In the days of the terrorist manhunts – following the murder of the Arroyo family children in 1971 in Gaza – my commanding officer in Sayeret Rimon, Meir Dagan, told me: "Tomorrow you'll take two jeeps, load up some senior government officials and take them on a tour of the dunes."
In the morning we met representatives from the settler movement who came with engineers and city planners, all of them from Mapai (the precursor to the Labor party). There wasn't a right-winger among them. The most senior official explained: "Golda [Meir] and [Moshe] Dayan decided we're not leaving the Strip anymore," referencing the withdrawal from Gaza in 1957, after the Sinai War, and the withdrawal from Kfar Darom during the War of Independence in 1948.
"The way to keep the Strip this time is by renewing settlement, including Kfar Darom; that's what they think in the government," the official said.
Then the settlers came, and then the homes with the red roofs and the green, lush communities; and the children; the tiny mills and greenhouses dotting the landscape; and the large contingent of farmers, working with local laborers to make a living by turning those sandy dunes into fertile fields. And relations were neighborly. Women received their driver's licenses in Khan Younis and took their cars there to get fixed.
There was economic prosperity with shared services. The money stayed in the hands of the locals; the Israelis, laborers and merchants from Gaza. The state's coffers also benefited, unlike the current situation where money paid to foreign workers is taken out of the country. The municipalities were supervised by Israeli governors but were managed by the residents of Gaza. The streets were cleaner and the local police reported to the Israel Police. Instead of Hamas' brutal intelligence apparatus, the Israeli Shin Bet security agency used collaborators. Terrorists learned that terror came with a price and were sent to jail.
Government policy at the time wasn't guided by historical sentiment – specifically that Jews had almost always lived in Gaza – rather by security considerations. The doctrine of security through settlement came from the Zionist Left. The Mapainiks explained to us: Not all the Arabs hate us but most of them do. Therefore we cannot afford the luxury of relinquishing security control over the Gaza Strip. Any power vacuum will be filled by terrorist elements.
The terrorist attacks didn't start with the "occupation" after the Six-Day War in 1967. They began in 1948, after the War for Independence.
The IDF's combat doctrine at the time wasn't drafted by Brig. Gen. Ofer Winter, the controversial former commander of the Givati infantry brigade, but by officers from the Zionist Left who called Gaza "a living organ torn from the body of Israel … a fist extended against the country, a base for murderous terrorists, a constant threat against the chain of prospering communities, through continual threat and harassment, shelling and casualties; our southern border."
Eventually, under pressure from world powers and the United Nations, the IDF withdrew from Sinai and Gaza. In the days leading up to the Six-Day War, then-Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser expelled U.N. peacekeepers. Israel twice conquered the Strip. Every time it was given back to the enemy, it was used as a base for terrorist activity and to menace our communities. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
To understand the importance of security control over Gaza, look at the maps. An enclave 40 kilometers (25 miles) long and about 10 kilometers (6 miles) wide jutting into Israeli population centers – Ashkelon, Sderot and the surrounding agricultural communities – is currently ruled by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The late general and Labor Party leader Yigal Allon explained it in the following manner: "These communities are of utmost importance to the diplomatic future of Gaza because they split the Strip into north and south from Gaza City. Additionally, a Jewish presence in the heart of Gaza is of considerable security importance." What was true then is true now as well.
