Recent news that the government has formed two teams to investigate what our options are for a post war Gaza is probably the most ill advised decision our leaders could have made. Not only does it suggest a lack of clear, decisive strategic thinking on their part about the need to annex the Strip and expel its resident pro-Hamas Arab population, but it also renders us vulnerable to pressure from the Americans to accommodate their criminally flawed plan to eventually turn the area over to the PA as part of their two state solution for ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. More troubling, is the very real possibility that such indecision on the part of the government runs the very real risk of undermining the morale of our soldiers, who are currently trying to destroy Hamas in costly urban combat. Unfortunately, the only organizations talking about withdrawing from Gaza the day after Hamas has been destroyed, are those that have been largely responsible for the tragedy that occurred on October 7. Unless this changes and other, more responsible advocates of annexation start mobilizing the nation to oppose the recreation of yet another terrorist statelet in Gaza, all our sacrifices we will have made ridding Gaza of Hamas-and other terrorist organizations, will have been in vain.
How anybody could even consider turning post war Gaza over to either the PA or an anti Semitic international organization like the UN is totally beyond me. Not only would that be just plain crazy, but it would also undermine our efforts to rehabilitate all our devastated communities, which are situated along the Gaza envelope. Haven’t they suffered enough? Don’t they deserve the right to return to their homes and businesses secure in the realization that the threat to their lives from Gaza has finally ended? Traumatized by the horrifying events of October 7, are we really expecting them to put their faith in yet another “concept” involving the use of supposedly impregnable security fences and border fortresses? Requiring the evacuees to place their trust yet again in an arrangement that is sure to fail, with all the horrible consequences that would entail, is beyond unreasonable - it’s just plain sadistic.
Apart from Washington’s subversive role in all of this, Egypt’s refusal to even consider establishing an internationally subsidized, temporary evacuation center in the Sinai for the Gaza evacuees or even a special city there both for them and other Palestinians in the region, represents more than Cairo’s fear of radical Islamists further destabilizing Sinai. The fact of the matter is that the Egyptians have a strategic interest in maintaining a terrorist threat to Israel’s south. Indeed, contrary to all the talk of President Sisi’s friendship for us, the Egyptian army, that he once commanded, still sees Israel as their most probable enemy in any future conflict. That’s why many of their war plans against Israel involve a rapid remilitarization of Sinai, while the IDF is split between containing a threat from Gaza and confronting Egypt’s American supplied armored forces deployed along our Negev frontier. And lest anyone think that this is a scenario I’ve invented, Egyptian military publications have not been shy about describing just such a war plan in alarming detail. So, if we want to remove Gaza as a future asset in Egypt’s war plan against us, we absolutely have to expel its current radicalized population and annex the area. The fact that Cairo, as economically distressed as it is, would turn down a $14 billion debt relief offer and a massive international aid package to temporarily accommodate their Gazan “brothers” should be all the evidence we need to appreciate how valuable they see a terrorist filled Gaza as both a dagger threatening the western flank of our Southern Command as well as a rocket launching pad that could threaten all of Israel. For this reason alone, then, we simply have to push Gaza’s Arab population across the border and let the Egyptians and their Gulf allies deal with them in any way they deem appropriate. We simply can’t accommodate the Egyptian army’s wish for a permanent
radicalized Gaza under any circumstances. Rather, we have to start basing our plans for Gaza on what best suits OUR strategic interests, not Egypt’s.
In light of our leadership’s seeming inability to forthrightly reject Washington’s incessant demand for the adoption of its two state delusion, as well as the government’s incomprehensible blindness with regard to Egypt’s future use of Gaza as a threat to our security, it may be time for our people to make their voices heard about the necessity of annexing Gaza. Whether this takes the form of pressure on the Knesset to prove its continued relevance or threats to individual parties to punish them at the next election if they don’t stop the government’s apparent plans to surrender Gaza, once again, to our enemies, our people have no other choice but to take the reins of power back from those who have so criminally mismanaged our lives. Granted, this will mean forcing a bunch of discredited political leaders to stand up to their American benefactors- but I think most Israelis would agree that it’s better to fight on our feet, putting our trust in HaShem and our brave soldiers, rather than to grovel before a questionable ally, whose intentions are as potentially dangerous as those of our enemies.