by Emanuel Shilo, editor of the Besheva weekly, translated by Hillel Fendel.
1. I first heard the word "containment" in a military-strategic context some 20 years ago. I took part in a tour organized for the religious media in the IDF's Gaza Division sector, whose headquarters in those days was near Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip.
Those were the days after the IDF's successful Operation Defensive Shield (March-April 2002), under the auspices of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. It came in response to the soaring rate of terrorist murders that had reached well over 100 in the first four weeks of March alone. During the offensive, our forces captured the six large PA cities, including Ramallah and Shechem, and regained the intelligence capabilities it had lost since the signing of the Oslo Accords.
We asked the Southern District Commanding Officer, Maj.-Gen. Dan Har'el, when would come the turn of Gaza to be "treated" to a similar operation to wipe out its burgeoning terrorist infrastructures.
Gen. Har'el said straight out: "It won't happen. Our policy in Gaza is different. It will be one of containment."
This meant, he explained, that we don't intervene in anything that happens on the other side of the symbolic border fence between the Jewish communities of Gush Katif and the rest of Gaza, which had been given over to PA control a decade earlier. "Even if we know about, or even see, a terrorist deployment, or acquiring weapons, or training," the general told us, "we will take no action. Only if they attempt to invade our territory will we fight back."
2. We didn't have to be great military experts to sense, as I and others there did, that this approach made no sense. A policy that enables terrorist organizations to strengthen themselves seemed dangerous and disastrous to us.
It was also far from the spirit of the Oslo Accords. These stipulated that whatever territory in Gaza, Judea and Samaria we hand over to Palestinian Authority rule would remain demilitarized, except for the weapons we agreed to provide the PA police. Hamas' acquisition of RPG's and other rockets that were launched at Gush Katif and Sderot were, of course, blatant violations of the agreement. In addition, the promise that the PLO would fight Hamas "without the [restrictions of the] Supreme Court and without [the protests of] B'Tselem," as then-Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin promised, never happened.
So why did the IDF initiate weeks of battle against the PLO in Ramallah and Jenin, but not in Khan Yunis and Gaza City? We didn't understand Gen. Harel's explanation, and in fact, he himself did not seem very convinced himself of the value of the "containment" policy.
After the fact, we now know that it was that policy that ultimately led to the deterioration of security inside and outside Gaza. It also served as a justification for Ariel Sharon's decision to destroy the Jewish presence in Gaza and unilaterally withdraw the IDF from the Strip; this was what he called the infamous Disengagement and what the nationalist camp called the Expulsion.
The ideological right-wing camp warned repeatedly that the Disengagement would turn Gaza into a greenhouse of terrorism, that the rockets on Sderot would become more powerful and frequent, and that they would soon hit Ashkelon and Tel Aviv as well. But the warnings were waved off and ignored; Israel's security establishment had fallen in love with the policy of containment, hiding behind fences, and closing eyes to Hamas' constantly increasing military capabilities.
Our leaders explained to us that if we totally quit Gaza and return to the pre-'67 borders, we would have complete legitimacy to respond to any attacks upon us. This of course was never true, in that because we retained control over the airspace, for understandable reasons, our enemies around the world claimed that we never actually left Gaza. But Israel's security establishment was convinced that leaving Gaza was a great idea, and that we could deter Gazan terrorism simply by bombing from the air and from our side of the border.
3. Soon, however, the failure of the conception of the Disengagement became too obvious to ignore. Just a half-year after the last IDF soldier left Gaza, the PA held parliamentary elections. Bragging that its terrorist activities and policies had gotten rid of the Jews, Hamas won a majority of seats in the PA legislature. Within a short time, Hamas and Fatah became embroiled in a cruel civil war; Hamas all but threw out Fatah, and Gaza became a political entity run by the Hamas terrorist organization and subjugated to its goals.
For Israel, this meant constant rocket attacks against the Jewish communities just outside of Gaza, and periodic attacks against further targets such as Ashkelon and Be'er Sheva. The assumption that Hamas could be deterred just by return fire was proven to be an illusion. The IDF was forced to periodically enter Gaza, show strong force in destroying Hamas capabilities, and then withdraw with the job only partially done.
The capture of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit from his tank on the border, and the fact that we were unable to reach and free him throughout more than five years, showed clearly how weak was our intelligence gathering capabilities in post-Disengagement Gaza.
Even when Gaza showed its prowess in firing its rockets even to Tel Aviv, Israel's government and military leaders still did not admit their error and come to the obvious conclusion: Gaza must be captured anew, cleaned of all rockets and of its terrorist government, and returned to Israeli control – if not administrative, then at least security.
Instead, we continued to entered a new routine of suffering more and more rocket firings as we rocket-proofed more and more towns and buildings – a reality that no other normal country would ever accept. Instead of smashing the enemy once and for all, we built "safe rooms" in every house, scattered concrete shields throughout southwestern Israel, and developed an entire Torah of warning systems, bomb-alert sirens, and charts and graphs showing how much time every child and adult needed – depending on place of residence and distance from Gaza – to run to protected spaces. We became a technological powerhouse in developing anti-missile systems at an insane cost, with great pride in the performance of Israeli technology's 'Iron Dome' system – while agreeing to absorb the damage caused by a certain inevitable rate of its misses.
4. We attempted to deal with the constantly intensifying tunnels threat in a similar manner: We paid billions to build some kind of barrier that was supposed to defend against feared attacks by hordes of terrorists, or even just dozens, streaming into Israel via the tunnels.
For these mistakes and lack of deterrence, we of course paid a very steep price, with great interest, 140 days ago, in the form of the worst catastrophe in the history of the State of Israel.
5. The same thing, most unfortunately, appears to be happening on our northern border. It started with the abrupt unilateral IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon by none other than then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak back in 2000. This time the beneficiary was Hizbullah, which proceeded to build up an incredible stockpile of missiles estimated at 150,000 (!).
And now, instead of the buffer zone in southern Lebanon that protected Israel for 18 years, we now have a different kind of buffer zone inside northern Israel: It is the zone from which its Israeli residents have been evacuated, for fear of Hizbullah missiles. No one yet knows when they will be able to return.
The nationalist camp earned for itself a reputation of always saying no: No to the Oslo Accords, no to the withdrawal from Lebanon, no to the Disengagement, no to the Gilad Shalit deal [which saw the freeing of over 1,000 terrorists in exchange for the soldier], and no to the conceptions that Hamas was deterred and that infinite periodic rounds of limited battle with Hamas would keep the terrorists at bay.
Now, with the threat of national elections looming, it would be totally absurd if the recent massacre would end up leading to the replacement of a right-wing government by, of all people, former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Ganz – who was always a full partner in formulating and implementing the containment strategy.
It is the ideological right-wing – which has proven to be correct in its analysis of the situation, and which speaks today of returning control of Gaza to our hands for the long-range, and which seeks to encourage Arab emigration from Gaza – that is clearly the most appropriate camp to navigate the correct path in the face of the security challenges that we will be forced to encounter in the coming years.