Editorial: Gaza withdrawal could lead only to this

Issue of Jan. 9, 2009 / 13 Teves 5769

Without a doubt, the most galling, the most frustrating and the most tragic aspect of the Israeli operation in Gaza is that it should have been completely unnecessary.

It would be easy to say ‘only a fool’ couldn’t have predicted that a power vacuum in Gaza created by a unilateral Israeli withdrawal would lead to the defacto creation of Hamas-stan. But Ariel Sharon, still comatose in a hospital bed, was no fool. Foolhardy? His critics might say so. Over-confident? His critics would almost certainly buy that one. But a fool? Uh uh.

And yet.

And yet it remains painfully, glaringly obvious — and definitely not just with 20-20 hindsight — that withdrawing from Gaza without leaving behind a stable government was a recipe for disaster. Exactly the sort of disaster that the residents of Sderot and Ashdod and, more recently, Ashkelon and even Beersheva have been living with — and the sort of disaster that the widowed mother of Dvir Emanueloff a”h, the first Israeli solider killed in Gaza this week, must now face. Likewise for the families of those killed in friendly fire accidents on Monday and those of any casualties that follow.

We’re not inclined to rule out absolutely the concept of land for peace. Some may but it is our feeling that those who don’t live in Israel, vote and fight, when necessary, should keep their feelings about such matters to themselves. It is, frankly, none of our business.

So it is with no sense of absolutism at all that we observe, with several years safe remove from the original event, that the withdrawal from Gaza never should have happened — certainly not when and how that it did — and that the Israelis who lived in those beautiful communities of their own creation — with the powerful blessing of the government of Israel, let’s not forget — lost their homes and their familiar lives, for no good reason at all.

Moving forward — for what other choice is there? — we hope to see Israel pursue its apparent, if unstated, goal of crushing Hamas domination of Gaza, at least to the point where the daily weather report in Sderot no longer includes missiles, to paraphrase a thought from an excellent essay on page one.

To stop short of that goal, to withdraw from Gaza — again — before that job is complete, would represent nothing less than a waste of the lives that have already been lost.

Several Israelis have already paid the ultimate price in Gaza on account of the shortsightedness of their political leaders. May their families take comfort, however small it may be, in knowing that their sons gave their lives so that others might live in peace.