Now you might watch the video I posted before, and say to yourselves, well what choice do the Palestinians in Gaza have? They’re stuck in a prison, can’t get in, can’t get out, no work, no hope. This is true, and very sad, but it didn’t have to be that way.

In the summer of 2005 Israel left Gaza. The Israeli civilians who had been living there were all removed, against their will, many forcibly. The Israeli military forces all withdrew as well, every last one. The border with Egypt, the strip known as the Philadelphi Axis, was also vacated, leaving the policing of the border in Egyptian hands.

Following the disengagement, there was tremendous goodwill, not only internationally, but also among Israelis, towards the Gazans. Everyone hoped they would make something of the tremendous opportunity they had received to begin building their state. There were many offers to contribute money, aid, knowledge, whatever was necessary to make it work.

One would expect that a hard suffering people would want to make use of all this goodwill. That they would want to use the international help offered to them to build schools, create jobs, perhaps make use of the wonderful sandy beachfront they have to develop tourism. I’m sure that even if Europeans would be hesitant to rush to Gazan beach hotels, the Palestinians’ wealthy Arab brethren would have been only too pleased to come and spend their holidays and money there.

If things had been quiet.

The borders were closed you say? But if Israel had seen that there was quiet, peace and development, we would have eased up on our restrictions. Even the Egyptians would have opened the border.

The Gaza Disengagement was our test case, you see. If it had gone well, there would have been immense public pressure in Israel on the government to continue the experiment in the West Bank (sorry David and Zahava, but you know this would have been the case).

Sadly, the Palestinians wasted no time in showing everyone that they had no intention of making it work. The first thing they did, when the Israelis left, was to destroy the valuable, clever system of greenhouses, worth funten und funten (as my grandmother used to say), that the Israeli farmers had left behind for them, free of charge, a gift to the Palestinian people. These greenhouses had made the Gush Katif farmers an excellent living. Their produce was exported all over the world.

The Gazans weren’t interested. In hours, nothing was left.

Violence between the different factions, mainly Hamas and Fatah, soon broke out. Things eventually got so bad that just two years after the disengagement, Hamas staged a coup, forcibly taking control of the entire Strip and running Fatah out of town (those left alive).

Since then the Hamas has proceeded to create an Islamic terror state.

Now, what they did inside the Gaza Strip was their business, although we seemed to be blamed for whatever they did, even though we weren’t anywhere near, and had no influence or control over the internal situation. Besides the internal violence that broke out, after we left the Gaza Strip, almost immediately there was an inexplicable surge in violence against Israeli civilians, civilians not living in the Gaza Strip and having no quarrel with the people of Gaza.

Not only did violent attacks on Israeli towns and villages near the border with Gaza not cease completely, as one would expect, since the Gazan Palestinians had no further reason for such aggression – they were no longer under occupation – these attacks increased considerably.

Peaceful Israeli civilians came under a constant barrage of rockets and missiles. At first these were rudimentary and primitive rockets, but as time went by, and the Palestinians improved their weapon production and smuggling methods, via tunnels from Sinai, their weaponry gradually improved. Israel did little to stop these attacks, besides the occasional targeted attack at the launchers, their operators, or the operators commanders, which made no difference at all. The frequency of the attacks increased and the range grew.

Currently they are firing Grad rockets, supplied by Iran, that easily reach Ashdod and Beer Sheva, highly populated cities in the heart of Israel. No one has any doubt that, left to their own devices, the Gazan Palestinians would very soon be targeting the Greater Tel Aviv metropolis. They may have the ability already.

Then Imshin would also be writing to you in between ‘Color Red’ alerts.