(Please Share) Sharon, Olmert and Israel's Non-Disengagement II - by Nadav Shragai

The late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denied that Israel was planning a second disengagement from Judea and Samaria, but it turns out that he and former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni appointed a secret team that was charged to look into the feasibility of the idea.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
31 July '20..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/07/31/israels-non-disengagement/

Fifteen years ago today, the day after Tisha B'Av of that year, 1,751 families (about 9,000 people) were evicted from their homes in Gush Katif and northern Samaria, along with thousands of supporters who had come to help them. A total of 26 communities in Gush Katif, the northern part of the Gaza Strip, and northern Samaria were turned into ruins in what was defined as either "disengagement" or an "expulsion." The unprecedented event, which then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon initiated as part of the peace process, is still etched on the hearts of many on the Right and the Left as a serious trauma and a major mistake in terms of defense and security.

As the years passed, a few reports were published about the second stage of the disengagement that Sharon had planned or considered for Judea and Samaria. In his final months as prime minister, prior to suffering a stroke that left him comatose, Sharon denied these reports.

Now new details are emerging that put these denials in a different light, especially when it comes to tactics. "Disengagement II," the "Realignment Plan" that former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert attempted to implement during his time in office, was cooked up under Sharon. Sometimes, things were done with his explicit approval, and sometimes without any response, but Sharon knew everything. He certainly didn't forbid work on the matter.

In December 2005, three months after the disengagement plan was complete, Sharon and then-Justice Minister Tzipi Livni appointed a committee under the leadership of the director general of the Justice Ministry, Aharon Abramovich. It was a sort of continuation: Abramovich and his people had previously led the work of the teams that put together the legal and financial framework for the disengagement.

At that time, the team was asked to present the security and defense, economic, legal, and diplomatic framework for another withdrawal, this one from Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), to be based on the lessons of the disengagement from Gaza and northern Samaria. The committee was not given a mandate to lay down the borders of the retreat or decide which settlements would be evacuated, but was asked to map out the Israeli interests of another unilateral move for the area of the West Bank, if it turned out that there was no Palestinian partner for peace negotiations.

Thus, for example, Abramovich and his friends looked as the financial costs of evacuating 15,000 settler families (about 100,000 people) from far-flung communities. This would have been 10 times as many setters as the number evicted from Gush Katif.

Attorney Dov Weissglas, who at the time served as Sharon's chief of staff, tells Israel Hayom that these were "initial thoughts."

He clarifies: "We thought we needed to reorganize the Israeli presence in Jude and Samaria. No doubt, if Sharon hadn't been taken ill, the reality there would be completely different. It was a film that was cut off because of a power outage."

Weissglas confirms a report by the late journalist David Landau after the disengagement. In his book Arik: The Life of Ariel Sharon, Landau wrote: "In October 2005, we all – [Weissglas], Sharon, his sons, Reuven Adler, my wife and I, went to the Galilee for a weekend. We talked for hours about the future … The disengagement from the Gaza area was a move in and of itself, but it was intended to be combined with an additional move that would come later that was based both on the Road Map [a plan devised by the Middle East Quartet and adopted by the administration of George W. Bush] and the desire to avoid an impasse. The thinking was to continue on to a similar action in the West Bank. We hoped that the security barrier would help create that reality, that the Jews living on the other side of the fence would start coming back to Israeli territory … that we would gradually withdraw our forces from more and more cities, more and more areas – without the whistles and bells of negotiations about a permanent peace deal, which would certainly get stuck on the issue of Jerusalem. That was exactly Sharon's thinking … that was where the decision to set up the team under Abramovich was made."

The committee's concern

Abramovich's team included Director General of the Finance Ministery Yossi Bachar, the Deputy Attorney General for International Law Shavit Matias, Deputy IDF Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, and attorney Daniel Reisner. Abramovich worked in secret, far from the spotlight, while Sharon was flatly denying remarks by Olmert, who was acting prime minister, and his close associate Eyal Arad that a second disengagement was expected or being considered.

The committee's existence came to light only after Sharon fell into a coma and Olmert took his place. Olmert made the Realignment Plan one of his main issues and talked about it openly. Unlike Sharon, he didn't try to hide it at all. Abramovich, who moved from director general of the Justice Ministry to director general of the Foreign Ministry – along with Livni, who also switched ministries – continued his work.

In August 2006, after Sharon had been comatose for eight months, the committee submitted Olmert and Livni with a thick report that contained hundreds of pages and revealed a number of problems entailed in executing the move. The committee members started out by listing major difference between Gaza and Judea and Samaria.

According to the committee, the West Bank is "tactical terrain," whereas the Gaza Strip is topographically lower than Israel. The West Bank also has a number of water sources that are important to residents of Israel, which Gaza does not. The Gaza Strip is entirely closed off and easier to control from outside in terms of security. In contrast, the committee said, Israel would have difficulty finding a solution to the threat of rocket fire from hilly areas in Judea and Samaria, and there was also concern that Hamas would gain control of the large population centers there, making continued IDF presence in key parts of Judea and Samaria the most reasonable way of preventing rocket attacks and a Hamas takeover.

The committee members also assessed that in the case of a necessary military presence of that kind, Israel would not be able to receive international recognition of an "end to the occupation." They also expressed concern that a unilateral withdrawal would endanger the stability of Jordan, and observed that unlike Gaza, from whence Israel retreated to the Green Line, it wanted to hold onto the West Bank settlement blocs, part of the Jordan Valley, and east Jerusalem until a permanent peace agreement was signed.

'Arik asked, what will Condoleezza Rice say?'

The Critical Debate Over What Should Be Learned from the Gaza Disengagement - by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen

The debate over the interpretation of the clear and present danger emanating from Gaza in the wake of the 2005 unilateral disengagement holds the key to saving Israel from the dangers attending the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,257..
16 August '19..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/gaza-disengagement-lessons/

In the summer of 2005, as Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza drew near, the self-styled “Council for Peace and Security” issued a declaration – signed by hundreds of former senior officers and security officials – that promised that “the disengagement will improve Israel’s security situation.” Fourteen years later, many of these “security experts” – including newly retired general turned leftwing politician Yair Golan – continue to maintain that the disengagement from the Gaza Strip altered Israel’s security situation for the better. They base their claim mainly on comparisons between the number of wounded and killed in the period preceding the disengagement and in the years since.

They do not take into account, however, the massive disruption of the normal life of the country – from the ongoing suffering caused to many Israelis, to the huge investments poured into protecting communities and building another barrier with a price tag far exceeding 4 billion shekels, to the heavy cost of the three large-scale operations (2008-9, 2012, 2014) and the numerous rounds of fighting. The costs of Operation Protective Edge (2014) alone – including total military and civilian outlays and calculations for lost productivity – came out to over 10 billion shekels. The “experts” also ignore the balance of terror, and consequent loss of Israeli freedom of action, that Hamas has established with its rockets and that enables it to upset routines on the Israeli home front at will.

Above all, by making the number of casualties the main criterion by which to assess the security situation, as US generals did in Vietnam to cover up their abysmal failures, the “experts” ignore the fact that a national-security equation does not by any means depend primarily on the number of wounded and killed. If that were indeed the key criterion, most struggles for national liberation would not have happened.

It is no coincidence that those claiming that the unilateral disengagement improved Israel’s security situation are also those who favor further withdrawals in the West Bank. The inevitable linkage between what has transpired in Gaza since the IDF’s departure and the uprooting of the communities in the summer of 2005, and what is likely to occur if a similar step is carried out in the West Bank, calls for comprehensive and critical reassessment of all that has happened in Gaza over the past 14 years.

Gush Katif, heroism and forgiveness

...They swallowed their pain, even when some living in the Gaza periphery for months called them "occupiers" and demanded that they "come home." The kibbutzniks were convinced that if their neighbors in the old Gaza periphery would just pack up their belongings, there would be peace on Israel, and the Palestinians would turn their swords into plowshares.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
17 August '14..

More than 6,000 mortars fell on Gush Katif communities in its last years. Mortars are known for their incoming whistle and the explosion just after they hit. There is no siren or Color Red alert for the mortars, which caused destruction and anxiety but could not force the residents out of their homes. Unlike some Tel Avivians during the Gulf War, unlike some of the residents of Kiryat Shmona when Katyusha rockets were fired at them, and unlike some of the Gaza periphery residents only recently, the people of Gush Katif exemplified unrecognizable Jewish steadfastness. Every day of green grass, laundry drying in the breeze, planting in greenhouses and studying Torah -- even when the sword of their brothers who would forcibly evacuate them rested on their necks -- was for them an almost holy commandment. We are the country's bulletproof vest, they said, not concealing their pride.

The forgotten history of Gush Katif is relevant today. Not as criticism of those who chose to leave their Gaza border homes until things were over (more than a few chose to stay, but the media focused on those who left) -- the people of Kfar Aza, Nahal Oz or Ein Hashlosha have every right to evacuate their children and themselves to a safe place and demand that the state provide them with security. No one who isn't in their place can judge them.

In contrast, the heroic story of Gush Katif is a story that should be retold today, because at the time the people there were accused by some sectors of the Israeli public of "sacrificing their children" and using them for political purposes. The "Gushniks" who were carrying on the great Zionist tradition of devotion and keeping hold of the Land in the face of disease, plague, terrorist attacks and war did not leave; they quietly swallowed the insults. They were silent when it became clear that the army was responding to the increasing shelling on Sderot, while ignoring the shelling on them. They even kept quiet when their neighbors in Sderot saw their city included in the list of border conflict communities (a status that grants significant material benefits), while they, who had been attacked much more for years, were ignored.

They swallowed their pain, even when some living in the Gaza periphery for months called them "occupiers" and demanded that they "come home." The kibbutzniks were convinced that if their neighbors in the old Gaza periphery would just pack up their belongings, there would be peace on Israel, and the Palestinians would turn their swords into plowshares. Now, after many have asked the residents of Gush Katif for forgiveness, it's time for the residents of the Gaza periphery communities to do the same.

Nine years on, revisiting the disengagement from reality

The same pundits who claimed that evacuating Gush Katif would improve Israel's security and dismissed the Palestinians' "flying objects" as inconsequential, are now offering the government advice on dealing with the threat they did not see coming.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
08 August '14..

Four years prior to the 2005 evacuation of Gush Katif, acclaimed author Aharon Meged penned a jarring essay in which he warned of a "rose-colored blindness." It is an affliction that "causes people to only see pink by choice," he said. Meged was convinced that the peace camp was beset by such a condition.

In recent weeks, as what was once considered a causal link between the disengagement on the one hand, and the enhanced capabilities of the terrorists in Gaza Strip on the other hand, became poignantly clear, we returned to the press archives and worn-out news clippings of that era. We refer back to the news sites and the newspapers that documented the fierce debate that raged in Israel a decade ago between the Right and the Left over the disengagement plan and the eviction of the residents of Gush Katif.

We reacquainted ourselves with the rosy future outlined by defense analysts and politicians who, as it turned out, were also suffering from "pink-colored blindness" given that they predicted a calm, tranquil future in the wake of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. "The disengagement is good for security," they vowed. The scenarios that they envisioned were far rosier than could be imagined.

If they had the chance to do things differently today, what would they do? We asked those who at the time dismissed the prophecies of doom offered by the skeptics. We were indeed surprised to discover that only a few of them had recanted.

Some of them have appeared on television and radio shows as guest analysts over the course of the past month. With no shortage of self-confidence and brashness, they offered their commentary on how Operation Protective Edge in Gaza Strip was progressing, even going as far as to offer the government and military their advice.

The archives, which document everything, however, do not spare them. The legal petitions against the disengagement submitted to the High Court of Justice by The Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, as well as 11 other plaintiffs, also helped to grasp the full picture.

The petition, which was turned down by the High Court, is a good place to start. It was a legal motion which the state did not even bother to fight. The state did not offer any rebuttal or affidavits intended on supporting the claim that the move was expected to pay dividends in terms of security.

It should be noted that the judges who heard the petition did not lean on the state to provide any explanation. They rejected the cogent, professional arguments, which were backed by evidence and sound defense reasoning offered by the petitioners, who relied up the expertise of Maj. Gen. (res.) Ya'akov Amidror, among others.

The judges refused to visit Gush Katif. They also refused to summon the former chief of staff, Moshe Ya'alon, to the witness stand. They assumed that "the evacuation will dampen the desire of the Palestinians to harm the civilian population," though it is unclear as to where they derived the logic for this argument.

This was a frustrating time for Yossi Fuchs, the attorney arguing the petitions before the High Court. In his view, the judges were "putting up fortified walls" in front of him.

"All of my efforts to ascertain the basis for the state's claims that the security situation would improve [as a result of the withdrawal] crashed against these walls," he said. "I felt that the judges were willfully shutting their eyes for fear that if they opened them, they would be compelled to grant the petition and stop the disengagement plan."

Those who implored the court to listen to the heads of the security services were members of the Knesset's Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee. They discussed the disengagement plan, but the state prevented them from summoning the various defense officials and have them appear before the committee.

Then-Shin Bet security agency chief Yuval Diskin (who declined the request to be interviewed for this article), then-IDF chief and current Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, and Giora Eiland, who at the time served as national security adviser (and who was "too busy" to respond to our questions), were all told that they were barred from appearing before the committee. At the time, all three were very critical of the disengagement plan.

Nonetheless, the state did send one official to represent it before the panel -- Eiland's acting replacement, Itamar Ya'ar, a member of the Council for Peace and Security, an organization which at the time publicly advocated the disengagement plan. Ya'ar mentioned that the move would result in "a significant reduction in the military forces required to maintain day-to-day security in the region."

Then-committee chairman Michael Eitan challenged Ya'ar with competing assessments from experts who said that the withdrawal would whet the appetite of terrorists seeking to expel Israeli forces from the area.

"The decision establishes that, as opposed to what was said here, there will be an overall improvement in the situation," Ya'ar replied.

When Eitan asked Ya'ar which defense experts he cited in his arguments, Ya'ar refused to give a name.

Perhaps 'The Gush Katif War' Would Be the More Appropriate Name

...Since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Palestinian terrorists have fired over 14,000 rockets at the Jewish state, which averages out to more than four rockets a day, every day, for nearly a decade. And since the Hamas takeover in 2007, Israel has had to launch three military campaigns to contain the violence: Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, Operation Pillar of Defense in October 2012, and now Operation Protective Edge. But in effect, this has all been one long battle, the Gush Katif War, a conflict that was sparked by Israel's own self-inflicted wound of retreat and expulsion.

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/JPost..
05 August '14..





As the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas appears to be winding down after more than three weeks of bloodshed, it is time to confront a painful and inconvenient truth.

Though hardly anyone has had the courage to admit as much publicly, the fact is that Operation Protective Edge should never have needed to have been fought.

All the destruction and loss of life, all the economic disruption and diplomatic fallout of recent events did not have to come to pass. Simply put, this conflict is a direct result of the grave and unnecessary strategic errors that Israel made nearly a decade ago, chief among them the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

Indeed, don't think for a minute that Operation Protective Edge began on July 17, when Israeli ground forces entered the Strip, or that it commenced on July 8, when Israel's air force launched its offensive in response to Hamas rocket fire. The groundwork for this bloody clash was laid precisely nine years ago this week, on the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Av, when Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's government began dismantling Gaza's Jewish communities as part of the so-called disengagement plan.

Despite countless warnings at the time that the Gaza pullout would bring disaster, Sharon pressed ahead, demolishing more than 20 flourishing Jewish communities and withdrawing the IDF from the Strip. This foolhardy move paved the way for the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, a turning point that has had calamitous consequences for Israel ever since.

Had Israel not uprooted thousands of Jews from their homes, had the government not pulled the army out of Gaza, Hamas would never have been able to seize control over the area, transforming it into a platform for unprecedented terrorist attacks. Thus, through its own reckless actions, the Sharon government helped to create the monster that is now using Gaza to fire rockets at Tel Aviv and to build dozens of underground tunnels.

Frankly, it is chilling to look back and peruse the statements made by various Israeli leaders at the time and to see just how short-sighted and wrong they were about the ramifications of a Gaza retreat. Then-prime minister Sharon, in a meeting with American Jewish leaders in Washington on April 13, 2005, insisted that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza would "reduce terror and give Israeli citizens the maximum level of security. It will increase security for the residents of Israel and relieve the pressure on the IDF and security forces."

Tell that to the millions of Israelis who have been running to bomb shelters in recent weeks as air raid sirens wail eerily in the background.

The Additional Price of Israel’s Gaza Pullout in Palestinian Lives

...This Hamas strategy increases Palestinian casualties in another way as well: by magnifying the impact of any Israeli strike. Precision bombs can sometimes take out a building without touching the ones next to it. But precision strikes don’t work when the building they hit is booby-trapped or serves as a rocket warehouse; in that case, secondary explosions will create a much broader swathe of destruction. And Israel has no way of knowing when a target has been booby-trapped; Hamas doesn’t provide it with maps.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
04 August '14..

Last week, I noted that Israel’s unilateral pullout from Gaza has cost the lives of more Israeli soldiers than remaining in Gaza would have. But no less significant is the fact that Israel’s pullout has cost the lives of far more Palestinians than remaining in Gaza would have.

Here, too, a comparison to the second intifada is instructive. According to B’Tselem’s statistics, 1,727 Palestinians were killed in Gaza between September 2000, when the intifada began, and the August 2005 pullout. Since then, the numbers have soared. Another 1,271 Palestinians were killed between the pullout and December 2008, when the first Israel-Hamas war in Gaza began; 1,391 were killed during that war, and 481 between then and the start of the current war. That’s 3,143 Palestinian fatalities in total, and Palestinians claim another 1,600 or so have been killed during this war. So even if you assume, which I do, that B’Tselem’s numbers are exaggerated (it tends to believe Palestinian reports far too uncritically), the trend is undeniable: Since the pullout, Israeli-Palestinian fighting has produced more than twice as many Palestinian fatalities as the peak years of the second intifada did.

Moreover, as in the case of Israeli fatalities, this increase represents a sharp contrast to the trend in the West Bank, which the Israel Defense Forces still control: There, Palestinian fatalities have fallen from 1,491 between September 2000 and August 2005 to 395 in the nine years since August 2005, meaning annual fatalities have fallen by more than 85 percent (they haven’t dropped to zero because neither has Palestinian terror; terror attacks still kill Israelis every year, but the level is dramatically lower than at the height of the intifada).

The question is why Palestinian fatalities in Gaza have risen so sharply. The anti-Israel crowd will doubtless cite this fact as “proof” that recent Israeli premiers are even more bloodthirsty than “the butcher of Beirut,” as they fondly dubbed Ariel Sharon, the prime minister during the second intifada. But anyone not convinced that Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu are simply monsters who like eating Palestinian children for breakfast will have to consider the obvious alternative: Palestinian casualties have soared because the IDF’s departure from Gaza allowed terrorist organizations to entrench their rockets, tunnels, and explosives among the civilian population in a way that simply wasn’t possible before.

In the current war, Palestinians have stored rockets in schools and launched them from hospitals and from amid civilian houses. They have built cross-border tunnels to attack Israel that pass under civilian houses and emerge straight into a mosque. They have booby-trapped civilian houses and even health clinics. In short, by embedding their war material among the civilian population, Hamas and other terrorist organizations have made it impossible for the IDF to target them without also hitting civilians.

Nine years on, paying the price for disengagement

...The late Ariel Sharon, who was then prime minister, outdid himself, pledging, "Ashkelon will not become the frontline. Not Ashkelon, nor other places." Current Opposition Leader Isaac Herzog (Labor) said at the time that disengagement was "an act of true historic importance" that would "pull the state out of the mud." But now it cannot be denied that disengagement in fact got Israel deeper into the mud of terrorism, rockets and military operations meant to reduce those threats emanating from Gaza. Rockets from Gaza long ago passed over Ashkelon and now reach as far as northern Israel.

A Palestinian Islamic Jihahd militant,
holding a rocket propelled grenade
launcher, stands on top of a
synagogue in the former Jewish
settlement of Neve Dekalim
(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

MK Yariv Levin..
Israel Hayom..
15 July '14..

We have now reached the ninth anniversary of one of the most shameful actions every carried out by the State of Israel in its history. Nearly a decade has passed since the terrible day on which the expulsion of the residents of Gush Katif and northern Samaria from their land began. They paid an unbearable personal price when they lost their homes, jobs, supportive communities and, in many cases, their futures.

Today, with a majority of Israelis under threat of Gaza rockets, we should remember the courage of the residents of Gush Katif and northern Samaria who sacrificed their safety and put themselves on the frontline against our enemies. Their presence in those areas actually prevented escalations such as the one we are witnessing now.

Their presence there made the lives of all Israelis, from Sderot on northward, more secure. We all owe them a thank you and an apology. A thank you for the personal sacrifices they made under often tough conditions. And an apology for the fact that instead of showing gratitude, we repaid them by expelling them from their homes and their land, an eternal black mark in Israeli history.

The writing was on the wall, but most refused to see it. There were many warnings about the enormous damage disengagement would cause, including the boost it would give to terrorism and the creation of a rocket base in Gaza that would be used to attack Israeli cities. Yet a majority of Knesset members at the time declined to listen.

The late Ariel Sharon, who was then prime minister, outdid himself, pledging, "Ashkelon will not become the frontline. Not Ashkelon, nor other places." Current Opposition Leader Isaac Herzog (Labor) said at the time that disengagement was "an act of true historic importance" that would "pull the state out of the mud." But now it cannot be denied that disengagement in fact got Israel deeper into the mud of terrorism, rockets and military operations meant to reduce those threats emanating from Gaza. Rockets from Gaza long ago passed over Ashkelon and now reach as far as northern Israel.

Eight Years,14,000+ Rockets, and the Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

LOTL..
06 August '13..

Once again we are standing on the doorstep of the anniversary date, year eight, of the complete destruction and erasel of the Jewish communities of Gush Katif, as well as selected communities in the Shomron. A pain filled time when 8,600+ residents were driven from their homes, many forcefully removed by fellow-citizens carrying out their jobs as servants of the State of Israel, whether soldiers or policemen. Now, 14,000 plus rockets later, fired from the very same communities that once were one of Israel's greatest agricultural growers and exporters, comes the article below by Daniel Simon in Al-Monitor, clearly a proponent of the destruction and expulsion, but still painting a picture that irrespective of his wishes may yet prevent such a self-imposed and tragic mistake from ever being replayed once again.

By: Daniel Ben Simon for Al-Monitor Israel Pulse Posted on August 2.

Original Title:
The Gush Katif Precedent
Author: Daniel Ben Simon
Posted on: August 2 2013
Translated by: Hanni Manor

At the entrance to the Nitzan caravan site, I stop by the shop of Esther Buskillah. I had first met her when she was living with her family in the small settlement of Nisanit in northern Gush Katif, the block of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip evacuated in 2005. Like all the other 8,000 residents of the settlement, Buskillah was evacuated by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers and sent to live in Nitzan, a huge caravan site set up on the sand dunes of the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.

It's noon and the sweltering heat has driven away the inhabitants of the temporary settlement. In her little shop, Buskillah sells gifts and souvenirs to foreign and local tourists. There is not a soul out there in the scorching midday heat. Opposite the shop, there is a caravan turned into a museum commemorating the history of Gush Katif.

“It isn’t just the heat; it's also because everyone here is so depressed,” said Buskillah, half-joking, half-serious.
“After all, what would you expect? We have lost the joy of life we used to have in Gush Katif. And what's left? Our kids have still not recovered from the trauma of displacement. And we have not yet found real jobs. Unfortunately, to this very day, we are aching over our community, which has been shattered since we left Gush Katif.”

Not far away, a woman named Rachel (she chose not to share her last name) is hanging her laundry out to dry, as she did eight years ago in her spacious home in Neve Dekalim. I had come to know her, too, then. Time has left its mark on her face, which is lined now, having aged prematurely. She has no doubt that her feelings of anguish and distress are the cause of her depression.

After first arriving here, Rachel was told that she had only two years to find another place to settle, where she would be able to build a new life for herself, her husband and their eight children. Alas, eight years have passed, and Rachel and Buskillah are still stuck in this temporary site, which seems to have become a permanent settlement. It is no more than a cluster of shanty houses or caravans, really, whose walls have deteriorated over the time and which now look like the ma'abarot, the refugee camps set up to provide accommodations for the influx of new immigrants to Israel in the 1950s. The grass grows wild, and the wooden houses have been yellowed by the blazing sun.

Next to many of the caravans, huge containers are still standing, holding the personal belongings the families took with them when evacuated from their homes in Gush Katif. It may be reluctance to let go of the still-vivid memories of their previous life, or perhaps unwillingness to settle down in the new place, but the fact is that for years, these containers have been lying around, untouched.

Seven years and no end in sight for Gush Katif expellees

The 72-year-old mother and grandmother, a New York native, along with her husband Moshe – who lost an arm while serving in the IDF during the Yom Kippur War, and was then severely wounded again in a terror attack near their Neve Dekalim home in 2002 – are among the over 60 percent of former Gush Katif residents who, seven-and-a-half years after the expulsion, are still not living in permanent homes.

Josh Hasten..
Opinion Columnist/JPost..
12 February '13..

Sitting in her tiny caravan and looking up at the water stains and cracks in the ceiling from the winter rain, Gush Katif expellee and current Nitzan resident Rachel Saperstein has had enough.

Referring to her community as a “refugee camp” Saperstein tells me with obvious frustration in her voice during a recent interview that “it’s time to leave.”

The 72-year-old mother and grandmother, a New York native, along with her husband Moshe – who lost an arm while serving in the IDF during the Yom Kippur War, and was then severely wounded again in a terror attack near their Neve Dekalim home in 2002 – are among the over 60 percent of former Gush Katif residents who, seven-and-a-half years after the expulsion, are still not living in permanent homes.

This normally bubbly, always cheerful, laughing and optimistic Gush Katif pioneer is not smiling anymore.

“I’m angry, I’m depressed, I’m frustrated, I want to get going and build my house, but I can’t do it. I keep hearing from them [the Tenufa Authority, formerly known as the Sela Authority, which is responsible for assisting Gush Katif families with resettlement] – ‘next month, next month,’ but nothing is moving.”

Echoing Interviews That Precipitated a Tragedy - The Gatekeepers

...an Oscar-worthy documentary would have been one showing this story: “Security hawks speak up, policymakers listen up, a heart-wrenching evacuation of 8,000 Jews ensues, terrorist rockets are launched from the evacuated areas, and a nation is left bewildered as to what to do next.” But no Oscar would likely be awarded for such a film.

Rick Richman..
New York Sun..
03 February '13..

“The Gatekeepers,” the leading candidate for this year’s Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, begins with ominous music. It informs viewers that Shin Bet is the secret Israeli agency dealing with terrorism. Then three sentences flash slowly across the screen, one by one:

For the last 30 years only six men have led the organization.

They have never been interviewed.

Until now.

The film is intended, according to its website, as “the ultimate cautionary tale of what happens to people and nations alike when they try to answer violence with violence,” told by six former heads of the Shin Bet, who “for the first time ever … share their insights” about what Israel needs to do: change course, talk to anyone, and reach an agreement with the Palestinians.

But this is not the first time ex-Shin Bet leaders have been publicly interviewed. Their first interview — in 2003 — resulted in a disastrous change of course, one that haunts the “peace process” to this day. And not a word about it is mentioned in “The Gatekeepers.”

On November 13, 2003, Israel's largest-circulation newspaper published a two-hour joint interview with all four ex-Shin Bet chiefs, with a front-page banner headline reading: “Four directors of [Shin Bet] warn: Israel in grave danger.” The New York Times reported the interview the next day; so did the Washington Post, on its own front page.

In Britain, the Guardian's story was headlined “Israel on road to ruin, warn Shin Bet chiefs.” CNN, ABC, Fox and almost all the important press in the world carried extensive coverage of the interview. The ex-Shin Bet chiefs urged Israel to start dismantling settlements even before reaching a peace agreement.

At the time of the 2003 interview, Israel was insisting that before negotiating a Palestinian state, the Palestinians had to stop their terror war against Israel. The war had commenced in September 2000, after Yasser Arafat was offered a state at Camp David – and walked away. In December 2000, the Clinton Parameters were presented to both sides: they were accepted by Israel and rejected by Arafat.

To ensure that a system failure like the Gush Katif expulsion should never reoccur

Daniel Tauber..
Opinion/JPost..
03 January '13..

Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) chairman Naftali Bennett’s statement that he would not obey an order to expel Jews from their homes, the criticism it engendered and his subsequent retraction comprised only the latest example of how, seven years later, the disengagement from Gaza continues to cast a shadow over our national life.

That it still haunts us is appropriate considering what it was: the forcible transfer of thousands of people, in which only Jews – by nature of the plan’s goals – were targeted.

Though the Supreme Court did not strike down the plan, it found that it “infringe[d] the human dignity of evacuated Israelis” in a number of ways, violating their property rights and their right to build their lives where they choose, and destroying their communities, businesses and professional livelihoods, in short, their entire way of life.

Putting aside the mortal dangers it posed (all of which and even more have since been realized) the disengagement also sought to answer the most divisive issue our nation faces – setting the final boundaries of the state – a constitutional matter which even the Constituent Assembly, Israel’s first and only constitutional convention, deemed too controversial to decide on.

DESPITE THE enormity of the violations, the controversy surrounding it and the lasting impact it would have, the disengagement was a relatively easy thing for then-prime minister Ariel Sharon to accomplish.

The government presented its plan, the Knesset approved and the judiciary allowed it be executed. And even that outline makes the process seem more rigorous than it was. In the end, it was a simple matter of majority rule.

Technically, the Knesset could have disapproved a prime minister’s initiative, but in a parliamentary system, this is unlikely.

The government represents a majority of parliament and the cabinet is comprised of that coalition’s most powerful members.

Israel’s proportional system makes Knesset opposition further unfeasible: Even if some coalition members disapprove, in the fractured political landscape produced by the electoral system, allies can always be found outside the coalition. And, as the public does not choose members of Knesset, but only a prepared slate of candidates, MKs are first and foremost accountable to party bodies that set the slate, over which the party chairman typically has substantial control.

From disengagement to terrorism - The link between our past and current situation

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
13 November '12..

Speaking from the Knesset podium on the day his disengagement plan was approved on Oct. 25, 2004, in a tone that ridiculed his opponents, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said, "They tell me that the disengagement [from Gaza] will be interpreted as a humiliating withdrawal, lead to an increase in terrorist attacks and present Israel as a waning power. I categorically reject this statement."

Then Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz had no doubt at the time that the move was "necessary and correct, and will increase security for Israeli citizens." Meir Sheetrit, who was housing and construction minister at the time, dismissed claims by those who believed the move would threaten cities and towns close to the Gaza border and that Israel was "fleeing from terrorism." Sheetrit responded by saying, "I have never heard a more ridiculous claim."

Even judges of the High Court of Justice (with the exception of Justice Edmond Levy) ignored the warnings and refused to visit the Gush Katif settlement bloc in Gaza. They made do with the opinions of state-provided defense experts and automatically assumed that plans like the disengagement "improve the country's security." They claimed that "the disengagement reduces the Palestinians' will to harm the Israeli population."

Seven years later, when the ritual public debate on the south is almost as frustrating as the situation itself, there is a loud silence concerning the link between our past sins and the current situation. The connection here between cause and effect begs itself, not for the purpose of saying, "We told you so," but primarily so that similar thoughts of additional withdrawals, with or without an agreement with a "partner" who until today refuses to accept our existence as a state or perhaps even as individuals, will never see fruition and will be rejected outright.

Unfortunately, there is no lack of central players in our political arena who have failed to abandon this dangerous trend in thought. Some want to implement the same plan in Judea and Samaria. Not by coincidence they are also the last ones to deny a connection between the evil that was unleashed upon us in the south seven years ago and its intensity, and the simultaneous end of an Israeli military and settlement presence in the area from which rockets are now launched against Ashkelon and Ashdod.

Gush Katif: Seven years after

Emily Amrousi..
Israel Hayom..
27 July '12..

A photo from 1977 shows the plot on which the Vesertiles' house in Ganei Tal will be built. There are four barefoot children in the snapshot, with yellow sand dunes in the background. It is a desert, without a speck of green anywhere. No birds, no flies, no beetles.

In a picture of the same location from 2005 there is already a modest house surrounded by dark green grass, and hundreds of trees heavy with fruit. Many birds, flies and beetles compete for a place amidst their branches. 20 minutes after the photograph was taken, it all disappeared. The birds, the trees, the house — all of it flown away.

Shlomo Vesertile kept the magnets he had on the refrigerator, commercials to businesses that have been wiped out: an appliance repairman who also does plumbing; a plant nursery and gift shop (open on Friday!); a Torah scribe (will come to clients' homes to check their mezuzot) and many more.

The community of Gush Katif was a miracle. It grew on a strip of land where thousands of mortars fell to great clamor, yet almost without hurting a soul. A heavenly dome of iron had protected it. A place where green leaves grow out of seas of sand until it becomes a mighty agricultural center, must have a guardian angel watching over it. Such a remote location, which in a few short years fills up with schools and places of Torah study, with cowsheds and kindergartens and factories, cannot develop without divine supervision.

Gush Katif's quick uprooting had also defied logic. Human language does not possess the ability to describe the destruction of 26 communities within five days.

Seven years after disengagement: Closing a dark chapter

Zuri Genish..
Israel Opinion..
22 July '12..

Seven years seem like a day. Gush Katif remains in our memories and hearts, but for those expelled it touches their pockets and is on their tables as well.

As Jews around the world gather this month to mourn the destruction of the Temple and our historical dispersion as a people, we are bound also to remember the bitterest Jewish tragedy of the last decade – a modern-day willfully imposed exodus which continues to plague us until this very day.

Seven years ago, I was forced out of my home together with 8,600 fellow residents of Gush Katif – the "disengagement."

The evictors were not a foreign army or some anti-Semitic despot, but our own democratically elected Israeli government, led by many of the very same individuals who had earlier encouraged us to take up residence in that tiny strip of land along the sparkling blue Mediterranean coast.

Although this act was fiercely debated within Israeli society, today there is a widespread feeling across the Israeli political spectrum that disengagement from Gaza was a complete and utter failure of leadership and strategic thinking.

The most obvious proof of its failure is that once peaceful townships of Jewish families are today launching pads of terror for thousands of missiles, rockets and mortars raining down on Israeli communities.

Arens - The Palestinian state and its Jewish refugees

Moshe Arens
Haaretz
20 September '11

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-palestinian-state-and-its-jewish-refugees-1.385447

Ariel Sharon carried out such an ethnic cleansing operation in the large Jewish settlement bloc in Gush Katif, using the Israel Defense Forces to forcibly uproot 8,000 Jewish residents and farmers from their lands.

Maen Areikat, the Palestine Liberation Organization's "ambassador" to the United States, announced last week that the Palestinian state, for which the PLO is requesting recognition by the United Nations, must be free of Jews. This presumably means that the areas that the PLO considers to be part of the Palestinian state will have to be cleared of all Jews residing there at the present time. In other words, the area must be ethnically cleansed.

Those nations who intend to vote for the admission of this Palestinian state to the UN, at the UN General Assembly or at the UN Security Council, will be voting for such an ethnic cleansing operation.

There may be some UN member states, among the Muslim nations, that are at present clean of any Jewish presence on their territory and intend to keep it that way. Adding a country to UN membership that is determined to rid itself of Jews and keep its territory free of Jews presumably presents no moral problem for them when the time comes to vote - and may even be a welcome addition to their "club."

But, what about the other UN member states? What about the countries of Europe who not so long ago, under German rule in World War II, were cleaned and sometimes helped to clean their countries of Jews? Does this vote not represent a moral dilemma for them? That will be interesting to watch.

That the Palestinians - whether those led by Mahmoud Abbas, who is submitting the application for membership at the UN, or those led by Hamas in Gaza, who are opposed to this application - do not want to see any Jews in their land is disgusting but not surprising. What is at first sight surprising is that they believe that such an expectation is actually realistic, that it is doable.

Have I Been Mistaken for a Head of Insect-free Lettuce?

Sara L. Shomron
Shilo Musings
14 September '10

Nowadays, 5 years after the Israeli government’s forceful removal of its citizens from their homes in Gush Katif and the destruction of their communities, we seldom read/hear of it referred to as an expulsion but as an "uprooting."

Why has a recent historical event documented by the mass media in all its ugliness, pain, and tears been sanitized and rewritten? I think the word uprooting serves to numb its distraught and tired population and their supporters. It suggests a state of denial of what happened in the summer of 2005. It confuses, bewilders, and reduces the expulsion to a botanical misfortune - and I am aghast.

I don’t consider the word choice to be a matter of semantics or euphemisms. It reflects a world outlook. The use of uprooting seems to desensitize the mind, soften the reprehensible event, and merely serve to pave the way for future expulsions in disputed parts of the Land of Israel. It exonerates the Israeli government of its crime against the Gush Katif residents in particular, and the Jewish nation in general.

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Requiem for Kfar Darom

Memory is a chain that weakens and kinks with every added link, or generation. In a few decades the legendary of a region is only its most stubborn opinions, right or wrong. The truth may have been crushed by accumulative errors.
– California historian William Lawton Wright, 1961


Sarah Honig
Another Tack
19 August '10

Kfar Darom was crushed five years ago – on August 18, 2005, to be exact. That day, its population of 400 – among them bereaved families of five Kfar Darom inhabitants murdered in terror attacks and others maimed in these same incidents (like the three Cohen family children whose legs were blown off while they were seated in their school bus) – were forcefully ejected from their homes.

The IDF later razed these homes to the ground. Kfar Darom’s synagogue was subsequently despoiled and demolished by gleeful Gazans. Physically, the community was ruthlessly crushed by the accumulative errors of the 2005 disengagement.

Kfar Darom’s truth was crushed by the accumulative error that callously defamed it as an “illegitimate settlement” on usurped Gazan land, one that Israel would be better off without. Stubborn opinion-molders imperiously perpetuate this narrative.

This was Kfar Darom’s third crushing. But the first two blows were dealt by enemies who were eventually, even if belatedly, repulsed. Twice Kfar Darom came back to life.

Sadly its chances of recovering from the third blow, the mercilessly fatal one inflicted by a seemingly friendly force, appear nil. With the passage of time and the addition of new links to the chain of history, memories of Kfar Darom are already fading from most Israeli minds, save those with the “most stubborn opinions.”

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The 'disengagement' disaster, five years on

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
18 August '10

FIVE YEARS AGO THIS WEEK, the Gaza Strip was forcibly purged of its Jews. In the largest non-combat operation in the history of the Israeli Defense Forces, 50,000 troops were deployed to expel some 9,000 residents and destroy the 21 pioneering communities in which some of them had lived for nearly four decades. (Four communities in northern Samaria on the West Bank were also evacuated.)

The name given to this expulsion by Israel's government, then headed by Ariel Sharon, was "disengagement." The name implied, and a majority of Israelis appeared to believe, that by totally withdrawing from Gaza they would no longer be trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with Gaza's hostile and sometimes violent Arabs.

"What will we have gained by destroying thriving communities, dividing Israeli society, and embittering some of our most idealistic citizens?" one thoughtful Israeli commentator, Yossi Klein Halevi, wrote at the time in The Jerusalem Post. "The most obvious . . . gain is what we will lose: We will be freeing ourselves from more than a million Palestinians."

Many Israelis -- and many supporters of Israel internationally -- bought this argument, persuaded, perhaps, by the Sharon government's sweeping vision of the blessings that would flow from so radical an act of ethnic self-cleansing. "It will be good for us and will be good for the Palestinians," forecast then-Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was to succeed Sharon a few months later. "It will bring more security, greater safety, much more prosperity, and a lot of joy for all the people that live in the Middle East." Olmert prayed that with disengagement, "a new morning of great hope will emerge in our part of the world," and that Israelis and Palestinians together would make the Middle East "what it was destined to be from the outset, a paradise for all the world."

Had any of this actually come to pass, the trauma and destruction of the Gaza expulsion might have been justifiable. In fact, disengagement was a staggering failure, a disaster in every respect. It was seen by most Palestinians not as a courageous act of goodwill and an invitation to peace, but as a retreat under fire, much like the Israeli flight from southern Lebanon five years earlier. It led therefore not to less terrorism but to more, as Palestinian militants vastly expanded their arsenal of rockets, guns, and explosives, and launched thousands of attacks over the border into Israel.

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The peace camp’s immunity

Op-ed: Why are ‘peace champions’ allowed to do anything without facing consequences?


Elyakim Haetzni
Israel Opinion/Ynet
16 August '10

We suffer from an inflation of commissions of inquiry, yet only in respect to military screw-ups. Peace failures and even peace crimes (including ones that ignited wars) are not investigated.

Perhaps this is so because probes look for guilty parties, yet under the banner of peace everything is allowed and no one bears any responsibility. And so, security officials are offered no protection from criticism, while “peace” provides immunity.

Who looked into the decision-making process ahead of the Oslo Accords, which were born in sin? Which forum permitted Netanyahu to hand over Hebron and others areas in Judea and Samaria, and to recently declare his endorsement of the “two-state solution,” in contradiction to the pledges made to his voters? Which official body did Barak consult before offering almost everything to Arafat in Camp David? And who authorized Ariel Sharon’s “Ranch Forum” to carry out the disengagement?

Indeed, while the victims of the Yom Kippur War horrified the nation, the “peace victims” had not been etched into our consciousness.

The direct talks with Ramallah that Israel may find itself in may nonetheless prompt an eventual commission of inquiry, should they (heaven forbid) produce an agreement, because of the grave consequences of such deal. For the benefit of such future probe, here is a simulation of some questions for the prime minister:

• You knew that an armed Palestinian force, since Oslo, shifted to terror. With your permission, General Dayton built a new Palestinian army, while predicting that this very same army will attack Israel in the future should a Palestinian state not be established. Why then did you sow the illusion of a “demilitarized state?”

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Rachel Saperstein: Five years after expulsion from Gush Katif,

Gush Katif Viewpoint 165:Five years after the expulsion. My speech at the OU Center, Jerusalem


by Rachel Saperstein
Neve Dekalim/Nitzan

My name is Rachel Saperstein. I am almost seventy years old. My husband and I have three children and twelve grandchildren. We lived in Jerusalem for close to thirty years, in Gush Katif for nearly nine years, and now we live in a plasterboard caravilla in the refugee camp of Nitzan between Ashdod and Ashkelon. During the Cast Lead war we were bombed by missiles coming in from Gaza. The missiles and rockets followed us from Gush Katif to Nitzan. There is no escape from enemy assault.

In the evening I take power walks. I also observe life in our refugee camp slum. Most of the gardens are overgrown with weeds. People are slowly moving away. It doesn't make sense to keep a garden growing. After people leave for their permanent homes up the hill, flat-bed trucks arrive. First, the red tiles on the roofs are removed. The caravilla is then cut in half, loaded on the trucks and taken somewhere. We don't know where. Perhaps to a new site being prepared for the next victims of expulsion. We do not know what plans Obama and Netanyahu have for the people of Judea and Samaria. What is certain is that these plasterboard structures will be used again.

I visit the construction site of the new "permanent" homes, especially when we go to the attaching-the-Mezuzah ceremony. We wish the new occupants well. We "ooh" and "aah" at the up-to-date shower stalls, the new kitchen, the lovely floor tiles. The occupants invariably admit they have used all their funds on the house. Some have taken bank loans to finish the house. Many of our friends are in their late fifties and sixties. They worry about how they will ever pay off the loans, much less how they will live from week to week on their meager salaries, if they are lucky enough to be working. There is a tragedy waiting to happen.

Some cannot build at all. They have been living on their compensation money as they have had no livelihood since the expulsion. Some of our people were renters in the private market in Neve Dekalim, and though they lived there for fifteen or twenty years are not entitled to any compensation at all. Some have lost their money to swindlers, some have lost their money in bad investments. Others see building here as the final nail in the coffin of hope - the hope that they will return to Gush Katif.

In one community families had built and moved into permanent homes. They breathed a sigh of relief. At long last each family had a proper home. But something strange happened. Their children, who as pre-teens had lived through the expulsion, went berserk. They began drinking, smoking, vandalizing public property. The professionals who were called in declared the children victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The children felt betrayed by their parents. By building elsewhere their parents had admitted they would never return to Gush Katif. This betrayal had brought on a violent reaction.

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