1
Here we go, the warning sirens are blaring. Israel is expanding its presence in the Netzarim corridor and plans to stay in Gaza and maintain a military administration. Predictably, the usual cries of "occupation" are already in the air. But what happens next? For decades, we've been sold the "conception" that occupation is inherently problematic as it forces us to govern a hostile population and take responsibility for the lives of Gazans – and thus, inevitably, whenever something goes wrong, the world lays the blame squarely on Israel.
What do the critics of occupation suggest? That we hand Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority – in other words, that we place responsibility in the hands of thousands of armed men, not from Hamas, but from Fatah. Others float the idea of bringing in a so-called "non-hostile" Palestinian element to manage the territory. What a tragic joke. It's no surprise then that the same voices opposing Israel's presence in Gaza are also the ones pushing to end the war before Hamas is completely wiped out. Have we really learned nothing? After all, we went down that path once before – all the way until October 6, 2023.
2
With blood, fire, and pillars of smoke, Oct. 7 revealed a harsh truth: when it comes to the Land of Israel and control over it, the choice is stark – it's either us or them. Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, nor any of the other terrorists in suits aligned with Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and their ilk have never had any intention of compromising on the control of the part of the Land of Israel west of the Jordan River.
To this day, there is no official document detailing the ultimate demands of our neighbors; the conditions that, if met, would lead them to declare an end to the conflict and relinquish all further claims. This is because the fundamental purpose of these forces, without exception, is not to establish an independent state alongside Israel but to annihilate us and drive us out of our homeland. We must take our enemies at their word.
3
The Hamas charter is the political manifesto to which those who supported the events of Oct. 7 subscribe. Many of them reside in the Palestinian Authority and serve in its security forces. This document is inspired by the Nazis and advocated eternal war against the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Its guiding principle, from which the charter's articles are derived, is introduced at the beginning with a quote from Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a branch: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
The PLO charter, the official document of the Palestinian Authority, has never truly been amended. Article 9 states: "Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase." Article 20 denies our national existence and our right to self-determination: "The Balfour declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong."
4
First, the charter claims that the Jews never had a historical or religious connection to the Land of Israel. Any such claim it notes is "incompatible with the facts of history".
Indeed, it is a culture of lies. In my conversations with colleagues in Europe, I would often point out that if there is no connection between the Jews and the Holy Land, then Christians, too, have no connection to it. By this logic, Jesus never walked in Nazareth or Jerusalem but in some imaginary place. The charter's conclusion is genocidal, as it erases us from the family of nations by asserting that we are not a people but only a religion, and therefore we have no right to a state. According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definitions of antisemitism, opposition to Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people or to our right to national self-determination is antisemitic. Unsurprisingly, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly declared that he will never recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Moreover, in addition to these explicit declarations, we must consider the actual conduct of the Palestinian Authority: a significant portion of its budget is allocated to paying those who murder Jews. The more Jews you kill, the higher the financial reward your family receives. Sodom was not destroyed because wicked people lived there, but because its laws institutionalized murder, theft, and violence, while acts of charity and peace were forbidden by law.
5
Let us return to the basic, undeniable facts for those who seek the truth: In the summer of 2005, we left the Gaza Strip. We even exhumed our dead from their graves. In return, we received two decades of wars, tens of thousands of rockets, the south of the country held hostage by terrorists, and, ultimately, the massacre of Oct. 7. This massacre was carried out in the Arab tradition, as promised by Arab League Secretary-General Azzam Pasha on Oct. 11 (again, October), 1947: "This will be a war of extermination, a momentous massacre that will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."
In contrast to the withdrawal from Gaza, Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria remain steadfast, and our pioneers hold onto the homeland with strength and determination. The IDF soldiers who guard these communities can see the vibrancy of life there, and at the same time, If they look westward from the hills of Samaria, they see the large Jewish population centers spread out below in the lowlands and along the coastal plain. They understand exactly what they are defending. Our intelligence network is also deeply embedded in the area and is capable of gathering real-time information to thwart terrorist plots or, heaven forbid, missile fire.
What has cost us more – Gaza after we left the territory, or Judea and Samaria, where we have remained? Think of the numerous wars, economic shutdowns, disruptions to aviation, and the damage inflicted by the Oct. 7 massacre, and compare that to the cost of securing the communities of Judea and Samaria.
This is why it is crucial for Israel to maintain both security and administrative control over the Gaza Strip. It is essential that we oversee the school curricula, which have so far incited hatred, called for Israel's destruction, and glorified the murder of Jews. While we are not obligated to manage the sewage system there, we must, like the Allies did in Germany after World War II, impose military governance. Israel must treat these "new Nazis" in the same way.
6
After all these arguments, we must also remember that we went to war not only to retaliate against the enemy and rescue our hostages but to ensure that they never dare to commit a similar massacre in the future. To achieve this, we must defeat them in a way that leaves no room for interpretation; this must not be left to debates in TV studios over how much damage we inflicted or how many terrorists we eliminated. Victory will come when the enemy internalizes its defeat, understands that the price was unbearable, and realizes that next time, it will pay an even higher price.
This defeat will not be etched into the enemy's consciousness by images of Gaza's destruction or by the number of terrorists killed. After all, Hamas uses its citizens as human shields and could not care less about civilian casualties. On the contrary, it seeks to increase the number of victims to whip up international pressure against Israel. What our enemies truly fear is losing land. This is the ancient rule of the Middle East, the cradle of human civilization: the price for spilling Jewish blood must be land.
In the place from which the murderers emerged – the ones who beheaded our sons, raped our daughters, burned our parents and children, and destroyed our communities – a Jewish plow must now till the soil and Jews must harvest crops. Our pioneers will settle there, raising children, and the IDF will establish its presence. Under no circumstances should Hamas emerge from this conflict holding the same territory it controlled before the massacre. As the poet Avraham Shlonsky wrote: "An oath: Lest from this we learned nothing."
