Historical events aren’t just an isolated date in time; they are preceded by happenings that helped shape them, and they influence what follows. The Disengagement, which took place 20 years ago this month, is a painful case in point.
There are no festive celebrations in Israel for the 20th anniversary of the full withdrawal from Gaza and from four Jewish communities in Samaria. There’s nothing to celebrate.
The timeline of the Disengagement goes back further than 20 years, to the days of the disastrous first Oslo Accord in 1993 and the 1994 Cairo Agreement follow-up, known as “Jericho and Gaza First.” It includes the IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, which ignited the Intifada and – boosted by the Disengagement – led to the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Above all, today signifies not only 20 years since the Disengagement, but also 665 days since the Hamas invasion and mega-atrocity on October 7, 2023.
How naive or misguided were those who thought that offering the Palestinian Authority yet another chance to create a state would mean the Gazans would live and let live in peace. Instead, they voted for Hamas. The places where hothouses of Jewish farms once thrived became hotbeds of terror and the launchpad for the hordes of invading terrorists.
On October 7, terrorists at Kibbutz Beeri and elsewhere in southern Israel gleefully boasted about raping and killing “settlers.” They saw no difference between these kibbutzniks and the more than 8,000 residents expelled from Jewish communities that once flourished in Gaza.
I remember Yuval Steinitz, a Peace Now activist turned Likud MK and minister, warning that the Disengagement would result in rocket fire on the southern city of Ashkelon. Few could foresee that rockets from Gaza would later be aimed at Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and beyond. And that they’d be joined by missile barrages from Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Islamic Republic of Iran itself.
Each withdrawal – under the Oslo Accords, Ehud Barak’s hasty overnight pullout from Lebanon, and the Disengagement – encouraged Israel’s enemies to believe that Israel could be forced into more retreats at no cost to themselves.
Some of my memories merge into one big danger sign. As a parliamentary reporter in the Oslo years, I recall a solidarity tour, hosted by Jewish communities in Gush Katif, who opened their homes and hearts to residents of the Golan Heights. Incredible as it might now seem, under Yitzhak Rabin’s government in the 1990s, it was the Golan Heights that was threatened with abandonment and being handed over to the bloodstained hands of Syrian president Hafez al-Assad. The residents of Gush Katif had no inkling of their fate.
I COVERED the Likud on the 1999 election night, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost to Barak and handed over control of the party to Ariel Sharon. No one suspected that Sharon – known for his settlement building policies – would, as prime minister, carry out a withdrawal and the destruction of Jewish life in Gaza. (When the disengagement failed to pass a Likud referendum, Sharon left and formed a party, Kadima.)
It was then-MK Zvi Hendel, a former head of the Gaza Coast Regional Council, who coined the phrase “The deeper the investigation, the deeper the withdrawal,” to explain Sharon’s 180-degree turn on settlements when the prime minister was being investigated over several corruption cases.
Memories of that period have an orange tinge – the color of those who opposed what they called “The Expulsion.” Looking at the images of the summer of 2005, I am struck not only by the anguish of those who lost everything but also the pain on the faces of soldiers and police officers who had to carry out the forcible removal of whole communities. But there were also those who enjoyed seeing “the settlers” routed.
Many considered the country to be on the brink of civil war. The anti-disengagement protests were violently blocked or quelled; demonstrators suffered broken limbs; teenagers were held in detention for weeks.
By comparison, an elderly female activist against the judicial reform, who allegedly planned to assassinate Netanyahu, is currently restricted to house arrest. No wonder there are claims of double standards relating to the way the police and judiciary reacted to anti-disengagement protests and the mass rallies against the government’s judicial reform – when blocking roads, protesting outside private homes, lighting fires in the streets, and paralyzing the economy became the norm.
In May 2006, First Sgt. Hananel Dayan-Meged, whose family had been expelled from Gaza, was removed from his unit and denied a scholarship award for refusing to shake hands with then-IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz during a ceremony for outstanding soldiers.
By the summer of 2023, Halutz vocally supported reservists who were protesting the judicial reform and refused to serve; last year, he blocked the road leading to the prime minister’s home in Caesarea.
Strangely, the majority of the Gush Katif residents and their supporters abided by the message on omnipresent placards, “Love will prevail” and “A Jew does not expel a Jew.” Many believed a miracle would save them. For some, the eventual “Expulsion” resulted in a crushing loss of faith in the state and even of religious faith.
AT THE END of the 1970s, I spent nine months in a Nahal pre-army program on Kibbutz Sa’ad, close to Gaza. In those days, it was common for Israelis to travel to Gaza’s markets and beaches. Ahead of the Disengagement, friends on the kibbutz and nearby Sderot expressed prayers for peace but acknowledged fears that the sporadic rocket and mortar fire might increase.
Palestinian were at a crossroads 20 years ago
Twenty years ago, I, like many others, said the Palestinians could choose between turning Gaza into a success like Singapore or into a failed state like Syria. With hindsight, the comparison was incorrect – they didn’t have to look to the Far East for a role model. They could have turned the Gaza Strip into Dubai.
The Palestinians in Gaza are not inherently less able than their brethren in the United Arab Emirates, but their sole motivation has always been the destruction of the Jewish state rather than the construction of one of their own. With UN help, the Palestinians have been declared “perpetual refugees.”
Those who think, à la French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, that unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state with no defined borders, no sustainable economy, no democracy, and an education system that fosters hatred and the cult of martyrdom is going to end well are fooling themselves.
As we approach Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av, commemorating the destruction of both the First Temple (by the Babylonians) and the Second Temple (by the Romans), Jews are reminded of how deep our roots are. We are far from being “settler colonialists,” as our enemies like to portray us. Yet today, the UN and other international bodies are trying to erase Jewish ties to the holiest city of the Jews.
Palestinians and their supporters chanting “From the River to the Sea” are talking about replacing the Jewish state, not living alongside it. And for them, the end justifies the means, including violence and blood libels like the campaign accusing Israel of the “deliberate starvation” of Gaza. It is fueled by Hamas, which can only gain by the delegitimization of Israel. And it’s taking its toll.
Someone I respect, who lives on the other side of the world, recently expressed his fear that “Israel is losing its soul.” It’s not. But there’s no doubt that we are traumatized.
Twenty years after Israel took every Jew out of Gaza (even disinterring the dead in Jewish cemeteries), you cannot take Gaza out of the Israeli psyche.
We are more aware than ever that what happens now affects what comes next. The number of released terrorists Hamas receives in exchange for the release of hostages after nearly two years of captivity, will influence its motivation to carry out future abductions.
Allowing the terrorists to return to areas just a few hundred meters from Jewish communities will all but guarantee future invasions – on the southern border and elsewhere. And forget about forcibly removing half a million Jews from their homes in Judea and Samaria in return for meaningless international promises of peace in our time.
As a friend put it: “We’re not doing what we’re doing in Gaza to teach them a lesson, but because finally we learned ours.”