For those that are old enough to remember, there was a time when Gazans commuted with ease to work in Israel, and Israelis went shopping in markets in the Gaza Strip. When I first arrived in Israel many of those I worked alongside lived in places such as Beit Lahia or Beit Hanoun (two towns at the northern tip of Gaza). This continued for a while, even after the outbreak of the first Intifada.
None of that seems believable today. The Gaza Strip is a terrorist enclave, and every year or so violence erupts – just as it did last week. Rockets are fired at Israeli civilians, Israel targets terrorists, civilians in Gaza inevitably get killed, and images of dead children fill social media.
Media reporting in the west has descended into farce. Israel and Hamas (or Islamic Jihad) are held up as if they are equals. Somehow Israel is expected to lay down and play nice. How on earth do you play nice with radical Islamic terrorists who only want to see you and your family dead?
The naivety of Oslo’s hope
The descent into madness began in the early 1990s. Yitzhak Rabin (the real one, not the messiah figure), led by Shimon Peres and Shlomo Ben-Ami, imported terrorists in the naive hope that the PLO really wanted to (or could deliver) make peace. Israel legitimised the terrorist Yasser Arafat and let him bring in 1000s of ‘armed police’.
Israel literally gave guns and power to terrorists. This led to the 1994 Gaza–Jericho Agreement and a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
The Israeli right-wing claimed that giving Arafat control of Gaza would lead to rocket fire on Israeli towns. Rabin ridiculed them. He called them ‘cowards of peace’ and promised there would be no rocket fire from Gaza:
Sharon’s Gaza Strip Gambit
True to form Arafat threw away countless chances of building a Palestinian state. He said one thing in English to placate western diplomats whilst speaking very differently in Arabic to his home crowd. Arafat rejected all the peace deals that came before him while also making sure the Palestinians were arming themselves in preparation. The result of the madness was the brutal second Intifada.
Ariel Sharon was to embed the mistake even further. Sharon decided to withdraw from Gaza completely, even dismantling Israeli settlements. 8000 Israelis living in towns in the Gaza strip were forcibly evicted. There were mass protests, but the withdrawal went ahead.
Gaza celebrated, with the President Mahmoud Abbas calling it “a day of joy and happiness”:
The world turned to congratulate Israel. The Palestinians rejoiced. Israel had given up land for peace in the hope that the Palestinians would take the opportunity. Sharon said that the rise of a new Palestinian leadership after the death of Arafat presented a ‘historic breakthrough’.
This is what Netanyahu wrote when he quit the Government in opposition to the plan:
“I am not prepared to be a partner to a move which ignores reality, and proceeds blindly toward turning the Gaza Strip into a base for Islamic terrorism which will threaten the state”
Not for the first time, the fears of Israel’s right-wing bloc proved all too accurate.
The election and the Gaza Strip takeover
With Israel out of the Gaza Strip, it was an opportunity for Palestinians to show they were serious about making peace with Israel. Instead, they burnt the synagogues and the fields of the Jewish settlements and voted for Hamas. These 2006 elections were the last elections Palestinians enjoyed as factional war unfolded.
Hamas ousted Fatah from the strip and began firing rockets at Israel.
Eighteen years later
These are the lessons Israel learnt – the hard way. This is why the Israeli peace camp imploded – as Israelis became aware that there is no Palestinian peace partner. It does not mean that there are not Palestinians who would make peace – but that the Islamic terrorists – those who want war – control the Palestinian street.
This means that every time Israel moved towards peace with the Palestinians – it paid a bloody price. It is worth remembering that in the 1990s there was enormous pressure to get Israel to give up the Golan. Given what happened in Syria we can only be thankful that the naivety of the Israeli ‘peace bloc’ did not leave ISIS just a few miles from Tiberias.
Egypt wanted peace – and got it. Jordan wanted peace – and got it. The Palestinian leadership has no interest in peace – it just wants Israel gone. This is why there is still conflict.
The truth is that everything we see in Gaza today is a result of Israel ‘playing nice’ and doing whatever it could to make peace. Every time Israel ceded ground, or did what the west was telling it to, the price was paid in Israeli blood.
If there was a radical Islamic enclave firing rockets and cities in the US, UK, France, or any other western nation – these nations forces would have obliterated the terrorists long ago – at whatever cost. In consistently showing self-restraint, Israel is – as always – going above and beyond what every other nation would do.
Never forget this when reading the distorted news reports that circulate during times of conflict.
{Reposted from the author’s site}
