On August 22, 2005, I was among the last soldiers to close the gate as we left Netzarim settlement in the Gaza Strip, for the last time. We had served there for a year and a half of what could only be described as hell.
As a soldier sent to protect the settlements of Gush Katif – the main settlement bloc in the Gaza Strip comprising 21 settlements – I saw and experienced firsthand the price of holding onto isolated enclaves in the heart of a hostile environment.
I lost friends when Hamas fighters breached our military outposts. I hitchhiked my way home with settler mothers who raced at 150 km/h, with their children in the back seat, to avoid being shot at. I believed then, on that summer’s day in 2005, that I was leaving all this behind.
Now, the Israeli settler-right and their false prophets are doing everything in their power to reopen the gates of hell. According to recent polls, they have the support of at least 25% of the Israeli public.
As a filmmaker and anti-occupation activist, I’ve spent the last decade of my career trying to speak to the moral sensitivities of Israelis by demonstrating the deep injustices that Palestinians have to endure every day. I hoped that by evoking empathy, my compatriots would come to see that perpetual occupation – leading to untold human suffering – is not the way.
Now, in the new and horrifying post-October 7 reality, it seems that there is no longer room for empathy in Israeli society. That being the case, it is now time to expose the flip side of the coin: the terrible price we as Israelis pay to accommodate the policy of ruling over other people – because this is not just about the Palestinians; it is about us, too.
Speaking out against re-occupation of the Gaza Strip
As a former soldier-occupier, my comrades and I felt the full weight of that price in the Gaza Strip. We have an obligation to speak out as calls for resettlement of Gaza mount in Israel. Those who refuse to see the humanity of Palestinians at the very least owe it to us, the soldiers who protected their settlements, to hear what we were made to sacrifice before dragging us back there.
The Hamas atrocities of October 7 – the realization of our worst nightmares – sent every Israeli, myself included, into a state of deep mourning. Now, settler leaders are exploiting our grief and anger to trumpet the deranged idea of resettling what they see as part of their biblical birthright, while parroting the old party line of settlements being a security necessity.
An invitation for a right-wing rally that called for the reinstatement of Israeli settlements in Gaza in early November, featured a picture of two carefree girls on an empty beach. In reality, if you were to zoom out, you would see a blood-soaked land engulfed in fire and smoke.
Thousands of concrete barriers and fences separated them from the people who paid with their lives for an Israeli civilian presence in the Gaza Strip – mostly the Palestinians in the surrounding refugee camps, in homes riddled with bullet holes; but also us, the soldiers sent to protect the settlements.
This enthusiasm for the messianic salvation they so desire, and the inevitable human price it will exact, will only come as a surprise to those who weren’t there the last time. But I experienced the horror that was Gush Katif in the flesh. I remember.
The settler-right often refers to those settlements as “the country’s flak jacket.” But in reality, we, the soldiers, were their flak jackets. There wasn’t a thing we wouldn’t do to the Palestinians in the name of keeping the settlements safe: We carried out dozens of operations in the middle of their crowded neighborhoods.
We invaded their homes and turned them into military posts. We razed their properties and orchards around the settlements to create buffer zones. If there was a choice between affecting Palestinian lives or settler comfort, it was clear which choices would be made.
Hamas was a force in Gaza long before Israel demolished its settlements and withdrew military forces during the 2005 disengagement. There were rockets, mortar shells, roadside IEDs, and tunnels like the one from which Hamas blew up the Orhan IDF outpost in 2005. Rocket and shell fire were commonplace, but they were only part of the story.
Not every soldier has nine lives, but apparently, I had. I was once shot at on my way to the bathroom, moving between an armored vehicle and a military post. Another time, an RPG was fired at me while I was riding in a vehicle during one of our operations. Luckily, it missed. I stood right next to an IED as grenades were thrown at me, but somehow failed to explode.
Once, just as I was about to arrest a Hamas operative, he blew himself up next to a Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) officer. I still remember being covered in pieces of his flesh, my ears ringing from the deafening blast. I started asking what the hell I was risking my life for.
Today, Israel’s messianic-right is open and candid about its aspirations. MK Simcha Rothman, one of the architects of this past year’s judicial reform, said we’ll know we’ve won “when a Jewish child can walk in Gaza without fearing for his life.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is a minister in the Defense Ministry, talks openly about prolonged Israeli control of Gaza.
Make no mistake: if we blink, it will happen. How many are aware that earlier this year, the Knesset repealed the Disengagement Law in the northern West Bank, effectively paving the way for settlers to return to previously evacuated areas? The same lawmakers who proposed that bill have also recently tabled legislation to revoke the Disengagement Law from Gaza.
At first, they’ll tell us it’s “just a security zone,” and then, a settler outpost will pop up there. It’ll probably be named after one of the decimated kibbutz communities near the Gaza border. A while later, we’ll discover that the military is providing security for it and that it already has satellite outposts around it.
We cannot allow ourselves to skirt around the question of what happens after the war. We have to think about our vision for a free, secure, and sustainable life here for both Palestinians and Israelis. The Israeli public has let messianic ideas corrupt this place for too long, under the pretense that settlements are vital for security. We mustn’t buy it.
The settlements did not protect Israel – we as soldiers protected the settlements, always at the Palestinians’ expense. The settlers’ fantasy was our nightmare. No more.
The writer was a combatant in the IDF Givati infantry brigade and served in the Gaza Strip before and during the disengagement. He is currently a filmmaker.