The latest confrontation along the Gaza border appears to bolster the prevailing argument in Israel that the conflict with the Palestinians is not rooted in any way to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. Every Israeli is familiar with the following “facts”: Israel withdrew its settlements and forces from Gaza in 2005 and handed control to the Palestinian Authority, which was then ousted by Hamas in 2007. As thanks for evacuating thousands of Jews from their homes in Gaza’s Katif settlement bloc, Israelis have since been subjected to rocket barrages and attacks through tunnels. The 11-year Israeli siege that has turned Gaza into the world’s largest prison was only imposed to ensure Israeli security.
Only rarely, if at all, does anyone mention that Hamas rose to power in 2006 in democratic elections held under US pressure and with Israeli consent. Few ask how the export of vegetables from Gaza to Ramallah on the West Bank and the travel of Palestinian students from Gaza to their university in Bethlehem endangers the lives of Israelis. Israeli politicians have managed to inculcate Israelis with the notion that Gaza is an independent political entity and that Israel is not responsible for the fate of its 2 million residents.
Palestinians in Gaza are no longer counted in calculating the “demographic balance” of Jews and Arabs between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River and do not even merit lip service in discussions of the moribund Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.” Who even remembers that the 1993 Oslo Accords clearly stipulate that the West Bank and Gaza are one territorial entity, the integrity and status of which was to be maintained during the interim period leading to a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
To understand the root of the conflict in the south of Israel, one has to go back to a 2012 debate about Gaza among Israeli politicians and defense officials. Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, head of Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), confirmed that the reason for the discrimination against the residents of Gaza lies in a “policy of separation” of Gaza and the West Bank. A COGAT spokesperson had said a year earlier in a newspaper interview that decisions regarding exports from Gaza were political in nature, and therefore only the Prime Minister’s Office could make them.
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