By Reuven Koret
May 14, 2004
This week's guerilla attacks against IDF convoys in southern Gaza have produced calls for an immediate Israeli flight from the entire Strip.
As the fighting in Gaza has come to resemble that of Lebanon, the leftists sing the same refrain: cut our losses and run for cover. But the disastrous flight of the IDF from southern Lebanon, in which troops withdrew south under cover of time, sometimes leaving behind weapons and infrastructure, is widely believed to have contributed to the upsurge of violence several months later, which has continued to this day, costing more than a thousand Israeli lives.
Possible withdrawal in Gaza is further complicated by the presence of about 7500 Israeli residents, most congregated in a long-established and well-protected bloc of a dozen communities called Gush Katif. Ariel Sharon's proposal for "unilateral disengagement" from Gaza, soundly rejected by the Likud party which elected him, was a euphemism for retreat under fire, accompanied by the expulsion of Jews from their homes.
Despite the decisive rejection of his proposal in the referendum, Sharon continues to press for unilateral disengagement, a call echoed by several of his senior ministers. The calls continue despite the evidence that the continued Israeli presence on the Philadelphi corridor, which even Sharon deems essential in the future to prevent wholesale weapons-smuggling, will be a lightning rod attracting enemy fire, as happened yesterday.
Emboldened by the statements by Sharon and his ministers Shaul Mofaz (Defense), and Ehud Olmert (industry) that Israel will be completely out of Gaza in one to five years -- ultra-leftist MK Yossi Sarid called for immediate withdrawal -- it is clear that the enemy takes comfort and encouragement from these calls for Israeli flight under fire.
Withdrawal will have the effect of allowing more weapons in and unhindered production of Kassam rockets and, we can soon expect, Katyusha missiles. After Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, Hizbullah advanced hundreds of lethal rockets and reportedly chemical warhead-tipped short and medium range missiles close to Israel's northern border.
Hundreds of rockets fired from Gaza have landed in Israel. None have been fatal. Yet. Both patrols yesterday were protecting not settlers but Israelis outside Gaza from missiles and smuggled weapons. "What's clear," Minister Uzi Landau wrote, "is that each place we 'disengage' from and where terrorists remain, will end up like Zeitoun," the location of rocket factories which Israeli troops were compelled to enter. "We will have to re-enter again, not because we want to, but because that is the reality forcing itself upon us."
Proponents of disengagement are correct in saying that the current situation cannot go on indefinitely. Something's got to give. The question is what, and whom. Sharon knows that under current conditions, Israeli flight would be a huge boost to the terrorists, rewarding the vicious attacks, encouraging them to repeat the Lebanon lesson elsewhere.
What the disengagement proponents will not say is that what makes sense in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") -- consolidating Israeli settlement blocs that Israel intends to keep in any conceivable settlement, and relocating those in isolated areas to within those blocs -- makes even more sense in Gaza. Why not start with Gush Katif?
Indeed, Yitzhak Rabin, in his last Knesset address in October 1995, a month before his assassination, cited Gush Katif to exemplify settlement blocs that made sense for Israel's security and which would never be returned.
Today, after seeing the painful price of patrolling isolated routes and entering densely populated Arab cities from outside, the security value of Gush Katif looms all the greater, buffering against infiltrations of terrorists and smuggling of weapons from Egypt.
Sharon's proposed security strip on the Egyptian border should be expanded to connect with Gush Katif, creating a contiguous L-shaped zone which would both enable Israeli residents of the bloc to live safely and preventing terrorist from successfully shooting at Israeli troops. The zone would largely avoid Arab population centers. It means doing at the southern end of Gaza exactly what Israel is already doing in the West Bank.
Beyond enabling increased security, this annexation, whether de facto or de jure, would send a clear message to the Palestinians that more terror leaves them with less territory, that Israeli citizens and soldiers cannot be driven away by violence.
Annexing Gush Katif, and the small settlements in the northern Gaza Strip, would also solve a domestic problem for Sharon. It is likely that such an action, especially under current circumstances, could win government support and enable him to recover from his referendum debacle. It could well be the case that not every Jewish community in Gaza would be maintainable, and one or more would need to be dismantled or relocated.
If residents of the isolated Netzarim settlement in the central Strip were to relocate to blocs in the north or south of Gaza, Sharon could remain true to the principles of his unilateral plan and say that he had relocated. And if Jews are to be transferred from their homes, with compensation, the same principle should be applied to Arabs near the Israeli settlement bloc, especially in the Rafiah area abutting the Philadelphi corridor. They will need to move to areas of contiguous Arab settlement in the Palestinian part of the Gaza, north of Israeli Gush Katif, just as the Israeli Gush Katif will need to move inside.
Even to Sharon's left, the plan -- true to the Rabin legacy -- might win grudging support. The large Shinui party, opposed as recently as several months ago to unilateral retreat, put forward a plan of its own in which Netzarim would be transformed into an army base. And even Yossi Sarid said that he would be satisfied to see even a Netzarim greenhouse dismantled. It is true that Sharon's recent push for unilateral withdrawal from all of Gaza has "opened the appetite" for flight from the whole are, but his political need for an "alternative plan" and the recent attacks makes that approach simply untenable.
The international community will not accept Israel's annexation of Gush Katif. So what? If Jerusalem -- even the pre-1967 Western part of the city -- is still not recognized either as our capital or even as part of Israel, not even by the United States, then we shouldn't hold our breath or worry too much that the Arabs or the rest of the world doesn't clap its collective hands when we embrace a predominantly Jewish slice of Gaza and refuse to part with it or expel its residents.
Pragmatic Americans and Europeans will recognize that by creating an Israeli buffer zone in the southern Strip, we will effectively prevent the emergence of a fanatical Islamic terror state within missile range of Tel Aviv and with an ultimate intent to destabilize Egypt. Fleeing Gaza will only whet the appetites of those who dream of transforming a terrorized Israel, slice by slice, into Palestine.
The Palestinians must be taught that executing an expectant mother and her four daughters does not entitle them to the victims' family home, and that taking as trophies the heads and body parts of Israeli soldiers does not yield the bloody trophy of all Gaza.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
