Israel Matzav

Public mea culpas on the disengagement expulsion

The Council of Revenants of Judea and Samaria (known in Hebrew as Moetzet Yesha) has compiled a collection of mea culpas from public figures who now understand that the disengagement expulsion of all of the Jews of Gaza was a bad mistake. Here are some of the ones that were published by Arutz Sheva.

Maj.-Gen (ret.) Yiftah Ron-Tal, IDF ground forces commander at the time of the Disengagement: In the year preceding the Disengagement, the army trained mostly for dismantling communities, and that prevented it from preparedness for the war in Lebanon. The training for the Disengagement not only prevented preparedness for such a war, but dragged it away from the consensus as a people’s army. It is nearly certain that the excitement of those who led the decision and implementation of this is directly tied to the big failure in Lebanon…I still cannot understand how Israel gave up parts of its land willingly and with abandon, and how the residents connected to that land were turned into criminals, instead of raising their dedication as a banner of preserving the Jewish identity of the state of Israel.
- Kfar Chabad weekly, October 6, 2006

Ilana Dayan, Journalist, Host of Popular ‘Uvda’(Fact) Program on Channel 2: How come nobody is standing up and asking where this rain of Kassams is coming from? Why didn’t we ask the deep questions? Why didn’t we wonder whether this was the right way – even for those of us who wanted to divide the land? Why did we only examine the Disengagement when ‘orange’ youth burned tires in the street? Why did [Sharon confidant and Disengagement architect] Dov Weisglas not tell us there would be a rain of Kassams on Sderot? Because this wasn’t popular and because there was a strong prime minister [Ariel Sharon] with a firm hold on the central hubs of the media.
- address at B’nai Brith journalism prize ceremony, June 22, 2006

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, Chairman of the National Security Council and one of the Disengagement’s chief architects: There was no forward contemplation. The Disengagement contributed nothing to a solution to the conflict…There was no discussion of its merits. When I was tasked with planning it, all that existed was the word ‘Disengagement’ used by Sharon at the Herzliya Conference…I was given four months to plan, but Dov Weisglas was already committing to the Americans and leaking details of the withdrawal plans to the press…The paradigm of two states for two nations is not implementable. Perhaps the whole world agrees to it, but on the ground, it simply cannot be done.
- Haaretz, June 1, 2006

Avri Gilad, broadcaster and TV personality who supported Disengagement: I supported the Disengagement. I was mistaken. The way it was carried out was a crime.
-Maariv, January 23, 2007

From a practical perspective, pragmatic and seeing the situation for what it is – the orange public was right…Large segments of the public supported the plan out of general ideological reasons.
-Army Radio, HaMilah Acharona, June 26, 2006

Brig.-Gen. (Res.) Moshe Ya’alon, IDF Chief of Staff at the time the government decided to carry out the Disengagement: “There is no escaping the fact that the background leading to the decision was a political crisis – the decline in support for the prime minister, and added to that was a personal crisis – the investigations into corruption…Examining the Disengagement in hindsight opposite Israel’s interests, it was the worst possible…Israel withdrew from every millimeter, including evacuating settlements, received nothing in return, and thus created a very problematic precedent.”
- Maariv, February 24, 2006

Ron Ben Yishai, senior journalist for military affairs: The fact that they mixed the IDF up with the Disengagement, that the army was forced to do the job of the police, was a heavy blow to motivation. Not to mention that the IDF didn’t train for an entire year, during which it dealt only with evacuations. We have to put the IDF back in uniform.
- Army Radio, Ma Boer, February 14, 2007

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Yoel Marcus, left-wing commentator for Haaretz and ardent Disengagement supporter: To my great sorrow, it now seems that the extremist and pessimistic settlers were those who were right. The Palestinians do not wish to recognize Israel and have not accepted its existence. And now, with the election of Hamas, they again are not missing any opportunity to miss an opportunity…They turned the communities of Gush Katif into launch sites against residents of the Negev and particularly the town of Sderot. The warnings of Ariel Sharon and Dan Halutz that ‘If they will fire Kassams after Gaza is evacuated, Israel’s response will be harsh’ has not really frightened them.
-Haaretz, November 21, 2006

Hillel Halkin, Author and political commentator: Indeed, splitting the Likud was a bad thing. But so, it is necessary to say two years later, was disengagement. Those who were for it, like myself, were wrong. Those who were against it, like Mr. Netanyahu, were right...At great economic cost and at the price of a deep inner rift in Israeli society that still has not healed, 8,000 Jewish settlers were uprooted from their homes in return for supposed benefits, none of which has materialized. Gaza has become more, not less, of a military menace to Israel; Palestinian politics and the Palestinian street have become more, not less, radicalized; Israel's public image as an occupying country has not significantly improved in the world; and further unilateral disengagement in the West Bank as a possible way of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has turned out to be a chimera, in large measure because of the failure of what was supposed to be its Gazan first stage.
-New York Sun, May 29, 2007

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IDF Central Commander Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh: I claimed from the beginning that there was not [a single] security consideration in the Disengagement. This was a purely political decision whose motivations will perhaps someday be investigated.
- Maariv, April 19, 2007

Yair Lapid, popular TV personality and commentator: The Disengagement was not carried out despite the settlers but because of them. It never had anything to do with the Palestinians, with demographics, with a peace agreement, with the IDF or with any of the other explanations given and reviewed over and over. The drive was one thing: to teach the settlers a lesson in modesty. The Disengagement is now examined with other tools – political, strategic and demographic – and it doesn’t stand up to the test, especially while Kassams are falling on Sderot and Ashkelon.
- Yediot Acharonot, October 13, 2006

We left Lebanon and the Hizbullah attack us from Lebanon. We left Gaza and the terror groups attack us from Gaza. The region that is most quiet right now is Judea and Samaria. Even the biggest leftists are faced with the creeping heretical though: perhaps it wasn’t the occupation?
-Yediot Acharonot, column

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Senior TV newsanchor Dan Margalit, a strong supporter of Disengagement: Ehud Olmert has lost the mandate for a withdrawal from Judea and Samaria that he received when elected on the platform of such a withdrawal. When such a withdrawal is once again presented, I will think again before choosing it at the ballot box.
- Maariv, July 28, 2006

Maj.-Gen. Gershon HaCohen, who commanded the Disengagement and expressed his public agreement with it prior to implementation: What happened last year was a crime, and I was part of this crime against the Jewish nation. What is happening now – the Second Lebanon War – is the punishment for what happened last year.
- on visit to bereaved family, August 24, 2006

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:07 PM