What is behind the "diplomatic arrangement plan" for the Gaza Strip, which the Left has been peddling? As a rule of thumb, its mouthpieces avoid getting into detail; they know the public, mainly the mothers of soldiers, won't like their plan once they learn what it entails.
Behind the term "arrangement" is their plan to reconquer Gaza and transfer it to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. If all goes according to the Left's design, the IDF will enter Gaza in a ground operation; soldiers and tanks, with air cover, will clean out the tunnels, bunkers, homes and secret weapons stashes and hand Abbas a spotless Gaza Strip. The IDF will then withdraw, to be replaced by the PA's security forces from Ramallah.
We've already been in this movie. Following the disengagement from Gaza we transferred the territory to Abbas and the PA's security apparatus. Two years later, the heads of these security services found themselves being hurled off of buildings to their deaths. Hamas seized control. Who will prevent another Hamas coup, once the IDF leaves upon concluding this Left-driven operation? After all, Hamas is stronger, better trained and more organized than the PA. How can the PA be inserted into a territory it can't seize on its own? But – so goes the argument – the PA is still functioning in Judea and Samaria.
We cannot compare Gaza to Judea and Samaria, where the PA is buttressed on the ground by the IDF and Shin Bet security agency. So who will protect the PA in Gaza?
Assuming members of the Israeli opposition want things to end well instead of merely swiping at the government, they should learn from their past mistakes. Sometimes the enemy of the good is a better idea, turned bad. This is what happened to the Left in 1992 after the right-wing government quashed the Intifada with Moshe Arens as defense minister.
The Left didn't suffice there. There was still a need to patrol the alleys of Nablus and Gaza, but with greater vigilance. A group of do-gooders, known as the "Oslo underground," reached for a magical diplomatic solution that would make the IDF's presence in Judea and Samaria extraneous. They imported Yasser Arafat and his gang from Tunisia, armed them with guns and handed them control of the area. "Peace is made with enemies," they said, and signed Arafat to a piece of paper together with Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Bill Clinton.
That piece of paper was just that, a piece of paper, yet the doves of peace never followed. Quite the opposite; the Oslo Accords led to countless casualties, from 160 to around 1,700 in comparison to similar periods. Had Israel not immediately transferred all security responsibility to the PA, the fledgling Palestinian uprising would have never become a full-blown terror war, which was fought with the weapons we gave them.
It's time to admit: Wherever our forces are in control, and not the Palestinians, there is security. The solution to the Gaza Strip, therefore, is for the IDF to assume control, as it did in the past and still does in parts of Judea and Samaria. And barring national consensus over remaining in Gaza, the intermediate alternative is the war of attrition currently being waged by the Israeli government. In any case, we must certainly never allow Hamas to link with Fatah and the PA. Indeed, "separation of the wicked is good for them and good for the world."
