Bush optimism needs western Negev reality check
By Robert Horenstein
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It’s hardly surprising that President Bush’s eight-day Middle East tour last month failed to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process begun two months ago at Annapolis. That’s because the administration is pursuing a diplomatic track that’s totally detached from the troubling reality on the ground.
Had the president, in addition to Jerusalem and Ramallah, toured the western Negev, he might have realized early on the futility of his efforts.
Of course, I’m talking about the region adjacent to Gaza within Israel’s 1967 borders that for the past seven years has been terrorized by thousands of Qassam rockets and mortar shells. It’s a region that Ann Bardacke, a Jewish Federation lay leader, and I had the opportunity to visit over a three-day period in mid-December.
The problem is that whereas Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005—uprooting 8,500 Jews from their homes—Gaza never disengaged from Israel. Instead of building a peaceful state in the territory Israel evacuated, the Palestinians opted to put their government in the hands of a terrorist organization, Hamas.
Far from transforming itself into civic-minded do-gooders, as some predicted, Hamas has remained true to its extremist colors. It has done everything to prevent peace: holding fast to its goal of destroying Israel; turning Gaza into a terrorist fortress; kidnapping a shy, studious 19-year-old soldier named Gilad Shalit; giving a green light to Islamic Jihad and other groups to rain missiles down on Israel; and staging a violent coup, expelling Fatah from Gaza.
To be sure, President Bush knows all this, but perhaps a tour of the western Negev would have forced his optimism about a peace agreement to undergo a reality check.
His first stop might have been Zikim, an agricultural community just north of Gaza. There, he would have seen the pockmarked walls of the houses damaged by a Qassam rocket that struck the kibbutz on Dec. 16, the day before Ann and I arrived there and only a month after seven dairy cows were killed in another attack.
Had he spent enough time on Zikim, Mr. Bush might have met with the parents of Rom Gertal, the two-year old boy who was injured by shrapnel while playing in the family’s living room. And, like us, he could have been shown the badly damaged doorframe of the house next door to the Gertals, where, miraculously, the mezuzah was left unscathed, as if to symbolize Israeli resilience in the face of terrorism.
His next stop, just down the road, might have been Netiv HaAsara, the closest community in Israel to Gaza. Our visit to this moshav in December hadn’t been my first. In July 2005, I met with some of the residents and learned of their fears about Israel’s impending withdrawal from Gaza. Literally hours after I left, eerily on cue, tragedy struck: A 22-year-old college student, Dana Galkowicz, was killed by a Qassam that exploded on the porch where she and her boyfriend were sitting.
Had the president’s entourage considered it safe enough to visit Netiv HaAsara (the community is routinely under mortar attack), Mr. Bush might have stood on a hill at the moshav’s southern end—from which it’s possible to see the minarets of Beit Hanoun across the border—and hear Israeli artillery fire targeting the Palestinian rocket launchers.
Glancing just beyond the 30-foot wall that keeps would-be suicide bombers out of Israel but does nothing to prevent Qassams and mortars, he would have witnessed the pile of rubble where once stood the Jewish settlement of Nisanit, a remnant of the Israeli disengagement that provided the Palestinians another opportunity to prove their peaceful intentions.
Leaving Netiv HaAsara, the Secret Service likely would have advised the president against going to Sderot, the working-class town that has suffered the brunt of the Qassam attacks (well over 1,000 since 2001). Instead, he might have met with some of Sderot’s residents, say, at the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council headquarters, which, for now, is out of the range of the rockets (in another year or two, Israeli military experts predict, this will no longer be the case).
There he would have been briefed about a city under siege that has endured significant damage to homes and property, high unemployment, psychological distress (more than three quarters of Sderot children exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress) and emigration of thirty percent of its population.
Mr. Bush would have learned that in Sderot, people’s lives revolve around the “tzeva adom,” or red alert, which gives them, at most, 20 seconds to find shelter against the rockets. Worried they won’t hear the alert, they take quick showers and sleep with the window open even on the coldest winter nights.
The president also would have heard heartrending stories, such as the one Ann and I were told by Yafa Arberboy, who heads a non-profit relief organization in Sderot. It was the story of a lower-middle-class family that courageously insisted on celebrating their son’s wedding in Sderot despite the danger. Reporters from all over Israel came to cover the event, but friends and relatives, who customarily bring cash gifts to help offset the cost of a wedding, stayed way, afraid of the Qassams. The family was hit with a $5,000-bill, which they couldn’t afford.
This is the real world Mr. Bush would have encountered, the one that presumably prompted him to declare in June 2002, “The United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure.”
Now, six years later, he’s pushing for the establishment of that state before the end of his term even though the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank has shown little inclination or ability to crack down on the terrorists while in Gaza, the leadership and the terrorists are one and the same.
Israel has demonstrated a willingness to take risks for peace (see: Camp David, July 2000) and will do so again in the future when the situation warrants it. But to demand Israeli concessions on territory, Jerusalem and refugees at a time when rockets are smashing into homes and businesses all over the western Negev and children in Sderot are afraid to go to school isn’t only misguided—it’s unconscionable.
Robert Horenstein is the staff director of the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland.