The nearly 700 rockets fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in early May were not just another round of the same mini-wars between Israel and Hamas that the world has grown accustomed to. Coming just weeks before U.S. President Donald Trump's "deal of the century" for Arab-Israeli peace is reportedly set to launch, the rockets offer 700 vivid affirmations why a Palestinian state must not be created.
The international community for years badgered Israel to leave Gaza. Israelis were told that if only "the occupation" ended, then Gazans would embrace peace. The presence of Israeli soldiers and Jewish communities in Gaza were the obstacles to peace and that once Israel withdrew, Palestinians in Gaza would no longer have a reason to attack Israel, they said. "If even a single missile were fired into Israel from Gaza," the Israeli army would be justified in reoccupying the area, they said.
At the time, many leading Israeli military experts warned that withdrawal was a dangerous scheme. They believed Gaza was a vital security belt for Israel's south and a buffer between Israel and an increasingly unstable Egypt. They argued that a Gaza under Palestinian control would become a breeding ground for Islamist terrorists and a gigantic storage depot for weapons to be used against Israel.
But eventually, the international pressure became unbearable. The constant browbeating by U.S. State Department officials, European Union envoys and columnists in The New York Times wore down Israel's political leaders. They decided to take a gamble. In 2005, with zero demands or preconditions, Israel withdrew all of its soldiers from Gaza and forcibly evicted all of the area's 10,000 Jewish residents from their homes.
For promoters of Israeli territorial concessions, Gaza was supposed to set the precedent they hoped would soon be repeated in Judea and Samaria.
Instead, Gaza has become the most graphic illustration of why relinquishing Judea and Samaria to the hostile and extremely corrupt Palestinian Authority is a dangerous idea.
Imagine how the actions of the Palestinians in Gaza would have looked had the terrorist military factions instead been West Bank Palestinians, acting from inside a Palestinian state in the West Bank.
Despite the pleasant-sounding turn of phrase, there is no such thing as a "demilitarized Palestinian state." An independent state controls its own borders. "Palestine" would be free to open its borders to truckload after truckload of Iranian weapons.
If Israel tried to intervene, it would be accused of violating Palestinian sovereignty, denounced at the U.N. and threatened with sanctions by the EU.
Now, about those 700 rockets: A Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria would mean that the border with Palestine would reach the outskirts of both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Those 700 rockets might have been aimed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City, the Knesset or at passenger planes landing at Ben-Gurion International Airport.
The terrorists and their rockets would quickly vanish behind the civilian shields of Palestinian orchards, tunnels and safe houses. The government of Palestine would declare that the attacks were "regrettable," but that they "cannot control every extremist element."
Palestine would continue to amass a huge arsenal of weapons – just as Hamas and Islamic Jihad have done in Gaza and just as Hezbollah has done in southern Lebanon – and Israel would be helpless to stop it without launching a preemptive war and inviting the wrath of the international community.
There are many other reasons to be opposed to the creation of a West Bank Palestinian state. There is the likelihood that a drastically shrunken Israel will be unable to prosper economically and have room for new immigrants, that its cities will become unbearably overcrowded and increasingly unlivable. There is also the tragedy for Jews being unable to visit Jewish biblical shrines such as the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem.
There is also the danger that the mass, forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Israelis from those territories could provoke an all-out civil conflict in Israel.
But for now, let us keep in mind that the national security of all of Israel is at stake. Those 700 rockets were the reminder we needed.
This article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
