By David K. Shipler
In the late
1970s, Israel’s former general Ariel Sharon used to call Jewish settlements in
the occupied Palestinian territories “facts on the ground.” As agriculture
minister then, he provided the roads, wells, and power lines that made
settlements possible. They would anchor the Israeli presence, he argued, making
it hard to dislodge.
He was
accurate as far as the West Bank was concerned. Those settlements,
proliferating over the decades, have balkanized the land that would be the
heart of any Palestinian state.
But he himself dislodged the
Israeli presence from the Gaza Strip. He still had a general’s mindset as he
later became defense minister and then prime minister, and by 2005 had come to
see the densely-populated territory as more liability than asset. His most
notable and controversial act as prime minister was to end the occupation by
withdrawing the army and sending Israeli soldiers to forcibly evict Israeli Jews
from Gaza settlements.
The resentment and backlash by
Israel’s religious right, combined with the area’s rapid takeover by Hamas
militants, demonstrated the limitations of pure military calculations, which
rarely consider politics, emotions, or the human quest for dignity. Israelis’
willingness to consider a Palestinian state was virtually obliterated by Hamas
rockets.
Sharon was known for brutal retaliation, so if he were still alive and in power, he would surely be decimating Gaza as thoroughly as Israel has done since the intimate atrocities by Hamas fighters during their invasion of Oct 7, 2023. The resulting “facts on the ground”—some 80 percent of Gaza’s buildings destroyed or damaged, the bones of tens of thousands in the earth, a health care system and infrastructure in ruins, systematic sexual violence, over 2 million traumatized Palestinians struggling to survive—define a new reality not easily dislodged.
