The plan to fire rockets from Jenin has shown that Judea & Samaria too could turn into Hamastan, if we withdraw. The expulsion, or the “Disengagement”, was not only a cynical, anti-Zionist act, lacking any real purpose but also the direct cause of the severe deterioration in the security situation.
The current round of violence in the Gaza Strip has a cause and effect, there is an underlying factor that has given rise to it. We really should not ignore it. What is happening at this current moment in time along our southern border, and what has occurred there in previous rounds of violence, is not something that has taken place within a vacuum. The mortar bombs, the rockets and the missiles neither were, nor are, a matter of divine will. They are all the result of our own stupidity – the folly of the “Disengagement Plan”.
We should never cease to mention this: the expulsion, or the “Disengagement” as it is more euphemistically referred to, was not only a cynical, anti-Zionist act, lacking any insight or real purpose but also the direct cause of the severe deterioration in the security situation. Immediately after the Disengagement, Hamas and the terrorist organizations took control of the Gaza Strip, and consequently, the threats from Israel’s southern border have worsened over time. The rate of rocket fire has constantly increased from one round of violence to the next. From one round of violence to the next the enemy has been able to considerably upgrade its arsenal along with its independent rocket manufacturing capacity.
The legitimacy that has never been granted
The IDF was not there to prevent the establishment of ‘Hamastan’. The promises that were made prior to the destruction of Gush Katif – “If they dare to even fire one bullet, we will give them a real pasting” – turned out to be empty, hollow promises. The “magnificent” demonstration of our withdrawal was interpreted as a demonstration of extreme weakness. The Disengagement did not provide Israel with the requisite legitimacy to “give them a pasting” – neither internationally nor even within Israel itself. Every response was measured and considered not only in terms of the operational cost and benefit but also subject to the amount of leeway that Israel either had or did not have to take action.
The claim that mortar bombs and missiles were fired from Gaza into Israel even prior to the withdrawal, is extremely misleading. The basic data of relevance for debunking this myth relate to three dates: June 1967, when the IDF took control of the Gaza Strip during the Six-Day War; May 1994, when Israel handed over to the Palestinians 80% of the Gaza Strip territory; and August 2005, when the Gust Katif settlements were destroyed and given on a plate to the Palestinians.
During the initial period, not even one incident of rocket fire into Israel was recorded. In the second period, some 6,000 mortar bombs and rockets were fired on the Gust Katif settlements, which in practice served as a security belt for Israel’s southern towns and cities (at the same time, in comparison, only 600 rockets were fired at the Gaza belt communities and the towns and cities in southern Israel). During the third period, after the expulsion, to date, more than 27,000 mortar bombs, rockets and missiles have rained down on Israel. The first rocket landed in Ashkelon in 2006 and in 2012 the first rocket reached Tel Aviv.
Preventing the establishment of Hamastan in Judea & Samaria
Exposure of the plan to fire rockets from Jenin is a clear indication of precisely the same potential. For a long time now, Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas figure, has been eagerly working to implement his vision of turning Judea and Samaria into Hamastan, and consequently create a similar rocket threat to the densely-populated areas of central Israel, and he has even spoken about this publicly.
On the eve of the Disengagement, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ridiculed anyone who dared to warn of what was to come. Meir Shitreet, a government minister at that time, defined claims that “there will be a threat to the towns and cities in the Negev” as ridiculous. The Supreme Court judges at the time (apart from the late Justice Edmond Levy) made do with the security experts on behalf of the state and automatically assumed that plans such as the Disengagement Plan “tend to improve the security situation.”
Don’t let Benny Gantz (State Party Chairman), Yair Lapid (Head of the Yesh Atid (“There is a Future”) Party and Leader of the Opposition) and anybody to their left make do with a statement that the time for disengagement from the majority of the territory in Judea & Samaria, either as part of a coordinated agreement or a unilateral move, has yet to arrive and that neither side is currently ready for this; it is imperative to demand that they completely mothball the plan to establish a Palestinian state there; we should demand this with the same degree of bold confidence and determination with which they demand that the supporters of the judicial reform should completely do away with their plan.
{Reposted from IsraelHayom}
