INTO THE FRAY: Much to worry about

By Martin Sherman

For decades leading up to the atrocities of October 23, the top echelons of the Israeli leadership have wildly misjudged the realities that prevailed in Gaza

Looking back over the last several decades, citizens of Israel will find much reason for grave concern over the aptitude of the country’s leadership. Indeed, almost all of those who held- and some who still hold—senior positions of national responsibility have raised ideas, which have either precipitated trauma and tragedy or, by mere good fortune, have not done so.

Dangers disdainfully dismissed

Leading this dismal parade of monumental folly is the dubious duo of Nobel laureates Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, under whose stewardship, the calamitous Oslo Accords were ushered in. Disdainfully dismissive of the clarion calls for caution that warned shrilly of the impending disaster that the Accords would precipitate, they pressed on regardless, wreaking tragedy and trauma on Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs alike. Indeed, the ill-conceived Accords that they promoted brought about the absolute antithesis of the peace they were purported to herald.

The gross misjudgment reflected in the Oslo process is clearly manifested in the attitude of the leadership towards Gaza. Thus, in a 1995 radio interview, Itzhak Rabin scornfully scoffed at the possibility of rockets being fired from Gaza, jeering at the opponents of the Gaza pullout: “The nightmare stories…are well known. After all, they promised Katyusha rockets from Gaza as well. For a year, Gaza has been largely under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. There has not been a single Katyusha rocket. Nor will there be any Katyushas.”

Clearly, the thousands of missiles and rockets that rained down on Israeli cities, villages, and other agricultural communities since his disdainful dismissal of the prospective dangers make a mockery of his foolhardy prognosis.

As if in an alternative universe…

Ariel Sharon, the father of Israel’s unilateral Disengagement from Gaza, displayed a similar inability to gauge the course of future events. Addressing the Knesset (October 25, 2004), almost a year before the Disengagement took place, he declared:  “I am firmly convinced and truly believe that this Disengagement… will be appreciated by those near and far, reduce animosity, break through boycotts and sieges and advance us along the path of peace with the Palestinians and our other neighbors.”

Subsequent events underscore beyond any shadow of doubt how hopelessly misconceived this naively optimistic appraisal was.

Sadly, the disconnect between policy proposals by Israeli leadership and reality persisted long after the Disengagement was implemented/perpetrated and even after Gaza fell into the hands of Hamas, which, in 2007, violently wrested control of the enclave from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.

Thus, in February 2017, then Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman proposed an initiative for transforming Gaza “into the Singapore of the Middle East,” which included building a seaport and an airport and creating an industrial zone that would help produce 40,000 jobs in the strip, if Hamas would agree to demilitarization and to dismantling the tunnel and rocket systems it has built.

Unsurprisingly, Hamas’s response was quick to come. and was highly instructive. Indeed, it should have dispelled all illusions as to the efficacy of economic enhancement as a means to generate any impetus for peace. Thus, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas official, dismissed it derisively, sneering: “If we wanted to turn Gaza into Singapore, we would have done it ourselves. We do not need favors from anyone.”

Impervious to reason and experience

Liberman, however, was not the first to propose the folly of providing a port for Gaza. The same perilous and preposterous proposal was raised by incumbent Minister of Defense, Yisrael Katz, who, in 2011, as Transport Minister, first floated the inane idea. Imperious to both reason and experience, he persisted with the idea in 2016 and 2017—and astonishingly, even as late as 2024, well after the Hamas-perpetrated atrocities of October 7, 2023.

Of course, the rationale behind the prospect of a port is extremely difficult to decipher. After all, in times of stability, Gaza always had port facilities available to it—via the nearby Ashdod port. Indeed, Ashdod is closer to Gaza than almost all Israeli towns, with less than 25 miles (40 km.) between them. On the other hand, in times of instability/conflict, why would anyone want to allow Hamas a port for the unhindered importation of war-related materiel to undergird their aggression?

Accordingly, the idea of a port for Gaza is not only utterly irrational from an Israeli perspective in terms of its security implications, but it will also induce serious ecological damage in Israel, resulting in severe erosions of Israel’s beachfronts and coastal cliffs by defecting northbound deposits of sand that preserve these sites (For a detailed explanation – see here)

Intellectual flotsam

For the Israeli public, the persistent misreading of the situation in Gaza, stretching over at least three decades, by so many of the nation’s senior leadership, should be a matter of profound concern. After all, their policy proposals have proved to be poorly thought through and no more than intellectual “flotsam” swept along by a torrent of false axioms and misconceived politically correct assumptions—rather than any astute grasp of the realities confronting the country and the challenges it must overcome.

One can only hope that the traumatic and tragic events of the last two years will rip away the distortive veil that seems to have blurred the vision of Israeli policy makers, and permit more sober, clear-eyed strategies to chart the future course of the nation.

Dr. Martin Sherman spent seven years in operational capacities in the Israeli defense establishment. He’s the founder of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a member of the Habithonistim-Israel Defense & Security Forum (IDSF) research team, and a participant in the Israel Victory Project.