The Costly Price of Israeli Withdrawal: Lessons from the Past - by Prof. Hillel Frisch

Prominent politicians still advocate withdrawal from the West Bank. A simple analysis of pertinent basic data that appears in the Shin Bet’s terrorist summary for the year 2006 alone shows that the idea of withdrawal, which would imply the cessation of IDF activity in the area, could be misguided and dangerous.

Prof. Hillel Frisch..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 948..
14 September '18..

Twelve years after the tidal wave of terrorist violence known by the misnomer the al-Aqsa Intifada, one still hears prominent politicians, commentators, and political researchers advocate withdrawal from the West Bank.

An examination of data provided in the Israel Security Agency’s, or Shin Bet’s, terrorist summary for the year 2006 shows how misguided and dangerous the idea of withdrawal, which would imply the cessation of IDF activity in the area, could be.

To understand the following graph, one must recall that at the end of March 2002, Israel launched a large offensive against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the terrorists in the major towns in the West Bank to which it gave sanctuary. Not only did Israel physically retake all these areas temporarily, but it has engaged ever since in daily penetrations to make preventive arrests or apprehend those terrorists that succeed in perpetrating acts of violence.

The results were dramatic. Until the offensive, which was followed by another major offensive three months later, terrorism more than doubled each year since the beginning of the wave of violence in October 2000 up to and including 2001. After the offensive, the number of Israeli fatalities more than halved in each succeeding year. It is important to note that this reduction occurred before the completion of the most critical areas of the security fence and that the reduction in fatalities in the West Bank, which did not enjoy the security of the fence, was slightly greater than within the Green Line.

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