Hamas, the ruling government of Gaza, and, de facto, the most popular movement in Judea and Samaria, is in trouble. The financial support they thought they would gain by linking up with the Palestinian Authority has not materialized. Their hoped-for hostage deal with Israel fell through when the kidnappers killed the hostages. Their smuggling tunnels have been blocked off. The Egyptians oppose them, and are poised to execute over 500 protesters who, if not Hamas members, are similar.
Once more Hamas is desperate for some way to change its bad luck. They don’t like Jews, and, considering that they don’t terribly value their own lives, they have little to lose at this point by attacking Israel. Thus, after a few years of keeping their bombing of the Israeli South to an “acceptable” level, they have just now begun once more to provoke Israel by bombing the Israeli South massively. Worse, for the first time, their bombing is being accompanied by large-scale unrest in Arab areas of Israel, itself. In a word, Israeli Arab citizens are openly aligning themselves with the Arabs of Judea and Samaria. Israel seems headed for war.
If a war comes, it will be the fourth war attributable to the ill-conceived Gaza Disengagement of 2005, following the Second Lebanon War, 2006; Cast Lead, 2009, and Pillar of Defense 2012.
Israelis are saying to themselves, “This has got to stop,” just they’re not sure how. If matters run the “natural” course they have run over the past eight years, Israel will send the army into Gaza for two or three weeks, kill some Hamas terrorists, arrest others, gather weapons caches, blow up houses, bomb some army bases, until Hamas agrees to a ceasefire, and then things will quiet down again for a while, until new terrorists replace the killed and captured ones. Hopefully, Israel will do all of this cautiously, as it has learned to do during the past several years, and our casualties, with G-d’s help, will be few. The international community will inevitably shout, “But you blew up two hospitals!” and Israel will respond, “Terrorists were hiding there! They used them as army bases,” etc., etc. ad nauseum.
Yet I, and many others in Israel, believe that there are other approaches Israel can take to stop the cycle. Ramban states in Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive Precepts Forgotten by Rambam, Mitzvah 4:
We were commanded to occupy the land G-d gave our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We must not abandon it to any other nation, or leave it desolate. G-d said, “Clear out the Land and live in it, since it is to you that I am giving the Land to occupy.” (Number 33:53-54)…. It is a positive precept for all time, and every single Jew is obligated in this, even during the exile.
Pit’chei Teshuva, note 6, on Even HaEzer 75, codifies this Ramban as law.
Time after time, the Israeli army goes into Gaza, which is part of the tribal portion of Judah, and then, after a while, it withdraws. The Arabs of Gaza know this is going to happen, they factor it into their considerations, and they are not deterred. They say to themselves when Israel is about to launch an offensive, “Come on in! Make our day! Get mired down in Gaza. Be the butt of international censure, and then leave. Our own popularity will skyrocket.”
But what if Israel went in and conquered, say, five square kilometers, and then stopped? What if they then announced, “We have liberated five square kilometres of the tribal portion of Judah, and we are annexing it, and placing a kibbutz on it that will raise insect-free lettuce, and we are going to call our new kibbutz, Kibbutz Naftali, after one of the three boys murdered in June, and we are never ever going to leave there? The next time a bomb falls, we may or may not liberate more.” How would the Arabs react to that? I think they would be more deterred by such actions than by their own deaths. I think they would think twice before hurling another bomb at Israel.
The same applies to other acts of building. Israel could have declared, and still can, that in response to the triple murder, it will annex Gush Etzion, or that it will build 30,000 homes in Judea and Samaria. Or, it could announce a new Jewish town where the bodies were found.
The Arab world has never been as weak and divided as it is now. President Obama is working against a pro-Israel Congress. Now is the time for Israel to take such steps. Why should we regularly kill our enemies when we can accomplish the same thing by educating them?
Here is an email written two days ago by a cousin’s cousin living in Kibbutz Alumim on the Gaza Border:
I’ve lived here for 29 years. Last night was one of the scariest nights of my life. Making soup in the kitchen, home alone, half an ear out for incoming attacks. I heard a launch and then the “Color Red” warning. I went to the safe room, quite nonchalantly, as in “yeah, okay, been-there-done-that.” Heard a whoosh/scream over my head (and I was in a sealed concrete safe room) and a helluva crump. The rocket had landed in my neighbor’s garden….
We residents of the Gaza border region have been through worse, but soon we will have had enough…. You learn to live with the fear. Last night close to midnight, one of my children came home from the army for Shabbat. He got a lift from a base in the deep south of the country. To Sderot. We had been told by the army to stay in our safe rooms. What could I do? I went to pick him up. Drove the 15-minute distance with windows open to minimize the chance of concussion and explosion in the car if something exploded near me. Radio off – to hear the “color red” announcement. Debated not wearing a seatbelt but decided to. Roads quite deserted. Drove fast but not madly so. Needed to be in control. Picked him up. Color Red in the middle but it fell where I had been five minutes before. Got home okay. Shaky but can’t show the kid that. Am I officially nuts or just a normal mother?
Going back to 1978/79, when Begin participated in autonomy talks at Camp David – and the Arabs realized for the first time that they might have a chance at political independence – the more “peace talks” we have held, the more we have conditioned our enemies to believe that our existence is a matter for debate. Only by making it clear to them that we have returned to the Land of Israel to stay can we restore our deterrence and treat the Torah’s laws with the respect that they deserve.
The 18-day period of searching for the three kidnapped teens, Naftali Frenkel, Eyal Yifrach, and Gilad Shaer, Hy”d, were days of unprecedented unity for the Jewish People, as Jews of all stripes prayed and showed concern for their welfare. Let us pray that that unity provides us with the strength and merit to withstand the difficult days ahead. I make this wish because I don’t see my suggestions being fulfilled in the near future. (But G-d is great. Who knows?)
Raphael Blumberg, the author of a book about Rabbi Boruch Milikowsky, has lived in Kiryat Arba, Israel for 30 years. He translates books there from Hebrew to English, and can be contacted at: rdb1000@actcom.net.il
