Prof. Aryeh Eldad: We fell asleep at the wheel because we believed that bribing Hamas would make it forget the desire to kill us. Israeli military rule in Gaza is vital.
Former Member of Knesset Prof. Aryeh Eldad, former chief medical officer, also participated in the series of Zoom meetings led by the Sovereignty Movement on the events of the Iron Swords War.
As someone who is careful to claim that in the world of politics, just as in the medical world, without the correct diagnosis of the illness, we will not arrive at a cure, Prof. Eldad relates to the illness that led Israel to the events of the massacre by Hamas terrorists in the towns of the Gaza envelope as well as what is necessary to cure it now.
“The illness is a chronic one, where Israel aspires, as much as possible, to be a normal country like any other, while it was established in a way that is not normal. The Zionist Movement is an atypical national liberation movement and the history of the People of Israel is not normal history compared to the histories of other peoples in the world, so the very aspiration for complete normalcy is contrary to the basis upon which the State of Israel was founded”, begins Prof. Eldad.
In his opinion, the normal aspiration for normalcy erodes vital Israeli resilience, in the face of the threats that surround Israel and are within it as well. “When the aspiration for normalization found the right time to go into hibernation, we were on the brink of coma. that is, if we convince ourselves that our policy is correct and if we bribe Hamas with money and employment for the Gazans, they will be relaxed and not want to kill us, then we have fallen asleep at the wheel. There is an attempt by the decision makers in the political sphere and the security sphere to present victories; look – we shot down a hundred rockets and now they are deterred, and we didn’t understand that they are not deterred or anything else. They still intend to destroy the State of Israel and they are waiting for the right time, which is now. For various reasons, they have understood that Israel is fragmented and divided and perhaps not all the reserves will come so now is the time to attack us, and they have found us asleep at the wheel, both the leadership and the military and the home guard.”
Eldad returned to the example of a person with a chronic illness, noting that sometimes ironically, an electric shock can wake up someone who is critical, and indeed, on Simhat Torah, we, as a nation, were hit by an electric shock that woke us and now, the body has awakened to new life and it is collecting the fragments of courageous heroism and wisdom, and now we are united in the understanding that it is either us or them, consequently there is no choice but to eliminate the terrorists in Gaza.
As he speaks, Prof. Eldad emphasizes that the term “terrorists” refers not only to those who carry rifles, since, as we saw on the morning of Simhat Torah, there were not only those who carried Kalashnikovs, there were also those who came with axes and hoes in order to slaughter and murder and pillage. This understanding, Eldad believes, is applied by the IDF de facto when it launches bombs on a building to eliminate a Hamas terrorist and it does not check exactly who his neighbors are.
Regarding the "day after", Eldad believes that there is reason for concern in light of the understanding that there is a price tag for American support and it will be a heavy and dangerous price, since the Americans are interested in seeing Abu Mazen or his successor rule Gaza after Hamas is eliminated and then the two-state plan will be placed on the table. “Of course, we must be very careful about this”, he says, adding his opinion that the Israeli elite understands and has internalized that the PA is the problem and not the solution.
Relating to the civil population in Gaza, Prof. Eldad says that if it was only up to Israel, it would be proper to promote the plan to settle them in Sinai, but it seems that the Egyptians object to this, despite the fact that a number of years ago, there was a window of opportunity that allowed this even from their point of view, and it was only Israeli opposition that led them to oppose this plan. Because of this, Eldad finds it difficult to see the implementation of the emigration plan to empty the Strip, even if the Gazans were given the possibility to leave as part of the humanitarian solution that is now required. In this situation Eldad views the model of Judea and Samaria as one that can be implemented in the Gaza Strip, that is, full freedom of action for the IDF in the Gaza Strip, which will enable Israeli control over the height of the flames and prevent the establishment of a terror kingdom threatening the entire State of Israel.
Later in his remarks, Prof. Eldad was asked about Haim Ramon’s accusations of the Right for strengthening Hamas at the expense of the PA in an attempt to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. Eldad agrees that Netanyahu did believe that the split between Gaza and Juda and Samaria was good for Israel and prevented the implementation of the two-state plan. “He was sure that he would succeed in bringing about this separation without being harmed. He just forgot that Hamas has a plan and a covenant of its own and they have not forgotten it, contrary to our Jews who have forgotten what the Arabs intend”, says Eldad, defining as vain, plans to strengthen Hamas with budgets, employment and development projects in an attempt to be a normal people.
As a result, Eldad agrees that Netanyahu did indeed strengthen Hamas, but in his opinion, he did not weaken the PA enough, and it did not bother him that the PA reinforces the terror emanating from there, in order to continue “feeding the lie told by the heads of our security system, from end to end, who explain why it is so important and how the PA is fighting terror. This is all a lie.”
In Prof. Eldad’s opinion, Netanyahu is not interested in turning Judea and Samaria into a sovereign part of the State of Israel, so he did not weaken the PA enough; therefore, he also did not promote the Trump plan, because of its weaknesses.
“Israel”, says Eldad, “could totally have applied sovereignty on the seventh day of the Six Day War and the fact we left the territory in a formal state of military occupation, which the Left calls ‘occupation’ and we call ‘military rule’, contrary to what we did in Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, is what allowed Oslo to happen. Failures resulted from this vacuum and those failures demanded a solution, and instead of the solution being sovereignty, the solution was that we would establish for them an authority cum state, so that they would be there and we would be here, but Oslo was not created in a vacuum. When we accuse the architects of Oslo, it is because they recognized Arafat and his murderers, but in principle, the State of Israel should have recognized the significance of the Six Day War and applied sovereignty over the entire Land of Israel.”
Regarding the future of the Strip, Eldad believes that it is indeed proper to take steps toward forming Jewish communities, but in the present period, such steps of forming communities are carried out by the state, and as of now, it does not seem as if the government is leading in this direction. As part of his remarks, he mentions the repeated warnings that were issued before the uprooting and expulsion from the Gaza Strip, that it was this disastrous step that brought about the shooting of rockets and missiles, but these warnings were met with disdain and contempt and above all, there was a lack of understanding of the fact that Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip and the military presence that this entailed, prevents slaughter in the communities of the Gaza envelope.
According to Eldad, in the situation where Israel cannot execute a relocation of all the Arabs of the Gaza Strip, it will not be possible to defeat Hamas, since even if Israel manages to eliminate fifty thousand armed terrorists, it will not be possible to overcome two million murderers who live in that same cell of territory, who will act in every possible way to harm our forces even in the days after the war, as it was in south Lebanon. In such a situation, “We will have to shed such an amount of blood that Israel will not be able to withstand it”, says Prof. Eldad, who believes that “We must rule with the same model of Nablus and Jenin and not East Jerusalem. The process that we have carried out in this area since Oslo, when we talked about Gaza and Jericho first and we did not turn the wheel back, makes it impossible at this time for us to enforce a municipal control over Gaza”.
Full military rule in the Gaza Strip, he believes, can allow us to restore the communities of the Gaza envelope to their place and remove from them the threat of terror from Gaza.