Oasis Plan's Historical Primer, (2/5)

Three days ago marked the second anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel through Gaza. The surprise attack began at 06:30 with a barrage of 2500 rockets fired into Israel to distract security forces from the ground assault on 22 separate locations which penetrated as many as 15 miles (24 kilometers) into Israel. By day’s end, 1500 Israelis (soldiers and civilians) had been killed and 251 captured as hostages. Two years later, 20 of those hostages are still alive in Hamas’ custody, 28 confirmed as deceased, with their families awaiting the remains.

The uproar against this attack was universal in Israel, and there was blame enough to go around. Citizens were furious that the Israeli security apparatus – supported by the world’s highest per capita defense budget – did not detect this well-coordinated attack and repel it sooner. In editorial after editorial across every Israeli news source, one historical topic kept surfacing: Disengagement from Gaza in 2005. To this one policy and watershed in Israel’s history from twenty years ago now, editorialists across the board attributed – reasonably or otherwise – Israel’s defenselessness against Hamas on October 7th, 2023.

The present article is the third in a septempartite series which presents Lyndon LaRouche’s Oasis Plan. The Oasis Plan seeks to end the Middle East’s conflict between Israel and its neighbors by incentivizing cooperation towards common goals amongst the regional countries. To contextualize the decisions now facing the statesmen as they evaluate the Plan, the pertinent regional history is recounted in five parts, of which this is the second. If you are already familiar with Middle Eastern history, then please feel free to skip to the final installment’s conclusion after reviewing the introduction.

Disengagement from Gaza (2005 – 2010)

As the Second Intifada’s violence raged on, Israel proposed in December 2003 that it withdraw from Gaza and evict its Israeli civilian settlements there by way of a policy called “Disengagement.” Israel would ease out of Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) would ease into it, provided that each side fulfill certain benchmarks as a showing of good faith. Far from a withdrawal out of surrender much less concern for Palestinian statehood, the Disengagement from Gaza sought a cynical objective. By disengaging from Gaza, Israel could indefinitely suspend all negotiations about Palestinian statehood, which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s director-general Dov Weisglas, Esq. likened to preserving a dead specimen in a jar of “formaldehyde.”

The United States and an international coalition had invaded Iraq in April 2003 and wanted to mollify Arab opinion about their intentions in the region, so behind the scenes the USA, the United Nations, European Union and Russia (what the literature calls the Quartet) assisted Israel and the PA in negotiations for Disengagement, as by pledging diplomatic support and earmarking funds. The principal parties of Israel and the PA were in almost daily communication and live meetings about different aspects of the pending Disengagement, yet both sides portrayed no such collaboration to their respective constituencies. The PA could not be seen by its base parlaying with its sworn nemesis Israel. For Israel’s part, it had to impress its hardliners that the withdrawal from Gaza was on its terms alone, which is why Israel publicly emphasized the term “unilateral Disengagement” (hitnatkut had-tzdadit in Hebrew).

In November of 2004, the PLO’s chair Yassir Arafat died and was succeeded by Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas was elected to the PA’s presidency in January 2005, yet his influence was promptly curtailed when rival group Hamas’ electoral wing won two-thirds of local councils in Gaza. In February 2005 at the Sharm el Sheikh Summit hosted by Egypt, Abbas called an end to the Second Intifada, but Hamas refused to honor the call for peace.

By September 2005, Israel executed the plan of Disengagement from Gaza. Around 9000 settlers were evicted – in some instances, very forcibly – and 21 settlements were bulldozed. Sizable Jewish communities like Gush Katif and Neve Dekalim were razed, and Israeli journalists were on the scene to televise the evictions’ trauma.

Due to the clandestine negotiations about Disengagement, to the perspective of the PA’s rivals like Hamas and PIJ, it appeared that the Second Intifada’s violence had induced Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. They celebrated Disengagement as their victory over Israel, oblivious to how Israel had just altered the conflict’s parameters. To Israel’s perspective, it had just removed all its citizens and assets from Gaza, which meant that international law no longer restrained Israel from treating Gaza as a hostile foreign nation when attacks against Israel were conducted therefrom.

Those attacks from Gaza commenced in earnest immediately after Disengagement in September 2005. Improvised Qassam rockets were fired over the border into Israel, hitting towns such as Ashkelon and the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) basic training camp at Zikim. Human Rights Watch reports 322 rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel between August 31st, 2005, and December 31st of that year. Israel retaliated with artillery barrages.

In January 2006, the geopolitical landscape changed in Gaza. A hemorrhagic stroke incapacitated Disengagement’s architect, Israeli premier Ariel Sharon on January 6th. Twenty days later, Hamas won a majority of the Palestinian parliament, which further sidelined Sharon’s negotiating counterpart, al-Fatah’s leader and PA President Mahmoud Abbas. With Hamas as the PA’s governing entity, its military wing was in a better position to conduct insurgency against Israel.

On June 25th, 2006, Gazan militants traversed a tunnel into Israel and ambushed an IDF checkpoint at Kerem Shalom. After a shootout which killed two militants and two Israel soldiers, the militants abducted Corporal Gilad Shalit, who had been wounded in the ambush. The PA’s security forces determined that the ambush was conducted by Hamas’ military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades and two groups called the Popular Resistance Committees and the Army of Islam. Israel’s response was Operation Summer Rains, a major incursion into Gaza from June 2006 to March 2007 by bulldozers, artillery strikes and infantry which demolished 279 homes and killed 425 Palestinians, including 85 children. Corporal Shalit was finally released over five years later in October 2011 by exchange of 1,027 captured Palestinians.

Starting June 7th, 2007, Hamas purged al-Fatah from Gaza in clashes which lasted about one week. Casualties numbered 125, including both combatants and bystanders as Hamas’ 5,000 militants bested al-Fatah’s 40,000.

The IDF’s Operation Summer Rains concluded, the tit-for-tat resumed right away with Gazan militants launching rockets and mortars fired into southern Israel as late as December 24th, 2008. This occasioned the next major Israeli response of Operation Cast Lead. On the morning of December 27th, 2008, F-16 fighter jets, Apache helicopters and naval barrages blitzed over 160 targets in a matter of minutes. The IDF shelled 47 Gazan police stations, which killed 248 active policemen, called shurta. Operation Cast Lead – which also featured incursion by IDF infantry – killed 1400 Palestinians overall, with one in six of these casualties being a shurta, which suggests a concerted attempt to destabilize the PA under Hamas’ control.

Though Israel could claim Operation Cast Lead as a tactical success at its conclusion on January 18th, 2009, Israel was losing the wider strategic war, especially in the international court of opinion. The humanitarian foundation Free Gaza dispatched two boats on successive relief missions to transport documented medical and economic provisions to Gaza. On December 30th, 2008, Israeli gunboats intercepted and critically rammed the 60-foot Dignity seventy-eight nautical miles outside Israel’s territorial and contiguous waters. On June 30th, 2009, the Israeli navy interdicted the Greek-flagged Spirit of Humanity in international waters nineteen miles off Gaza’s coast, during which IDF commandos at gunpoint forced the vessel to an Israeli port, only then to imprison the 21 persons aboard (both crew and journalist passengers) for “illegally entering Israel.”

The most damning evaluation rendered in this period was the UN Human Rights Council’s Goldstone Report, published on September 25th, 2009. This was an investigation into the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank, headed by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who in the International Criminal Tribunals had prosecuted the war crimes committed in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The commission sought to interview all available witnesses and participants to get both sides of the story, but Israel outright refused to participate. Nevertheless, the commission made two determinations. Firstly, both sides – the IDF and Palestinian militants – had committed war crimes in certain instances. Secondly and importantly, Israel still exerted sovereignty over Gaza despite Disengagement, as evinced by complete Israeli control over Gaza’s coastline, airspace, land ports, commerce, telecommunications, water, electricity, sewage and currency. (p. 49, ¶ 187)

Pillars and Edges after Goldstone (2010 – 2014)

Following the Goldstone Report, a pattern developed between Israel and Gaza. Life proceeded in Gaza with the Oslo Accord’s restrictions in place (e.g., limits to Gazan commercial fishing, land and sea ports closed to most personnel and freight, no air travel), until Hamas and other militants protested such conditions by attacking Israel. As damage mounted in Israel, the IDF would counter by campaigns of deterrence. Such campaigns were characterized as “mowing the grass.”

In March 2011, Hamas began attacks against Israel via improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and rockets. The ordnance varied from the crude and short-ranged Qassam rockets to the more sophisticated Fajr-5 rockets equipped with telemetry to reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Between November 11th - 13th, 2012, Gazan militants fired over 200 rockets into Israel. Hence, the IDF initiated a campaign of deterrence titled Operation Pillar of Defense on November 14th, 2012.

Operation Pillar of Defense started with Israel sending diplomatic messages to Hamas requesting a ceasefire. This lulled Hamas’ military commander Ahmed al-Jabari – believed to have coordinated Corporal Shalit’s abduction five years earlier – into thinking that Hamas’ rockets had brought Israel to the negotiating table. He shirked his usual security precautions and the Israeli Air Force (IAF) assassinated him in one of multiple targeted airstrikes in close succession. President Netanyahu mobilized 57,000 reservists, which put Hamas and Israel – expecting national elections in January 2013 – on notice that an infantry incursion of Gaza was imminent.

In the end, no ground incursion was ever ordered. “Shock and awe” airstrikes, artillery barrages and gunboats neutralized Hamas’ launch sites and network of tunnels. Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system was debuted, which successfully intercepted numerous enemy rockets in flight (¶ 9). Another innovation was the use of Twitter (now known as X), by which the IDF publicized the Operation’s details, sometimes before dissemination through mainstream media (p. 46). On November 22nd, 2012, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi (who came to power the year before when the Arab Spring toppled the previous regime) brokered a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, which ended Operation Pillar of Defense.

Egypt’s crucial role in brokering the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel would be reversed only two years later. In 2013, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ousted President Morsi in a coup d’état (this series’ next installment will cover the Arab Spring in its many vagaries). Whereas Morsi had been endorsed by the Muslim Brotherhood and was therefore amenable to Hamas in neighboring Gaza, President el-Sisi regarded Hamas as problematic for Egyptian security. Hence, he froze Hamas’ assets in Egypt and ordered the closure of tunnels which Hamas had used for smuggling from Sinai into Gaza.

Not only did this deprive Hamas of supplies and weapons, but it starved Hamas of tens of millions of dollars in revenue since it collected taxes on transport through the tunnels. Additionally, on October 7th, 2013, the IDF discovered Hamas’ tunnel which burrowed beneath the border and emerged nearby the Israeli village of Ein HaShlosha. The tunnel – which had displaced 3400 cubic meters of earth and stretched 20 meters deep – revealed that cement imported to Gaza for civilian construction was being diverted to military purposes. This in turn necessitated a ban on the importation of all construction materials to Gaza, which left 17,000 Gazans unemployed, and therefore, untaxable.

Egypt and Israel’s pressure on Hamas left it unable to pay its soldiers and functionaries in Gazan government. Crucially for our purposes, Hamas could not pay the 600 operatives of its Dabat al-Midan, a force organized to prevent other Gazan militants, such as PIJ from breaking Operation Pillar of Defense’s ceasefire by launching ordnance into Israel. Thus it was that rival militants fired ordnance from Gaza in violation of 2012’s ceasefire, memorably during former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon’s funeral in nearby Negev on January 12th, 2014.

The next spark for “mowing the grass” came after Hamas militants – though unsanctioned by leadership – abducted three Jewish teenage Yeshiva students who were hitchhiking nearby Gush Etzion in the West Bank on June 12th, 2014. On June 30th, their corpses were discovered, proving that they had been murdered. On July 2nd, a Jewish mob in Jerusalem lynched an uninvolved Palestinian teenager in reprisal, which in turn spurred riots by outraged Palestinians. Into this volatile mix, the rain of rockets from Gaza could no longer be tolerated, so Israel launched Operation Protective Edge on July 8th, 2014.

From July 8th – 16th, 2014, Phase I saw the IAF pummel Gaza with as many as 190 daily airstrikes on average, striking caches of weapons, manufacturing facilities, the homes of Hamas and PIJ commanders and ballistic launch sites. Gunboats barraged the coastline. Phase II lasted from July 17th – August 4th, 2014, and featured the IDF’s incursion made possible by the mobilization of 86,000 reservists, more than Israel had mobilized for the Yom Kippur War forty-two years earlier. Troops on the ground were tasked with locating and demolishing Hamas’ interconnected tunnels, of which they found as many as 36 tunnels spanning a total of 62 miles (100 km). One specialized company of Samoors (Hebrew for weasel) was equipped for combat in the tunnels (p. 55). Fighting on the ground was a slog block by block, house by booby-trapped house, and included a protracted siege of eastern Gaza City’s neighborhood of Shuja’iya from July 20th – 22nd. Phase III lasted from August 5th – 26th and involved eight attempts to institute a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, with the ninth finally perduring after 51 days of operational combat.

The uneasy peace between Israel and Gaza lasted for nine years, until Hamas’ attack on October 7th, 2023, changed everything. Yet another regional game-changer had occurred which merits discussion on its own.