By Jonathan Benedek/TPS

Nitzan (TPS) – The Gush Katif and Northern Samaria Commemoration Center held a conference on Monday commemorating the eleventh anniversary of Israel’s “Disengagement.” Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew all Jewish presence from Gaza and four communities in northern Samaria eleven years ago in the spirit of the Road Map for Peace plan promoted by US President George W. Bush.

Several Members of Knesset attended the conference and discussed lessons that could be learned from the event.

“The Israeli government uprooted dozens of settlements and thousands of Israelis from their homes. In return, missiles rained upon our cities, our communities, and our children,” said Social Equality Minister Gila Gamliel (Likud). “The argument that withdrawal would bring peace with the Palestinians, or at least bring us closer to peace, was not built on a realistic vision.”

Gamliel also argued that Israel’s presence in Gaza was not the initial cause for attacks against Israel.

“Whoever thinks that the continued hostility against Israel is a result of our presence in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza is mistaken,” she claimed.

“We were attacked before a single Israeli soldier was ever in Judea and Samaria,” continued Gamliel, referencing instances in which Israel was attacked by its Arab neighbors in the years before Israel gained control of Judea and Samaria in 1967.

Gamliel insisted that Israel must stop the Palestinian Authority from allowing and encouraging incitement to take place in communities under its jurisdiction.

“We should demand first and foremost the cessation of incitement in the Palestinian Authority and we have to hope that the Israeli people learned a moral lesson from the expulsion in that there should be no further expulsion of Jews,” she stressed. “So long as entire generations in the Palestinian Authority are taught to be anti-Semitic, there is no chance for peace.”

Zionist Union MK Merav Michaeli, who was also in attendance, said that she had disagreed with the Disengagement when it was implemented.

“I was opposed to the Disengagement at the time,” Michaeli said. “I thought that although we had to leave the Gaza Strip, we could not tear the community apart without ensuring that security and quiet would follow. In other words, we should have left with an agreement.”

Although MK Michaeli acknowledged that Israel has faced threats to its security from Gaza in the years following the Disengagement, she expressed her belief that the Disengagement ultimately saved lives, albeit having been implemented in the wrong manner.

“The question now is what to do next,” she asked, adding that she hoped that a future solution to the conflict would allow as many people to remain in their homes as possible.

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said on Sunday that there is no legal obstacle barring a review of the status of lands adjacent to the community of Amona in Benjamin regional council, to start a discussion of potentially moving there the residents of the community which has been slated for demolition by the end of the year by the supreme court. Mandelblit spoke at a discussion with government officials of regulating the status of Amona.

The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the Amona community is illegal under Israeli law, based on petitions of presumed original Arab owners of the land who had been rounded up by anti-Zionist groups like Peace Now and Yesh Din. Since then, the court has ruled again on the Amona case, ordering that the Jewish residents must be evacuated, the housing and infrastructure destroyed and the area be handed to the Arabs.

According to the Amona residents, when the community was founded in 1995 it was by a state initiative, promoted by then housing minister Natan Sharansky, who invested millions of dollars in creating an infrastructure, paving roads and promoting construction, all of it under the auspices of the state. If there were irregularities with the land purchase, it was the state’s problem, not theirs. Had they known the land was privately owned they would have stayed away, but they were told by the state to move in — let the state deal with the alleged original owners.

It should be noted that when Mandelblit was being considered for the AG appointment, he was favored by the right for his idea that in just these kinds of cases, with anti-Jewish settlement activists signing up claimants against existing Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, and the claimants prove ownership (which is not so hard to do considering the land registration archives are kept in Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority) — said claimants be compelled to accept fair market value for the property, or comparable property. Mind you, this is after some Arab real estate agent had received full pay for the same land.

Now, despite his wise recommendation on grandfathering existing Jewish communities, the AG is obviously feeling that he can’t go to battle against a clear Supreme Court ruling to demolish Amona, and so he recommends finding an alternative land not for the alleged Arab owners, but for the very real Jewish residents instead.

Amona was the site of one of the most brutal attacks of Israeli government forces on Jewish residents in the state’s history. On February 1, 2006, Amona Jewish residents and protesters were evacuated by 10,000 Israeli Police, Border Police, and Army troops. The estimated 4,000 Jews on the Amona grounds mostly consisted of youths from nearby communities. More than 300 were injured, including some 80 security personnel. Among the injured were three Knesset members. After several hours, the Amona homes had been demolished. A few girls that were evacuated accused police officers of sexual assault.

In March 2006, the Knesset parliamentary inquiry into the events at Amona determined that security forces had employed brutal force, striking protesters with clubs and charging them with horses. Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra was criticized for preventing police commanders from testifying at committee hearings. The committee also found contradictions between the testimonies of the Army Chief of Staff and the Internal Security Minister.

Today, none of the coalition parties wants to position itself behind a similar evacuation effort, a move which could kill their political aspirations among their rightwing voters. Likud, Habayit Hayehudi and Yisrael Beiteinu officials have stated recently that this government will not permit the destruction of Amona. When the brutal evacuation took place in 2006, it was carried out by the same government that had evacuated Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip in 2005, yet another traumatic event in recent Israeli history. That government was ruled by the Kadima party, a political albatross invented by soon-to-go-comatose Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which has since disappeared from the political map, and serves as a warning to all Israeli rightwing parties wishing to err leftward.

With that in mind, it can be expected that Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Liberman and Justice Minister Shaked come up with a solution that keeps the Jewish settlers in place, risking the ire of the high court, as well as of Israel’s many friends in the free world. It should provide for great political theater, as these three politicians will show their ability to both capitulate and gravel while proudly standing erect. It’s time to call in the chiropractors.

It’s now 11 years since the Expulsion from Gush Katif and the Northern Shomron, Laurence Baziz, projects coordinator for the phenomenal Katif Heritage Center, speaks with Eve about where the 2000 families are now, both physically and emotionally. The youth have in the main re-engaged with their country via the army and other institutions, while former farmers have had a much more difficult time. A conference on August 8th in Nitzan will commemorate the events of 2005 yet focus on how to strengthen our society, encourage patriotism and love of Land and Nation despite betrayals and setbacks. Is it realistic to dream of a return to the sands of Gaza? With faith and prayer, hope and hard work, yearnings have been answered before, as in Gush Etzion after 1967. So who knows what will be- let’s be ready for every eventuality. And meanwhile ensure that this travesty never happens again.

Water-logged terror tunnels are collapsing. Hamas and Islamic Jihad tunnel diggers are dying. New recruits are becoming ever more wary of taking their place, and Gaza government funds have been drying up; salaries are owed to 40,000 civil service workers, in fact. What’s a terrorist government to do?

Well, for a start there’s all that land which was left as a gift from the Israeli government after former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yanked every last Israeli out of the Gush Katif region of Gaza in 2005, and much of northern Samaria.

Those plots of land are beautiful, fertile fields where once Jews cultivated some of the best crops of produce that Israel ever exported.

Now they are being handed out like little candies in lieu of two years’ worth of salaries to the 40,000 loyal civil servants it still owes.

Lack of jobs, power blackouts and tunnel collapses have all contributed to massive discontent among the masses; land makes Gazans happy.

Land is the best gift of all.

A Jerusalem area community in Samaria is hoping former president Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas can help them stop the planned government destruction of a 20-year-old synagogue allegedly built on Arab land.

The Supreme Court, which previously accepted leftists’ claims that the synagogue was built on private Arab land, received on Friday a last-ditch petition to stop the destruction, based on arguments that the court and the government did not take into consideration international law concerning the  protection of Holy Sites.

The appeal, filed by attorney Gilad Korinaldy on behalf of Givat Ze’ev regional council rabbi Yosef Toledano, also asked the court to consider aspects of Jewish law, the Hareidi website Kikar Shabbat reported.

The court has ordered Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to answer the petition by next Monday night, the end of Simchat Torah in Israel.

The Netanyahu administration has ordered that the 2-year-old Ayelet HaShachar synagogue, where several hundred congregants have prayed, be demolished immediately after the Sukkot-Simchat Torah holiday.

The petition to the court also explained that the community has appealed to Peres and Abbas to “think outside the legal box” and find a political-diplomatic solution.

Korinaldy, who also represented Gush Katif in efforts to save Gush Katif synagogues from destruction in the expulsion of Jews from Gaza in 2005, said, according to Kikar Shabbat:

Synagogues are the voice of the existence of Judaism for generations. All possibilities must be examined to protect the holiness of Israel and respect for God. There is no greater disgrace than Jews destroying a synagogue.

TheJewishPress.com reported here last month that Givat Ze’ev worshippers already have taken holy books out of the synagogue in preparation for the demolition, which Prime Minister Netanyahu postponed from August until immediately after the holidays.

The  suit against the synagogue followed the pattern of several previous appeals by the left-wing Yesh Din and Peace Now grows, arguing that Jews did not legally buy the land on which they built.

It usually is difficult to prove the legal purchase because it is always done through a third-party. Otherwise, the Arab seller would face death, either by an angry mob or by the Palestinian Authority policy that follows the Jordanian law that selling land to a Jew is punishable by execution.

If the petition is successful, it would prove the seeming impossibilities of life in Israel.

Who would dream that Peres and Abbas would be the intermediaries to stop the destruction of a Jewish place of worship in the “occupied territories?”

The topography of Israel’s shared border with Hamas-occupied Gaza is far too complicated, different and longer than Egypt’s shared border with Gaza to replicate what Egypt just did, but it does make one think about other possible solutions.

Fed up with Hamas sending terrorists into the Sinai via the underground tunnels, as well as the smuggling tunnels, Egypt redirected water from the Mediterranean sea, flooding everything under the ground along their shared border.

If we’re already being creative, here’s another thought… the Mediterranean could be Israel’s solution too.

Perhaps Israel could find a way to get every Gazan $5000, a fake Syrian passport (there’s plenty of those floating around) and a seat on a boat sailing across the Mediterranean into to Europe.

Once the sane people leave, it’s clean up time, and we rebuild Gush Katif.

(((CLICK BELOW TO HEAR AUDIO)))

Yishai plays recordings from the month-and-a-half he and his wife, Malka, spent broadcasting from Gush Katif during the 2005 disengagement.

The Fleishers provided their priceless, on-the-scene perspective of one of the most dramatic moments in Israeli history, as they observed the communities’ valiant refusal to leave their homes — even as their towns were cut off from food and supplies — while being intimidated by the Israeli government.

Yishai Fleisher on Twitter: @YishaiFleisher
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