President Shimon Peres
President Shimon PeresIsrael News Photo: Flash 90

President Shimon Peres told American Jewish leaders Wednesday that the "Disengagement" from Gaza three and a half years ago was a mistake in the way it was executed. "I was for leaving Gaza. I feel myself as one of the persons mistaken," he confessed.

"Whatever will happen in the future, we shall not repeat the mistakes we made in leaving Gaza," the President told the Conference of Major Jewish Organizations. He explained that he backed the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif and northern Gaza because he wanted to "make sure that the State we have remains Jewish."

The expulsion has left thousands of former Gaza residents without permanent homes and without employment.



President Peres is another of many former sponsors of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Disengagement program to admit that its execution, if not the policy itself, was wrong. National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (Labor) has been one of the most prominent political leaders to admit that it should not have been carried out at all.

As Vice Prime Minister in 2005, Peres said immediately after the expulsion that "we never will return to Gaza." Since then, the IDF has been forced to enter several times to fight Hamas terrorists, and it recently led the massive three-week Operation Cast Lead counterterrorist offensive.

Since the expulsion of Jews and the withdrawal of the IDF more than three years ago, rocket attacks on southern Israel have increased, prompting President Peres to remark last year, "I did not imagine that we would leave Gaza and they would fire Kassams from there. I did not imagine that Hamas would show so strongly in the elections."



Following a Kassam attack last year that left 69 soldiers wounded, he wondered aloud to foreign diplomats, "It makes no sense why they would continue to shoot at us despite the fact that we disengaged."

He wrote in the Times of London several weeks days after the last Jews left Gaza, "Disengagement…demonstrates the moral decision we have taken not to turn our nation that escaped slavery in Ancient Egypt into a nation of masters in the Land of Israel. Disengagement reinforces the power of Israel’s moderates to make decisions, and exposes the true size and political power of the extreme Right."

The President, who still was in the government at the time, added that the expulsion and withdrawal took place "in line with our long-standing world view that calls for a resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians based on moral principles, mutual recognition and the establishment of two states."