In the days leading up to Tisha B’Av, and as the anniversary of the 2005 Gaza withdrawal draws near, Israel once again stands at a historic crossroads. We can continue down the path of hesitation and half-measures, or we can finally do what history and security demand: restore Jewish communities in Gaza.
This is not a radical notion. It is the necessary response to the horrors of Oct. 7. Gaza is part of the Land of Israel, and rebuilding Jewish life there is the only way to force Hamas to pay a concrete and lasting price for its crimes.
The 2005 expulsion from Gush Katif and northern Samaria, which began on the day after Tisha B’Av, was sold to the Israeli public as a bold step toward peace. Instead, it became one of the most catastrophic errors in the country’s history.
The images from the expulsion of Gaza’s Jews remain seared in our collective memory: 21 thriving Jewish communities, home to more than 8,000 pioneers, were uprooted.
Their homes were demolished, their synagogues abandoned and later desecrated, and their world-renowned greenhouses – which supplied a significant share of Israel’s agricultural exports – were handed over to those who would soon transform Gaza into a launching pad for terror.
In 2005, Israel uprooted Jews in the name of peace. Over 20 years later, we are still burying the victims of that illusion.
Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 and transformed it into an Iranian forward base. The result was tens of thousands of rockets fired at Israel, repeated wars, and, ultimately, the barbarism of Oct. 7, 2023. When Jews left Gaza, death and destruction entered in their place.
Gaza's Jewish history
Jewish communities thrived in Gaza during the Second Temple period and in the centuries that followed. Archaeological remains, including an ancient synagogue mosaic depicting King David, testify to a flourishing Jewish presence there during the Byzantine era.
Gaza is not foreign soil. Jewish history there stretches back more than three millennia. Indeed, the very name Gaza – Azza in Hebrew – echoes through our sacred texts. It lies within the territory promised to Abraham’s descendants in the Book of Genesis. It was a place where Samson fought the Philistines and where Jewish sovereignty and settlement persisted through the eras of the judges, kings, and Hasmoneans.
In later centuries, Gaza was home to prominent rabbis and scholars, including Rabbi Israel Najara (1555-1625), the renowned poet and author of the Shabbat hymn “Kah Ribon Olam,” who served as Gaza's chief rabbi.
A small but vibrant Jewish community continued to live there into the 20th century, engaging in trade and agriculture, until the 1929 Arab riots forced its members to flee and the British Mandatory authorities prevented them from returning.
Hence, the Jewish return after 1967, culminating in the flourishing communities of Gush Katif, was not an act of colonialism. It was the restoration of an ancient Jewish presence.
The pioneers of Gush Katif did what Jews have always done. They made the desert bloom, built schools and yeshivas, raised families, and lived with dignity. They proved that Jewish settlement and agricultural innovation could flourish even under extraordinarily difficult security conditions.
The case for rebuilding Jewish life in Gaza now rests on two truths.
The first is that Gaza is part of the Land of Israel. No amount of international pressure or historical revisionism can erase that fundamental fact.
The second is that resettlement is the most effective means of extracting a concrete price from Hamas.
A hollow victory
After the atrocities of Oct. 7 – the murder of more than 1,200 people, the rape and torture of civilians, and the abduction of hostages ranging from infants to the elderly – vague declarations of “victory” ring hollow.
Thousands of Israelis who survived Oct. 7 deserve more than promises that such a massacre will never happen again. They deserve policies that make it impossible to repeat.
A permanent Jewish presence in Gaza would create strategic depth, reinforce Israel’s control of the territory, improve intelligence gathering, and deny Hamas the opportunity to regenerate.
Hamas launched Oct. 7 believing that mass murder would weaken Israel’s resolve and ultimately drive Jews from their homeland. If Israel merely destroys tunnels and eliminates terrorists before eventually withdrawing once again, Hamas will claim that violence paid.
But if the consequence of its attack is the restoration of Jewish communities in Gaza, the message will be unmistakable: Every assault on Israel will strengthen rather than diminish the Jewish hold on the Land of Israel.
Hamas’s aggression must therefore carry a territorial cost that cannot be reversed.
Resettlement would ensure that Hamas pays not only through the destruction of its terrorist infrastructure but through the irreversible return of Jewish life to the very soil from which it sought to eradicate the Jews. This is deterrence through presence.
Every new home built in Gaza would stand as a monument to Jewish resilience and a repudiation of Hamas’s ideology of annihilation.
The idea of resettling Gaza, once dismissed as fringe, is steadily moving into the mainstream. A growing number of Knesset members and government ministers have openly called for the restoration of Jewish communities there.
On the ground, the public is ahead of the politicians. Thousands of Israelis are expected to march this Sunday calling for a return to Gaza. Their message is simple: The mistakes of 2005 must not be repeated.
These Israelis refuse to accept that Jewish blood is cheap or that any portion of the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland must remain forever off-limits to Jews.
The timing is no coincidence.
We are in the Nine Days, when we mourn the destruction of the Temples on Tisha B’Av and the long chain of exile and catastrophe that followed.
Tisha B’Av is a day of mourning, but it also contains the seeds of hope. It reminds us that from the depths of destruction can emerge redemption and rebuilding. Our sages teach that the Messiah is born amid the ruins of Tisha B’Av.
Jewish history repeatedly demonstrates that redemption begins when Jews recover the confidence to return to the places from which they were driven.
What better response to a tragedy of our own making than to reverse it? And what better way to honor the victims of Oct. 7 than to ensure that the land from which their murderers emerged can never again serve as a base for terror? The victims of Oct. 7 cannot be brought back. But we can ensure that their sacrifice forever changes the map of the Middle East.
The government must now translate military achievement into strategic victory. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has an opportunity to reverse one of the gravest strategic mistakes in Israel’s modern history. He and his ministers must seize it.
The familiar excuses – international pressure, legal concerns, and domestic political considerations – ring hollow after the price Israel has already paid.
Bold action is not recklessness. It is responsibility.
Israel possesses the military strength and the growing political will to resettle Gaza. The only question is whether its leaders can summon the courage of the pioneers who once built Gush Katif and of the marchers now calling for its return.
Imagine Jewish children once again filling neighborhoods where terrorists plotted massacres. Imagine greenhouses replacing rocket factories and tunnel entrances. Imagine synagogues and schools rising where Hamas embedded itself among civilians and transformed homes, hospitals, and mosques into instruments of war.
That is not fantasy. It is the logical outcome of a war Israel did not choose but must finish on its own terms.
The era of retreat is over. The time has come to resettle Gaza because it is part of the Land of Israel, and because Hamas must pay a price it cannot afford to ignore.
May this Tisha B’Av mark not only mourning for what was lost but the beginning of the return to what must be reclaimed.
The writer served as deputy communications director under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.