Israelis Expelled from Gaza in 2005 Make the Parched Land Bloom with Etrog Trees

Nine years after the Gaza disengagement, about a third of the Jews forced to leave Gush Katif are still living nearby, often in temporary housing. Many are in the Negev community of Halutza, where they have built farms and planted orchards. Among other crops, they are growing citrons (etrogim), traditionally used in the rituals of the holiday of Sukot. Although they lost much of their crop this year to rocket attacks from Gaza, they have not lost hope.

“We believe in something. We have a mission,” [one resident] says. “We are building the tate of Israel. Now it’s the Negev. It’s the biggest national mission today, more than any other part of the country. And we don’t see the obstacles. We just see the target in front of our eyes.”

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Etrog, Gaza expulsion, Israeli agriculture, Negev

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF