might buy two or three years of reduced rocket
fire, but in the longer term it merely gives terrorist groups the opportunity to
rearm and refine their techniques.
Whether we like it or not, the only
proven way to reduce the violence emanating from Gaza is for the IDF to be
deployed there, on the ground and in the air. An IDF presence in Gaza does not
mean there will be no attacks, but it most certainly does mean fewer assaults on
our towns and cities.
Of course, there were many prominent Israelis who
opposed the Gaza pullout from the outset and repeatedly sought to warn against
it. With a prescience that would prove near flawless, they foretold the dangers
that would result from an Israeli retreat.
Consider, for example, the
Knesset session held on October 26, 2004, when the bill to approve the
disengagement from Gaza was being debated.
Natan Sharansky, who was then
serving as a minister without portfolio, told the plenum, “Just as at Oslo, they
are deluding us, as though one can solve the conflict between us and the
Palestinians at the cost of withdrawal, with a quick solution. And just as at
Oslo, so too now the result will be the same: blood and more blood, war and more
war.”
“It is not possible,” he said, “to disengage from the terror and
hatred of Gaza without Gaza following and pursuing us.”
Uzi Landau, who
served at the time as a minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, was no less
resolute.
“When Katyusha rockets will fall in Ashkelon, and we will have
to go back in, we will be invading a semi-sovereign state. Will that make our
international situation any easier, will we be able to withstand the pressure
that will be applied to us?” Others, such as the late MK Yuri Stern, correctly
noted that a pullout from Gaza would inevitably result in more Israeli
casualties.
“Will we avert having more victims? When Jews will not be in
Gaza, and terror will increase and become better organized, won’t the army have
to go back in there? And won’t their activity there be even more dangerous?” he
said.
Reading these words years later, one is struck by just how
applicable they are today, when Israel has been wrestling with the question of
whether to pursue a cease-fire or deploy ground forces in Gaza.
Oddly
enough, it brings to mind a scene in the 1985 film Back to the Future, which
tells the tale of a teenager, Marty McFly (played by Michael J. Fox), who goes
back in time to change the present. After high-school principal Mr. Strickland
tells McFly that he won’t amount to anything because no one in his family ever
did, he memorably responded: “Yeah, well, history is gonna
change.”
Unlike a character in a film, we don’t have the ability to
travel through time and change the mistakes of the past. But we can certainly
avoid repeating them in the future.
Leaving Gaza in 2005 created a
vacuum, one that Hamas and other terrorist organizations were only too happy to
fill. They transformed it into a large staging ground for unprecedented attacks
against Israel and its cities. We can continue to play ping pong Gaza-style,
sending the IDF in and out every few years while subjecting the residents of
southern Israel to unending misery.
Or we can finally say “enough,”
reassert control over the area, and topple the Hamas regime once and for
all.
To be sure, the prospect of doing so is frightening, and it would
entail a high cost on many fronts. But at this point, it is most certainly a
move that is long overdue.
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