The disengagement sin

Shlomo Engel
Israel Opinion/Ynet
21 August '10

As we mark five years to the beginning of the Gaza Strip disengagement, we can clearly point to the immense damages we suffered in its wake.

The pullout’s destructive results for the Gush Katif settlers have already been identified by a national commission of inquiry, which ruled that the State turned evacuees into refugees in their homeland, utterly failing in handling them following their eviction.

However, our deteriorated, isolated global status at this time is also a direct product of the disengagement folly. In the wake of the Goldstone Report and flotilla incident, we can see the process of undermining the very legitimacy of the State of Israel (even within the 1967 borders) reaching a disturbing scope.

This has proven that the false pre-disengagement promise whereby the world will understand forceful action against the Palestinians only if we leave the Strip was completely foolish. The same is true for the claim that our very departure from Gaza would constitute an end to the occupation and control over another people.

The “enlightened world,” Israel's fans and even its foes, prefer in practice a “soft occupation” of the type maintained in Judea and Samaria over the terrible violence which the State of Israel was forced to resort to following its withdrawal from the Strip.

The false vision whereby leaving the Strip would improve our security situation was foolish and baseless five years ago already; today, this folly is loud and clear. There are no military leaders who believe that security control can be achieved without physically controlling an area, certainly in respect to the small territory of the Strip and Negev communities.

Today we also know that missile and rocket fire cannot be prevented without controlling the Strip. It is also impossible to prevent the smuggling of weapons, including long-range missiles that threaten central Israel, without maintaining our hold on the ground.

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