by Haggai Huberman, Israeli journalist and author, translated by Hillel Fendel.
The return of the corpse of Tzvi Feldman, of the 1982 Battle of Sultan Yaaqub, reminds us of the 1982 Peace for Galilee War – and the fateful decisions that followed it (1150 Freed Terrorists Led Directly to the First Intifada, the Founding of Hamas, and Untold Numbers of Deaths), and the critical importance of Jewish settlement.
The happy news of the return of the
remains of IDF soldier Tzvi Feldman, captured alive during a horrific 1982
battle with Syria that felled 33 soldiers, occurs very close to two important and
historic anniversaries: Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, and the
Jibril Deal in May 1985, in which 1,150 terrorists were released in exchange
for three captured Israeli soldiers.
Feldman was killed, apparently, shortly after his capture during the First
Lebanon War, also known as the Peace for Galilee War. This was a war that began
with fairly broad national consensus, in response to ongoing Lebanon-based PLO
attacks against Israel, including rocket fire, bombings, and infiltrations.
However, as the war dragged on and its strategic goals became vaguer, Israel's
government and military began to lose public confidence – and in fact, within a
year-plus, both then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin and then-Defense Minister
Ariel Sharon were out of their jobs.
This war was the first face-to-face clash between Israel and the PLO. One of
the indirect objectives of Operation Peace for Galilee was to mortally strike
the PLO, headed by Yasser Arafat, so as to strengthen Israel's hold in Judea
and Samaria, where the PLO sought Arab Palestinian sovereignty.
According to one school of thought, Sharon believed in an even more
far-reaching scenario: After a friendly Christian Maronite government would be
formed in Lebanon, headed by Bashir Jumayel, the Maronites would get the Arab
Palestinians in southern Lebanon to leave for Jordan – and this would hopefully
lead to a Palestinian state in Jordan. This would neutralize the primary
objection to Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria, which was that the
Palestinians had become a "people without a state."
In the early stages of the war, this plan seemed to be on the way to working
out. The PLO was expelled to far-off Tunisia, and Israel's friend Jumayel was
elected President of Lebanon. But then two things happened that changed the
course of history.
In September 1982, before Jumayel could even take office, he was murdered by
Syrian elements, thus throwing the entire plan off-course. Ten days earlier,
something even more significant happened, the grave consequences of which no
one could foresee: Eight Nachal Brigade soldiers were captured in southern
Lebanon. Six of them were released in November, in a relatively minor exchange
(mostly for prisoners held in a Lebanese jail).
But then came one of the State of Israel's worst decisions ever: the
agreement to release 1,150 terrorists in exchange for the two remaining captive
soldiers and one other, who were all being held by Ahmed Jibril's PFLP
terrorist organization. The third captive soldier was Chezi Shai, who had been
captured during the Sultan Yaaqub battle; three soldiers were declared missing from
that battle, including Zechariah Baumel, whose corpse was brought to Israel for
burial in 2019, Tzvi Feldman, mentioned above, and Yehuda Katz, not yet located
and still awaiting burial in Israel. May G-d avenge their blood.
I still remember the festivities in Gaza when the terrorists were freed. I
lived then in Netzarim – which was evacuated in the 2005 Disengagement Plan –
and the celebrations could be heard in our home. They certainly had what to
celebrate about, not only in terms of the quantity of terrorists, but also
their "quality." The freed murderers included such names as Kozo
Okamoto (a Japanese Red Army member involved in the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre
in which 26 people were murdered); Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, released after two years
of a 13-year sentence, who later founded and became the spiritual leader of
Hamas; Jibril Rajoub (not to be confused with Ahmed Jibril), sentenced to life
imprisonment; and numerous others, including many of those who later instigated
and led the First Intifada beginning in December 1987.
The front page of the next day's edition of Yediot Acharonot featured a
large photo of the ultimate Palestinian terrorist victory scene: released
murderers Suleiman al-Zaki and Ziyad abu-Ayn holding up their hands showing
V-for-victory. It is another such photo like this, giving great motivation to
the PA in its bid to destroy Israel, that we seek to avoid today.
Let us note another sad anniversary: This week marks 45 years since the
grave Palestinian terrorist murder of six young Jewish men near Beit Hadassah
in Hevron, on the first Sabbath night of May 1980. One of the murderers is now
serving as the mayor of Hebron, having been released in the notorious Jibril Deal.
An internal Shabak investigation found that close to two-thirds of
the Jibril Deal-released terrorists (as well as the 435 who were freed in the
2004 Tenenbaum deal) returned to active terrorism. The release of three Israeli
soldiers thus ultimately led to the loss of hundreds of Israeli lives.
The Compounded Mistake
At the time of the Jibril Deal, it was proposed to then-Defense
Minister Yitzchak Rabin to at least expel the released terrorists. But Rabin
felt that keeping them in Yesha (Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza in those
days) would enable Israel to keep a tighter watch over them. However, within 27
months, he was proven deathly wrong, when many of these very terrorists helped
instigate the Intifada. And it was that which led to the ill-fated Oslo
accords, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the withdrawal from
most of Hebron, and hundreds of Israeli deaths.
In the words of Zev Shiff and Ehud Yaari, in their book
"Intifada:"
"There is no longer any doubt that the freed terrorists of the
Jibril Deal played a central role in the intifada. According to authoritative
estimates, within just a year of their release, more than a third of them had renewed
their subversive activity in one way or another. Most of the rest [then] went
into activity almost immediately, with the outbreak of the first wave of
rioting… Jibril would later take pride, justifiably [from his standpoint - HF],
that this operation planted the seeds of the uprising." That is, within
just over two years, the Jibril Deal was the gasoline that fueled the engine of
the intifada.
The first intifada was that which created a nearly irreversible
situation in Yesha: The People of Israel, in large numbers, stayed away from parts of the Land of Israel.
Those who didn’t live there, just didn’t come. They became too afraid, and
distanced themselves from their Biblical homeland of Judea and Samaria: the
golden wheat fields of the Dotan Valley, the ruins of the biblical city of
Samaria (Sebastia), the beautiful Umm Tzafa Forest in the Binyamin region, the
majestic Herodion archaeological site, and the Tomb of the Patriarchs
(Machpelah Cave) in Hevron.
Judea and Samaria became the "Land of the Setters," and
hardly anyone other than them (certainly not delivery drivers!) came to see it.
This then led to a sense of estrangement from these areas, which
paved the way for a willingness to give them away in some kind of political
agreement. The result: the calamitous Oslo Accords of the 1990's, which removed
large areas of Yesha from Israeli control – precisely the opposite of the
original goals of the 1982 Lebanon War, as explained above.
If at least the freed terrorists of 1985 had been expelled, it is
likely that the tragic consequences of these events could have been avoided.
Only one thing stopped the stains of retreat and withdrawal that spread out over the map of Yesha: the Jewish settlement enterprise.