Yair Lapid
Photo: Yoni Hamenachem
Stop blaming disengagement
Yair Lapid explains why our situation could have been much worse if it wasn’t for Gaza pullout
“It’s because of the disengagement,” they keep on saying in a well-orchestrated manner. “The disengagement led to this. Had it not been for the disengagement, we would not be facing this situation. We told you so. We said so, but you did not listen. The disengagement is at fault for everything.”
This chatter is so consistent that it appears to be a foregone conclusion, and everyone already knows that the disengagement failed, and there is no need to even debate this issue. However, there is a limit to how much we can confuse the facts and hope that people won’t remember.
After all, Hamas did not take power in Gaza because of the disengagement. Rather, it did so because of the American insistence to hold free elections. These elections would have been held regardless, even if Gush Katif still existed.
It is also not true to say that the Qassams are being fired at us because of the disengagement. The first Qassam was fired back in April 2001, four years before the pullout. In those four years – before disengagement! – more than 5,000 mortar shells and Qassams were fired at Israeli communities (more than 1,000 of them at Kfar Darom alone.) In that period, 149 people were killed, including 91 soldiers.
Yet following the disengagement, this number dropped sharply. Six people were killed in 2005, six were killed in 2006, five were killed in 2007, and 14 were killed in 2008 (including those killed during operation Warm Winter.) The heart breaks for each and every one of them, and they deserve more than to become false arguments at the service of political debate.
The Philadelphi Route tunnels existed before the disengagement as well and quite a few of them. And we certainly had terrorism around here before the pullout. Back then it was easier for the terrorists to reach every corner of the country, before we deployed along the border – on the outside – and blocked it.
So there is a possibility – and it is even a realistic one – that had it not been for the disengagement, our situation today would have been much worse. Just imagine what would happen if the IDF had to, in addition to launching Operation Cast Lead, guard thousands of Jewish residents who are not in Qassam range, but rather, in the range of a hand grenade. And who exactly would go into Gaza if we still had 11 battalions earmarked for Gush Katif security assignments?
Yet the critics don’t care, because they are not interested in the truth, but rather, in the opportunity to exploit the pain and sorrow over today’s victims in order to avert the next evacuation. And to that end, it is ok to lie, and to smear, and to come up with false arguments, as though the truth, and Zionism, can only be found on one side of the spectrum. Yet it is not.
