20 years after it withdrew from Gaza, Israel is set to remain caught in

Missed alternatives

Former Israeli main common Dan Harel, who was head of the nation’s Southern Command through the 2005 disengagement, remembers the toll of defending a couple of thousand settlers.

There have been a mean of 10 assaults per day in opposition to Israeli settlers and troopers, together with rockets, roadside bombs sufficiently big to destroy a tank, tunnels to assault Israeli troopers and army positions, and frequent gunfire.

“Bringing a faculty bus of children from one place to a different required a army escort,” mentioned Harel. “There wasn’t a future. Individuals paint it as how great it was there, however it wasn’t great.”

Harel says the choice to evacuate Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip was the best one, however that Israel missed essential alternatives.

Most egregious, he mentioned, was a unilateral withdrawal with out acquiring any concessions from the Palestinians in Gaza or from the Palestinian Authority.

He additionally sharply criticised Israel’s coverage of containment towards Hamas after the disengagement. There have been brief however damaging conflicts over time between the 2 sides, however in any other case the coverage gave Hamas “a chance to do no matter they needed”.

“We had such a blind spot with Hamas, we did not see them morph from a terror organisation into an organised army, with battalions and commanders and infrastructure,” he mentioned.

The 7 October 2023 assault, Israel’s largest army intelligence failure so far, was not a results of the disengagement, nonetheless, mentioned Harel. “The primary concern is what we did within the 18 years in between.”