Journalists in Gaza pay tribute to colleagues killed in Israeli airstrike
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Anthony Koch: Gaza — the Palestinian state that could have been
History's tragedies are not always found in what happened. Sometimes they lie in what could have been — visions abandoned, possibilities squandered, peace betrayed not by inevitability, but by choice. Article content Nowhere is that clearer than in Gaza. Article content In 2005, Israel undertook an extraordinary political and moral gamble. Under the Disengagement Plan, conceived by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, himself a former general and champion of settlements in the region, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip. Every soldier, every settler, every last trace of Israeli presence was removed. Twenty-one Jewish communities were dismantled. Thousands of citizens were evacuated from their homes by their own army. Synagogues were shuttered, cemeteries were relocated, and millions of dollars in greenhouses and agricultural infrastructure were left behind, intact, in a gesture of goodwill. Article content It was a rupture in Zionism's own narrative. Israel voluntarily relinquished territory acquired in war, territory with strategic, ideological, and religious significance, without any reciprocal agreement. In doing so, it tested its own democratic resilience by pitting its army against its own civilians for the sake of peace. Article content Article content And it was peace that was on offer. The message to the Palestinians, to the Arab world, to the international community, was unambiguous: We are leaving. Show us what you can build. Article content Had the Palestinian leadership taken up that challenge, had it chosen governance over grievance, nation-building over nihilism, the rule of law over the rule of Kalashnikovs, the consequences could have been historic. A stable, demilitarized, self-governed Gaza would have transformed the landscape of Israeli politics. It would have provided the proof of concept that the Israeli public, weary and cynical after the carnage of the Second Intifada, desperately needed: that withdrawal works, that peace is possible, that Palestinian sovereignty need not come at the expense of Israeli lives. Article content Article content It would have strengthened the hand of moderates and pragmatists in Israel. It would have dealt a mortal blow to the argument of Israel's right-wing politicians that any land given would only become a base for terror. It would have revived the Oslo-era hope that coexistence was not merely a slogan, but a strategy. Pressure would have mounted, internally, democratically, and morally, for Israel to take the next step and negotiate a final-status agreement over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. A two-state solution, long the darling of the diplomatic set, could have become not just desirable, but inevitable. Article content Article content Instead, Gaza became a dystopia. And that outcome was not imposed on the Palestinians. It was chosen, freely, consciously, and with open eyes. Article content Soon after disengagement, Gaza fell under the control of Hamas, a genocidal Islamist organization whose charter has called for the annihilation of Israel and the murder of Jews. Not only did Hamas win 7 of 10 councils in the Gaza strip in January 2005, they also won 74 out of 132 contested seats in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections (in both the West Bank and Gaza) held just under 6 months after disengagement was completed. Article content Once in power, Hamas executed its rivals, purged dissent, and transformed Gaza into a theocratic fortress. The ballot box vanished. Freedom of speech was extinguished. Billions in foreign aid were funnelled into terrorism, not infrastructure. Schools became indoctrination centres. Hospitals were used to store weapons. Civilians were turned into human shields in a perverse strategy of deterrence by child sacrifice. Article content And over the border, Israelis watched. And learned. Article content They learned that disengagement did not bring security. It brought rockets, thousands of them, raining down on Sderot, Ashkelon, and Be'er Sheva. They learned that ceding territory did not lead to normalization, but to escalation. They learned that the problem was not the occupation of Gaza, because there was no occupation. There was only jihad. Article content And so, a generation of Israelis changed its mind. Article content The Israeli left, once dominant, crumbled. Labour, which signed Oslo, all but disappeared. Meretz, a once prominent party founded to push explicitly for a two-state solution faded into irrelevance and did not win a single seat in the most recent Israeli elections. Kadima, the centrist party that led disengagement, dissolved. Article content As of early June, only 21 per cent of Israelis believed that a peaceful coexistence between a future Palestinian state and Israel is even possible. From center-left to far-right, the majority of Israelis believe that another Gaza is intolerable — that a Palestinian state in the West Bank, without ironclad security guarantees and a total transformation of Palestinian political culture, would be madness. Most Israelis have no appetite for another experiment. Article content And yet, the western left remains frozen in time. Article content Figures like Mark Carney continue to speak of Palestinian statehood as if the Gaza catastrophe never happened. He recently stated that he supports such a state 'if certain conditions are met.' But the most basic condition, demonstrated capacity for peaceful self-governance, has already been tested. And it failed. And it failed because the majority of Palestinians chose failure. Article content This is not a policy failure. It is a moral one. Article content But to admit that would require western liberals to abandon the illusion that animates so much of their worldview: that all violence is reactive, that the 'oppressed' are never accountable, that Palestinian terror is only ever the product of Israeli action, rather than Palestinian will. Article content Article content And so, western liberals cling to the wreckage of the two-state solution like a theology, as if Hamas is a fringe group and the Gaza blockade was the source or motivation of Gazan terrorism and the thousands of rockets launched from the strip towards Israeli civilian centres, not the other way around. They behave in such a way as to suggest that Israel's disengagement in the region didn't go far enough. And If only Israel would 'show good faith,' things might change. Article content It's all a lie. Article content The truth is that Gaza was not a tragedy. It was a test. And the Gazans failed it, not because they were denied the tools of statehood, but because when given them, they used those tools to wage war and spread hate. That failure lies with them. And until they are held to account for it, there will be no peace. Article content Israelis understand this. That is why they no longer believe in the dream of two states. It did not die in the Knesset. It died in Sderot. It died in the tunnels of Khan Yunis. It died in the ashes of October 7.
