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4:04 PM
Reut R. Cohen
Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres brought the PLO (along with Arafat) back from Tunis to set up shop on Israel's borders. They mistakenly believed this would bring about real peace with Israel's Muslim-Arab neighbors. Gaza was turned over to Palestinians along with a large swatch of Judea and Samaria. Unfortunately, the Israeli government made the mistake of arming the killers of Jews with thousands of rifles and machine guns. It was a decision that has cost Israel more than 1,400 lives (and counting) over the ensuing years.
Ariel Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan was also ineffective. This "land for peace" formula could not work as the Palestinians did not begin building a country, but have been continuously waging war against Israel. This week President Shimon Peres admitted that the disengagement was the wrong decision.
Arutz 7 News reports: 
President Shimon Peres told American Jewish leaders Wednesday that the "Disengagement" from Gaza three and a half years ago was a mistake in the way it was executed. "I was for leaving Gaza. I feel myself as one of the persons mistaken," he confessed.
"Whatever will happen in the future, we shall not repeat the mistakes we made in leaving Gaza," the President told the Conference of Major Jewish Organizations. He explained that he backed the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif and northern Gaza because he wanted to "make sure that the State we have remains Jewish."
The expulsion has left thousands of former Gaza residents without permanent homes and without employment.
President Peres is another of many former sponsors of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Disengagement program to admit that its execution, if not the policy itself, was wrong. National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (Labor) has been one of the most prominent political leaders to admit that it should not have been carried out at all.
As Vice Prime Minister in 2005, Peres said immediately after the expulsion that "we never will return to Gaza." Since then, the IDF has been forced to enter several times to fight Hamas terrorists, and it recently led the massive three-week Operation Cast Lead counterterrorist offensive.
Since the expulsion of Jews and the withdrawal of the IDF more than three years ago, rocket attacks on southern Israel have increased, prompting President Peres to remark last year, "I did not imagine that we would leave Gaza and they would fire Kassams from there. I did not imagine that Hamas would show so strongly in the elections."
Following a Kassam attack last year that left 69 soldiers wounded, he wondered aloud to foreign diplomats, "It makes no sense why they would continue to shoot at us despite the fact that we disengaged."
Also See:
- Question: How did the troubles with Gaza begin?
- Operation Cast Lead: Background Briefing
1 comments. Leave a comment:
It was a great misstake to let Arafat and PLO in to Eretz Israel after they been gone to Tunis. And it is against Torah to establish a "palestinian", read arab state, on our soil,it just cost us lives and their state is not a state of justice, and therefore an abomination.
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