During the Second Lebanon War, I served as a chaplain in an elite unit. Called up under Emergency Order 8, I reported to my base, where the liaison officer began printing my necessary documents. She worked with an old printer – the kind that produced pages with holes on both sides. After eight pages, the experienced officer said, "That's it," but the printer kept whirring. "I don't know what this is," she said. We curiously examined the final printed page. Written in three languages was: "The bearer of this document is clergy, and according to the Geneva Convention must not be harmed." At the bottom was an instruction: "Attach this page to your uniform." Though I'm generally a rule follower who tends to follow orders, I somehow ignored this directive and didn't attach the life-saving page to my shirt. I had a feeling Hezbollah wouldn't be too impressed by printed papers. And that's exactly how I feel about the current agreement with Lebanon.
Perhaps there was no choice; maybe the Biden administration is applying pressure, maybe there's something urgent that needs to be done in Iran, I don't know. But even if we had no choice but to sign a bad agreement, we shouldn't pretend it's good. It's too similar to how we ended the Second Lebanon War. That war ended with painful bitterness, but after a few years, people started saying that maybe it was actually successful: Look, we got several years of quiet.
Only this year did we learn that the quiet was like the silence between falling from a tower and hitting the ground. The long fall took several years, because our enemies have patience, and might have taken longer if Yahya Sinwar hadn't forced Hezbollah to show their cards. Either way, the UN resolution that ended the Second Lebanon War wasn't worth the paper it was written on – and neither are any of the resolutions and agreements in our region. Only facts on the ground convince enemies to abandon their efforts to destroy us.
Experience teaches, again and again and again, that there is only one way to prevent our enemies from murdering us: controlling territory. We fled Gaza – and Gaza came to murder us. We fled Lebanon in disgrace – and Lebanon pursued us. Reality shows there will be a security zone in northern Israel; the only question is whether it will be in southern Lebanon or northern Galilee. Why is it so hard for many Israelis to state this explicitly?
Anyone who talks about permanent control of enemy territory gets labeled as messianic. I'm not sure that's such a great insult since they would undoubtedly have labeled David Ben-Gurion under that category, too. What's interesting and important isn't the label but rather the mindset – the irrational and incomprehensible fear of the only proven way to deal with the murderousness of the new Nazis. Shimon Peres used to say Gaza would become the Hong Kong of the Middle East; instead, Gaza became the King Kong of hell. Wherever the IDF leaves, nightmare enters.
Why did the butchers come from Gaza and not from Judea and Samaria? What would have happened if the peace advocates' dreams had materialized and we had, God forbid, also fled from Tulkarm and Qalqilya? What would then have occurred, God forbid, in Kfar Saba, Netanya, and Tel Aviv? Two generations ago, David Broza sang: "It will be good; we just need to leave the territories." But every time we left territories, it was spectacularly bad. So why leave?
It seems to me that despite all the disappointments and all the wars, there are Israelis who still nurture hope for "resolving the conflict" and who refuse to accept the fact that there are problems in life that have no solution. Humanity hasn't yet found a cure for the common cold, so it would be hasty to expect it to find a cure for Arab antisemitism. Just as we live with many other problems, we'll need to live with this problem, too. But many find it difficult to accept this fact, and therefore, geographic mixing between Israelis and their enemies pricks both their eyes and their hearts.
Perhaps many object to permanent Israeli control in Gaza and southern Lebanon not just for supposedly realistic reasons, not just because of what it will do to them and what it will do to us, but no less for symbolic reasons: When we are mixed with our enemies it's impossible even to dream about a comprehensive solution to the conflict. Geographic separation, which marks some solid border on the map, provides an illusion of a solution, the beginning of a solution, or the beginning of the path to a solution. Erasing this border is a painful recognition of reality. It is a clear declaration that our problem with the Arabs cannot be solved in the foreseeable future. We can only live with this problem or, God forbid, die with it. Better to live than to die and, therefore, better to control territory than to flee. And if we have no choice and are forced to give up control, at least let's not pretend this abandonment is cause for celebration.
