'Peace, Not Now:' Inside the shaping of Israeli policy - review

In the early years, the Lebanon withdrawal model was seen as a success, and there was a conception that it could be applied in the territories as well. In 2004, it was the Gaza Strip’s turn.

In December 2003, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon delivered a speech at the Herzliya Conference in which he warned against the folly of signing agreements that are not backed up by genuine change on the other side: “The opposite perception, according to which the very signing of a peace agreement will produce security out of thin air, has already been tried in the past and failed miserably. And such will be the fate of any other plan which promotes his concept. These plans deceive the public and create false hope. There will be no peace before the eradication of terror.”

Immediately following his speech, Sharon announced a plan that marked a 180-degree turn from the right-wing ideology he had long championed. The plan was formally launched in order to “reduce friction and tension between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Sharon stressed that this was a security measure, not a political one, but in practice it was agreed that the disengagement from the Gaza Strip would reach the 1950 armistice lines – with mutually agreed adjustments relative to the lines of 1949 – intending to grant them a quasi-border status.

The cabinet resolution on June 6, 2004, explicitly stated that “the completion of the plan will serve to dispel the claims regarding Israel’s responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip” – once again, the story of international legitimacy.

Israel uprooted settlements and cemeteries, withdrew its troops, and demolished the last remaining homes in the Strip. In several instances, synagogues were looted and set ablaze by Palestinian mobs immediately after the disengagement. Israel subsequently withdrew from the critical Philadelphi Corridor along the Egyptian border, with the clear aim of securing international legitimacy for its actions in defense of its sovereign territory. If the goal were truly to “reduce friction,” it would have been possible, for example, to leave the three settlements in the northern Strip – as they were not necessarily a security burden. And if the disengagement was a clear “security measure,” the army would have maintained a buffer zone to prevent attacks on the communities surrounding Gaza. Instead, as previously mentioned, we underwent a shift: from land-for-peace to land-for-legitimacy.

For that, a full, comprehensive, and absolute disengagement was required, in accordance with the precedent set by Menachem Begin.

At the time, I was the political advisor to Shimon Peres, who was then part of Sharon’s coalition. In that capacity, we held extensive discussions, and I participated in decisive debates regarding the disengagement. The issue of the border with Egypt illustrated the scope of deliberations. Sharon was determined to carry out a complete withdrawal so as not to leave the Palestinians any excuse to claim that Israel had failed to retreat from anything.

In Lebanon, there were the Shebaa Farms and Mount Dov, which Hezbollah claimed were Lebanese territory that Israel continued to occupy. Hezbollah used this claim to justify its actions against Israel. “We will not have another Shebaa,” Sharon said.

Peres took responsibility for the border issue with Egypt, and in that context, I participated in long and complex debates, down to the smallest details of border crossing procedures.

It was decided to establish a European force that would be stationed at the Rafah crossing and monitor the border.

We discussed the locations of the European, Palestinian, and Egyptian personnel, the method of surveillance using security cameras in Kerem Shalom, and even devoted meetings to discuss the size of suitcases that would pass through the crossing and the type of x-ray machines needed.

It is hard not to be struck by the enormous gap between the level of detail in these meetings and what actually happened when Hamas took control of the crossing within just a few months: the Europeans stationed there hurriedly packed their suitcases and fled to Ashkelon. The meticulously planned vision collapsed almost immediately.

The disengagement included two main components: the housing component and the economic component, primarily the issue of agricultural exports and the greenhouses.

Israel asked the Palestinian side whether the houses should be left intact; the response came quickly: “Don’t leave a single stacked stone.”

In hindsight, this was a clear indication that something was amiss—that the goal was destruction for the sake of destruction, instead of building a thriving society.

With regard to the greenhouses, Peres thought they could be leveraged as a catalyst for Gaza’s economic development and turn the area into a hub for strawberry exports. He did not merely talk about the “Singapore of the Middle East,” but outlined the plan in detail and worked tirelessly to implement it. He also brought on board James Wolfensohn, the then-president of the World Bank and the Quartet’s envoy to Gaza; Wolfensohn raised around $15 million from private donors and even contributed $500,000 of his own funds to the greenhouse initiative.

In practice, however, the initiative yielded very little: some of the greenhouses were indeed put to use, yet many were quickly abandoned – and the Gazan economy once again became dependent primarily on aid and international assistance.

The dream of economic peace collapsed, but were we at least able to secure legitimacy in exchange for land? There were moments when it seemed this had indeed worked. On April 14, 2004, US President George W. Bush sent a letter to Sharon following the disengagement, articulating policies that seemed to support Israeli interests – chief among them, recognition of the settlement blocs. In Israel, this letter was regarded as an essential diplomatic achievement and was mentioned as a significant advantage in both the government’s decision and the state’s response to the High Court of Justice.

The emphasis on international support continued: just three days after the last IDF soldiers left the Gaza Strip, on September 15, 2005, Ariel Sharon addressed the United Nations and was received as a determined leader of historic stature. There was a sense that Israel could now achieve peace from a position of power – a state defending itself within clear borders and armed with international legitimacy, and perhaps even finally able to attain security and tranquility.

Yet Israel quickly squandered the cards it had been dealt. It did not use Bush’s letter to solidify the settlement blocs with facts on the ground. It did not demand formal recognition from the UN for its new borders, nor did it set political conditions that could have been accepted – the removal of Gaza’s residents from the UNRWA refugee lists, for example.

Even Bush’s letter, in which Israel had placed so much hope, quickly proved to be a worthless card: the Obama administration renounced it early in its term.

The final nail in the letter’s coffin came on Christmas Eve 2016, when the UN Security Council adopted resolution 2334 – and the United States, for the first time in decades, refrained from vetoing it.

The resolution, which determined that Israel’s borders must be based on the 1967 lines and that the settlements were illegal, openly undermined Israel’s attempts to establish defensible borders, which are not the same as the armistice lines of 1949.

The global response was particularly severe.

In a further twist of absurdity, we went along with the lie: If we were no longer responsible for Gaza, why did we continue supplying it with electricity, water, equipment, and fresh bills from the Bank of Israel?