Hebrew press| If Israel loves life, not death, it must change the course of its relationship with the Palestinians

Jonathan Mandel

4 billion shekels were invested by Israel in the underground obstacle project that surrounds the Gaza Strip, from Kerem Shalom in the south to the Zikim area in the north. The construction work took 3 and a half years, during which the state invested in building the most important and largest engineering projects in its history, and in order to implement it, 6 cement factories were built along the border. More than two million cubic meters of cement were poured dozens of meters deep into the ground, reaching groundwater, in quantities sufficient to “pave a road from Israel to Bulgaria,” according to the Ministry of Defense.

Construction of the underground obstacle began at the end of 2017, in order to thwart Hamas' attack tunnels. In July 2014, Hamas used attack tunnels in the area of Kibbutz Sufa. According to the army’s message to the media at the time, “If it were not for the surveillance operation, we would have woken up to a killing campaign in the kibbutz, and there is no doubt that they are trying to carry out kidnappings.” Hamas's choice of tunnels resulted from Israel's success in preventing entry and exit from the Gaza Strip through two fences: "Fence A", which was erected after the Oslo Accords, and "Fence B", which was erected after the separation from Gaza, and another 6-metre-high fence, the work on which was completed with The underground obstacle in 2021.

These methods have been integrated into advanced “see and shoot” systems equipped with cameras and a machine gun that allows for remote shooting at the push of a button. Moreover, in 2019, Israel completed the construction of the sea barrier in the northern Gaza Strip. The goal of this project is to combat infiltration from the sea, and it included 3 layers - an underwater layer, another made of solid stones, and a third made of iron wire.

The obstacles that Israel placed around the Strip - on the ground, underground and under water - were accompanied by a defensive cover that it established against threats emanating from Gaza, from the air. The most famous is the Iron Dome system. Israel has invested a billion shekels in developing and producing systems, and the cost of each interception of these systems has reached 300 thousand shekels.

This system was not present in the winter of 2008 during Operation Cast Lead, but it has become very effective in all confrontations since then, especially in the fall of 2012 (“Pillar of Defense”), in the summer of 2014 (“Protective Edge”), and in the spring of 2019. (“Enclosed Garden”), in the fall of 2019 (“Black Belt”), in the spring of 2021 (“Keeper of the Walls”), in the summer of 2022 (“Dawn Breaking”), in the spring of 2023 (“House and Garden”), and in the current attack ("Iron Swords"). Another air threat that Israel has found a solution to is flaming balloons from the Gaza Strip. In February, a "Light Blade" system was put into use, according to the Israeli police, the first of its kind, which can detect a balloon in flight and hit it with a laser beam.

Until October 7, Israel succeeded in defending itself against the Gaza Strip. It continued to do so, performing hundreds of actions, detecting a threat from the sea, creating an obstacle, from land, establishing an obstacle, from the air, establishing an obstacle, and from under the ground, and establishing an obstacle. Within this logic, it imposed an ongoing siege for 16 years on 2.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

As part of this blockade, ships were prohibited from docking in Gaza or sailing from it, and there were no aircraft. The only way out by land was limited to humanitarian cases, goods, and a few thousand lucky workers, a group that did not constitute one percent of the total population in Gaza.

During the past 16 years, Israel waged military operations, one after the other, used a policy of assassinations, and specified which goods were allowed to be entered and which were forbidden to enter, so that the Gaza Strip would not starve. It was surprised every time that Gaza was described as an “open prison” (as David Cameron did, who was Prime Minister of Britain), or when someone claims that “life for children in Gaza is hell on earth” (United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres), or that “within years, Gaza will become unlivable” (United Nations report on the occupied Palestinian territories in 2017).

But whether out of punishing Hamas, or out of a desire to continue the policy of distinction between Gaza and the West Bank, and to maintain the division between Hamas and Fatah, and the political stalemate towards the Palestinians, Israel was never prepared to think about a new path regarding... With its strategy towards the sector.

Accordingly, the great blindness that led to October 7 is not due to the way Benjamin Netanyahu dealt with the specific warning that arrived from Egypt, or from the security system. The great blindness was in clinging to theory; And the need to maintain, year after year, the status quo of fragile and false “relative calm,” always on the brink of disaster, based on the belief that everything is fine, and that the interception systems, obstacles, and lasers will do their job, while next to Israel there is a human cage that is getting worse. . The one who promised the residents of the “Gaza envelope” empty hopes that their lives would be preserved thanks to millions of cubic meters of cement inside the ground, lied to them...

But Israel continued the siege on Gaza because it wanted to separate Gaza and the West Bank, and also because it really did not know what to do with Hamas. Israel preferred Hamas over other alternatives, and at the same time, it showed rigidity so as not to appear weak in confronting it, and preferred not to strengthen it directly.

At this time, Israel's relationship with the Palestinian Authority was similar. Israel did not want to appear weak in the face of Fatah, or directly strengthen the authority's power. Opposing negotiations with the Palestinians has been the policy of all recent Israeli governments, and it is what has led to political extremism and complete despair in the West Bank, and in Gaza as well.

The feeling of the Palestinians was (and still is) that no one takes them into account. Israel does whatever it wants, even in the holy sites of Jerusalem; It de facto annexes large parts of the West Bank, and forms a government with racist ministers who hate Arabs and call for the erasure of villages. Over the course of a decade and a half, many associations have emerged to encourage Jews to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Mosque itself... and the number of Jews who visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque every year has increased from 5,000 to approximately 50,000.

The Palestinians, whether in the West Bank or Gaza, saw how the Palestinian issue and all the basic issues (Jerusalem, the settlements, security, the state and refugees) began to dissipate in international public opinion, and how Israel succeeded in recording facts on the ground that conflict with the Palestinian national interest.

Palestinians also felt that the Arab world did not care about them, which led to a feeling of isolation and extremism. The leaders of Morocco, Bahrain and the Emirates, where the majority of people are sympathetic to the Palestinians, signed normalization agreements with Israel mediated by the American president who wanted to kill the Palestinian cause during his term, President Donald Trump, who moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, closed the Palestinian representation in Washington, and proposed the “deal of the century.” “Which is considered nothing less than a political joke, at the expense of the Palestinians. Recently, the Palestinians felt the ground shaking under their feet, when Saudi Arabia - custodian of the holy sites and regional leader - announced that “with every passing day, we are getting closer to normalization with Israel” (statement on September 20, 2023, two weeks before the events of “Black Saturday”). .

Hamas, as Adam Schatz pointed out in an article in LBR, had several motives for launching the attack against Israeli civilians and military targets on October 7. Among them is the desire to bring the siege of Gaza back into the international consciousness, thwart Israeli-Saudi normalization, gain popularity for the Palestinian struggle, challenge the rule of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, drag Israel into Gaza and try to subjugate it morally, and advance the liberation of Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas wanted to protest what was happening in the West Bank, settler violence and annexation as a fait accompli, and call for an end to changing the status quo in the holy sites in Jerusalem...

Although the attack against civilians and innocent women and children cannot be understood or explained, we must remember what is self-evident: the Hamas movement has become more extremist with the siege of Gaza. During the years of the siege, there was no political horizon, neither in the West Bank, nor in Gaza, neither for Fatah supporters, nor for Hamas supporters. In the last two decades, Israel has pushed forward the policy of distinguishing between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and during the 16 years of siege, the Gaza Strip’s general condition has deteriorated, including its health and psychological levels. In fact, it is very possible that whoever carried out the killing had never met an Israeli in his life, and most likely, he hates Israel and the Israelis with great hatred. It is also possible that this killing was his first in Israel. This is his first time leaving the Strip.

2.3 million Palestinians live in the Strip. 75% of them are refugees, and 50% of them are under the age of 18, and more than 8,000, according to figures from the Ministry of Health in Gaza, are mostly women and children, who were killed in the Israeli bombing, in response to the October 7 attack. In Israel, they want revenge on the Gazans. Taking revenge on them, and taking revenge on Hamas, as if Hamas were an organization with a beginning and an end, as if we had not taken revenge on Hamas over and over again, as if there was no open and bloody conflict, and we had not paid them a “heavy price” in the past...

Accordingly, if there is a promise to be made to those who lost what was most precious to them in Israel, especially the residents of the “Gaza envelope”, and also to all citizens of Israel who lost members of their families, friends and colleagues – it is not to continue pouring cement into the ground, And in producing more laser systems, but rather seeking a new status quo, stable, real, and looking forward to life. We must strive for a situation where the Palestinians do not think about digging an attack tunnel to Kibbutz Sufa, nor do they dream of launching flaming balloons in the direction of the Negev. This promise must be to reconsider the distorted policy that has been pursued in the West Bank since the outbreak of the second intifada, and in the Gaza Strip during the last 16 years. We must propose a political horizon and hope through a real willingness to settle on various issues with the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, or with a leadership that truly represents the Palestinian people, and based on the realization that Hamas will not disappear.

Israel must come down from the high and useless tree to which it has climbed. If it desires to live, and not to die, it must change and change the cylinder of its relationship with the Palestinian issue, and even the explanations that it will have to provide in the future: This change occurred, not because we “surrendered” to “Hamas,” but because for the first time, we choose life.