Disengagement from Reality

As a former New Yorker living in Israel for the past thirty-seven years I am delighted that the internet allows me to read my favorite hometown paper every day. Permit me, then, to express my disappointment at “Sharon’s Setback” by Eric Fettmann, (New York Post, May 5th, 2004) a columnist I usually admire.

I live in Neve Dekalim, the largest of the 21 communities that make up the Gush Katif bloc of Jewish habitation in the Gaza Strip. Not one inch of the land on which our homes, farms and factories are built was taken from Arab residents. They were built on sand dunes which we, as foretold in the Bible, have transformed from desert into a small paradise. It would be bitter enough if our reward for steadfastness in the face of three and one-half years of unceasing and unrelenting Arab warfare would be expulsion for some greater benefit to the people and State of Israel. With heavy hearts we would accept the need for our sacrifice. But to be expelled in exchange for nothing? That is unbearable. Not one single benefit claimed by Mr. Sharon stands up to examination.

The plan is called a Disengagement Plan. Disengagement means separation. But according to the plan Israel continues to provide Gazan Arabs with food, water, electricity and fuel, and Gazan Arabs can continue to work within the Green Line and to ship their products for sale in Israel or transshipment abroad through Israeli ports. Clearly the only thing being separated are Jews from their land.

Mr. Sharon claims that leaving Gaza will increase Israel?s security. The late Yitzhak Rabin, no friend of “settlers”, stated that “If Gush Katif didn’t exist we would have to invent it”. He explained that the existence of Jewish communities in Gaza provided the reason for an Israel Defense Forces presence in the area, a presence that would keep Gazan Arabs from organizing large scale attacks on Jews within the Green Line.

If the Israel Navy radar base opposite my home is dismantled how will we know of arms smuggling by small ships? Unless we have developed a method of examining planes in flight, how will we prevent arms being flown in to the Dahaniya airport in Gaza? As to troops in the so-called Philadelphia Corridor separating Gaza and Egyptian Sinai, Mr. Sharon has already agreed to American requests that the IDF stay be of limited duration.

Mr. Sharon has stated that chaos will reign in Gaza, and that various Arab factions will be busy killing each other. Even if this doubtful proposition is accurate, for how long will such a situation continue? Two days, two weeks, two months? Following which they will return to their favorite activity of killing Jews.

Is our expulsion worth a short period of relative quiet?

Mr. Sharon states that the absence of Jews in Gaza will deprive Arabs of an excuse to attack. Since when have Arabs needed an excuse to attack Jews? Excuses aplenty are provided to the Western media hungry to justify Arab atrocities. But in the Arab media it is clear that the simple existence of Jews is justification for their extermination.

Perhaps Mr. Sharon’s greatest success has been in convincing people that he has won President Bush’s approval for his plan that will strengthen Israel’s hold over settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria. Certainly his supplicants were arriving in Washington with greater frequency than the F train arrives at the East Broadway station. [When I lived there it was the D train.] But even a cursory examination of the Bush letter indicates that other than a photo-op Mr. Sharon received nothing. The much-touted comment about no going back to the 1967 borders because of demographic facts on the ground covers the Jerusalem neighborhoods built since the Six-Day War. And nothing else. As Secretary of State Powell stated the day after publication of President Bush’s letter, “America’s Middle East policy has not changed”.?

As to the so-called “security wall that Sharon is building”, the wall may be solid but the security is a mirage. Though politicians view it as the Holy Grail, military people who haven’t metamorphosed into politicians view it as the Maginot Line. The large wall separating Gush Katif from Khan Yunis hasn’t prevented over 4000 mortars, missiles and rockets from being fired at us since Rosh Hashanah 2000. And just yesterday tunnels were discovered under the wall leading in to our community.

“Yet the plan”, Mr. Fettmann writes, ” surely has the support of a large majority of Israelis”. Might I remind him that a week before the Likud referendum polls gave Mr. Sharon a double-digit majority, yet he lost by 60%-40%. Israelis bought the Brooklyn Bridge when we agreed to the Oslo Accords. We’re not going to be suckered again. The average Israeli has twice the common sense of the politicians that lead us, and four times the common sense of our intellectual elite.

One last example of the absurdity of Mr. Sharon’s plan. Clause Five mandates that Israel will once again provide military training and arms for the “Palestinian Security Services” at a time when Sharon declares that there is no reliable Palestinian peace partner. Don’t Mr. Fettmann and his colleagues see the logical disconnect?

It is unfortunate that Mr. Fettmann and his colleagues have suspended their critical faculties and put their trust in Mr. Sharon. We prefer to put our trust in the Almighty.

Mr. Sharon’s so-called disengagement plan represents Jewish despair. The Israeli citizens of Judea, Samaria and Gaza represent Jewish optimism. And in Israel it is the dreamers, not the pragmatists, who are the realists.

(Moshe Saperstein lost an arm in the Yom Kippur War in defense of his country. In February 2002, despite being wounded in his other hand, he attempted to run down the terrorist who had just shot and killed a young mother driving in the car in front of him).