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Ten years to the ‘disengagement’ from Gaza: One reason to rejoice

[additional-authors]
August 6, 2015

We, the Jews, are a people used to expulsion and immigration. And we have a long memory. We were exiled from Jerusalem many years ago, as all Jews were reminded on Tisha BeAv. We were kicked out of Spain, and from Portugal, and from England, and within Russia into the so called “Pale of Settlements”, and from Arab and North African countries. Jews always had to flee, because of an order or because of hostile actions; they had to wander from town to town, from country to country, from continent to continent – because of what other nations did to them – powerless to resist decrees of eviction, powerless to insist on staying where they are. 

The Jews were not evicted from the Gaza Strip. They chose to leave it. Not all of them were satisfied with this choice; not everyone agreed that this was the right choice. But they did it following a decision made by their own government, in their own state, by their own military. The Jewish state chose to leave the Gaza strip.

Ten years after the summer of the “disengagement” from Gaza – a painful and tense time for Israel, an event from which not all Israelis have recovered – we have to be reminded of this simple reality. We have to be reminded of it when the country, Israel, busies itself reading articles, convening conventions, making speeches, debating that event. We have to be reminded of it amid a wave of how-were-we-so-wrong and how-did-we-not-understand questions.

Asking such questions is also an ancient Jewish tradition. In the context of the disengagement, they are often asked by the people who insist on calling the disengagement an expulsion. One writer calls it “the expulsion of Gush Katif's residents by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon”. Another one writes about “The destruction of those communities – and the expulsion of the 350,000 Jews”. They insist on using the Hebrew word “Geirush” – a forced expulsion – rather than “Pinuy” – an eviction. Geirush is a loaded term, a dark one, a term that associates the disengagement from Gaza with previous Jewish expulsions. It's a term that clouds the fact that Israel and its government are not foreign, hostile, Jews-hating powers – Israel and its government are us.

Three main arguments are raised these days as part of the organized mourning of the Gaza eviction. It is a mourning organized by one political camp – the right – to protest the past deeds of another camp – the supposed left (although the disengagement was supported at the time by Israel's majority).  

The first argument: the disengagement was a strategic mistake. It did not bring about more peace nor more security for Israel (or Palestinians for that matter, who now have to live under Hamas rule). This is an argument worthy of debate. Since Israel left the Gaza strip, it has had to fight three rounds against Hamas, and has gotten used to being rocketed and bombed by Gazans. Indeed – there is no quiet in and around Gaza. On the other hand, no one can guarantee that had Israel stayed there would be quiet. Maybe, maybe not. Whatever one believes, the government of Israel (not “the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon”) made the decision to evict. This is what governments are supposed to do – make decisions. At times, these will be good decisions; at other times, these will be bad decisions. In that regard, the disengagement is no different from the decision to go to war in Lebanon (twice), or the decision to implant settlements in the West Bank, or the decision to pull out of Sinai, or the decision to cut children's subsidies. The government is elected to decide, and the public has the right to disagree with its decisions, in real time, or after the fact.

The second argument raised on this ten year anniversary is that the disengagement was the result of deception, that the government lied to the public. This is not a new argument. You could hear it ten years ago, and, amazingly, you can still hear it today. It was a dangerous argument ten years ago and it is a dangerous argument today. It is also untrue. As I wrote at the time: “The opponents have made some good points, but their battle was argued and lost. The government approved Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan, and the Knesset approved it. The disengagement is legal, and there's no way around it”. 

Many people believe this second argument to be true because of the circumstances leading to the disengagement plan. They remember that we still do not exactly know why Ariel Sharon, just two years earlier a fierce opponent of disengagement, suddenly changed his mind. They remember the accusations that it might have had something to do with criminal investigations that came riskily close to him. They remember that Sharon, as he battled to execute his plan, flip-flopped and lied, manipulated and bulldozed his opponents. Sharon made promises and later ignored them. He acted like a bully. Prime Ministers do such things from time to time, when great actions are at stake, when controversial actions are questioned. When Prime Ministers succeed, we call these bold actions courage; when they fail, we describe them as trickery and fraud. 

But no matter what we think about the wisdom of the disengagement, denying its legitimacy is denying the rules of the democratic game. Because really, these rules are quite simple: mistakes, stupidity, blindness, are all allowed. Disrupting the democratic process is the one thing that is forbidden.

The third argument made by opponents of the disengagement ten years after concerns the evacuees. These people were not handled well by the government, the argument goes. Israel's bureaucracy failed to find proper solutions for them as they were forced to leave the place in which they built their lives. This argument has merit. It is a problem. Yet it is hardly the only case in which Israel's bureaucracy failed to find a proper solution for a problem. There was failure in handling the evacuees, as there is failure in building a subway in the Tel Aviv area, as there is failure in many other projects that the Israeli government needed to handle (it also handles many projects properly).

So the third argument is valid, but not unique. It is also more an excuse than the reason for which Israel's right busies itself with rehashing the lessons of the disengagement.

In fact, the main reason for this mournful anniversary of the “expulsion” ten years after Gaza is the slightly pathetic desire on the part of the opponents of the disengagement to finally be recognized as the winning side of the pre-disengagement debate. They want the proponents to admit that they were wrong, they want to enjoy the sweet taste of victimhood and the sweet revenge of I-told-you-so (of course, the other side would never give them that).

It is a dynamic of public affairs that we know quite well, and is typical of Israel and of many other countries. Who was right and who was wrong when Menachem Begin decided to take out the Iraqi nuclear reactor? Who was right and who was wrong when Prime Minister Rabin decided to sign the Oslo Accords? Who was right and who was wrong when Prime Minister Ben Gurion decided to fire at the Altalena? Who was right and who was wrong when he also decided to exempt Haredi men from military service? Who was right and who was wrong when Israel's recent Basic Laws were added to the books? Who was right and who was wrong when an agreement was reached in Kedumim, the first achievement of the settlement movement? We are used to debating these matters, we are used to crying over these decisions of the past. The right cries, and the left cries; at times the government is to blame for deeds or misdeeds, and at times it is the people that need to learn a lesson. 

There is very little that we gain from these debates. There is very little that Israel gains from having them. Debates about the past are important, but thinking clearly about the future is more important. Understanding past decisions and their outcomes is important, but crying over things that are no longer changeable is often a waste of good energy.

Yes, that is the bottom line. In Gaza we have an unchangeable situation: Israel is not going back to Gaza and definitely not going back to building settlements in Gaza. Israel was established to save the Jews the need to mourn their evacuations by other people and save them the need to dream about going back to their own ruined places. We are already back.

So yes, we can have a debate on the wisdom of the disengagement. And yes, today it hardly seems like a wise decision. But rather than mourn an “expulsion”, we should rejoice in the fact that if the disengagement was a mistake, it was our mistake. We were not driven out. We took our fate in our own hands.

A shorter and slightly different version of this article appeared in Hebrew in Maariv Daily.

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