The Disengagement War

By Moshe Feiglin

10 Tevet 5769
Jan. '09

Two healthy and hope-arousing phenomena have become apparent in the Disengagement War being waged at the present. The first phenomenon is the all-pervasive unity and the basic will of the nation to fight for its life. The second phenomenon is the IDF's ability to learn from past mistakes and its generally good level of professionalism. The cries of the Jews expelled from Gush Katif - "Don't call me when you return to Gaza" - have dissipated. Israelis everywhere - expellees included - have put previous bitterness aside and are running to fight in Gaza.

It seems that the feeling of unity is stronger than all criticism - as justified as that criticism may be. The leaders sending our soldiers to fight in Gaza are the same cruel leaders who sealed their hearts to the pleas of the Gush Katif residents. They are the same leaders who brought the current catastrophe upon us. But for the average citizen - none of that matters. The average Israeli does not go to war to fight for Olmert. He goes to war to fight for his country. And that is very beautiful.

But here is where things get complicated. When everyone is running to fight in Gaza without looking back, all that I can do is to try to forget all the articles and analyses that I have written explaining why Israel should not enter Gaza, pray for the soldiers and civilians in the South and pray that maybe I am mistaken and that something good actually will come out of this war.

But only too quickly, my initial assumption is proven correct: If Israel cannot define a real goal for this war, it cannot win. All the IDF's professionalism and the arduous training with which the new Chief of Staff has equipped the army are ineffective if Israel's leaders cannot define the goal of the fighting. He who cannot define the goal cannot win. And if you can't win - it is best not to start fighting. And if you have started fighting nevertheless, you quickly find yourself entrenched in the heart of Gaza in the worst of all positions: You can't win; if you retreat you admit another defeat and a stalemate turns your soldiers into easy targets for kidnappers, suicide bombers and hate-filled murderers.

Why can't Israel define the goal of this war?

In the Sinai Campaign in 1956, the IDF took the city of Gaza by storm. In the battle orders distributed to the soldiers before their attack on Gaza, the following sentences were written:

"The will to win is the precondition for triumph."

"Gaza is a vital organ torn from the State of Israel."

"We will strike the enemy until he is defeated."

"Forward - to battle and triumph."

The person who wrote these words was well aware that all the encouragement and determination to eliminate the threat of the fedayoun (the Hamas of those days) would be worthless without the simple statement that Gaza is ours, "a vital organ torn from the State of Israel."

Gaza is an inseparable part of the Land of Israel. Our roots in Gaza run three thousand years deeper than our roots in Tel Aviv. Those who decide to fight in Gaza but do not intend to restore it to Israeli sovereignty, undermine their claim on Tel Aviv. If you are an American solider fighting to liberate Paris in the name of American values, that is fine and you can justifiably return to your homeland after you win. But if you are fighting for your own homeland, defeat the enemy and then give it up - you have admitted that the land was never yours in the first place and that the enemy's claim to the entire land is justified. If by your actions, you admit that the enemy is right, you will never have peace. Every retreat strengthens the enemy's claim on the entire land and sows the seeds of the next war. It arms the enemy with the most important of all weapons - the sense of justness and hope.

Whoever does not say that "Gaza is a vital organ torn from the State of Israel" cannot win and bring quiet to the residents of Israel's South. It seems that the leaders of the Labor party understood this concept when, after Gaza was recaptured for the second time in the miraculous Six Day War, they established Gush Katif.
Menachem Begin claimed that the Sinai was not part of the Land of Israel, thus justifying its surrender to the Egyptians. All the Grad rockets exploding in Ashdod and Ashkelon have Egyptian fingerprints. Those who supported the 'peace' agreement with Egypt can take credit for this achievement.

But the real turnabout came with the Oslo Accords. That agreement surrendered the heart of Israel to foreign sovereignty in exchange for 'peace.' We didn't get peace but what we learned in the Disengagement is that peace was never the goal. In the Disengagement we learned the hard way that Israel is besieged by powerful forces that seek to disengage from the Land of Israel at any price - even without peace. And as we see today - even at the price of war. They simply do not want the Land of Israel; certainly not its Jewish identity-laden Biblical tracts and the settlers whom they despise.

I call the current war the War of Disengagement because right now we are at the point where the soldiers of the IDF are giving their lives to establish the disengagement principle. Our brave soldiers march into battle with innocence and sanctity to defend their country. But their leaders have maneuvered them into a situation in which they are not fighting for their country, but rather for the ability to disengage from it and not suffer rockets in Tel Aviv.

And that is impossible.

The only possible option that we have now (until the day that we have leadership that believes that this is our Land) is to quickly exit Gaza and to heavily bomb any area from which rockets are launched. The problem, of course, is that Israel is beholden to the values system of the West. If we drop too many bombs on Gaza, our leaders will not be able to visit in London. But that is better than the senseless deaths of our brave soldiers in Gaza.