Twenty-one years have passed since the first Qassam rocket struck my city, Sderot. It happened on April 16, 2001, and ever since the city's character has changed in many ways. Last week, we returned to the bomb shelters and fortified rooms, reopening the old wounds of the city's children. The day after that sleepless night, I opened the newspapers and couldn't believe my eyes: Some people were saying this one rocket was the result of Naftali Bennett "selling Israel out" to the Muslim Brotherhood movement in his government.
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It's hard to understand these people, when over the past decade we've been hit with thousands of rockets, put out hundreds of fires, buried our dead, lost soldiers, hostages, and have been forced to flee our homes for an accumulated period of months. Assuming these people aren't completely detached from reality, and that history for them didn't begin in June 2021, it seems the safety of Sderot's children depends on one's political position.
What these people are proposing, apparently, is to go back to what we experienced over the past decade. As a resident of Sderot, I mainly have local and regional sentiments. I'd be happy for any solution that stops the cycle of terror. When Benjamin Netanyahu held an initial cabinet discussion in 2018 over an arrangement in Gaza, I stood with my friends in support of such solutions. When Israel Katz was the only cabinet member who publicly recommended a new strategy for the war against Hamas (building an artificial port island off the Gaza coast), his words were echoed in the civilian "Hope Instead of War" campaign.
These solutions flickered briefly before never amounting to anything. My children and I have been on the receiving end for the past 21 years; Hamas is a murderous organization that violates human rights in Gaza and Sderot. I, however, was raised on the values of a proactive Zionism that forms reality and doesn't just react, on an Israeliness that is creative and finds solutions rather than one that stagnates and freezes in place. The strong side can determine facts on the ground and change a strategy that isn't proving itself – the siege strategy the Olmert government declared in 2007 – for one that is effective.
The strategy needs to complement the new diplomatic environment, of the Abraham Accords, to include bolstering ties with Egypt. Military officials talk about the following equation: Rehabilitating Gaza's infrastructure and building a seaport, allowing Gazans into Israel en masse to work, and a series of shared economic projects to provide electricity, water, and health to the Strip. What's the return? Quiet, and bringing back Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, in addition to the remains of Israeli soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, killed during 2014's Operation Protective Edge.
Such an initiative would require significant help from Egypt, Qatar, the European Union, and the United Nations. It isn't simple, but we've seen the effort that's been invested into trying to resolve the large-scale war in Ukraine. In comparison, the 21 years of war with Gaza are negligible. It's a matter of political will, determination, and creativity. The people arguing that a Netanyahu government would be better for the residents of the Gaza periphery need to remember that you can't fool all the people all of the time. The government of "change" needs to internalize that the window of opportunity has closed and that those who are incapable of implementing new solutions are being derelict in their duty.
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