Israel cannot imprison two million Gazans without paying a cruel price

GIDEON LEVY

Behind all this is Israeli arrogance. The idea that we can do whatever we want and we will never pay for it or be punished. We will continue undisturbed.

We will arrest, kill, harass, dispossess and protect the settlers engaged in their pogroms. We will visit the Tomb of Joseph, the Tomb of Othniel and the Altar of Joshua in the Palestinian territories and, of course, the Temple Mount: more than 5.000 Jews on Sukkot alone.

We will shoot innocent people, gouge out people's eyes and smash their faces, expel them, confiscate them, rob them, drag people out of their beds, carry out ethnic cleansing and, of course, continue the incredible siege of the Strip. Gaza, and we will assume that everything will be fine.

We will build a terrifying barrier around Gaza - the underground wall alone cost 3.000 billion shekels ($765 million) - and we will be safe. We will trust the geniuses of the army's 8200 cyber intelligence unit and the agents of the Shin Bet security service, who know everything. They will notify us in time.

We will move half an army from the Gaza border to the Hawara border in the West Bank just to protect far-right legislator Zvi Sukkot and the settlers. And everything will be fine, both in Hawara and at the Erez border crossing into Gaza.

It turns out that even the most sophisticated and expensive obstacle in the world can be overcome with a smoking old excavator when the motivation is great. This arrogant barrier can be crossed by bicycle and moped despite the billions invested in it and all the famous experts and fat contractors.

We thought we could continue going down to Gaza, scatter a few crumbs in the form of tens of thousands of Israeli work permits - always contingent on good behavior - and continue keeping them in prison. We will make peace with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and the Palestinians will be forgotten until they are erased, as many Israelis would like.

We will continue to hold thousands of Palestinian prisoners, sometimes without trial, most of them political prisoners. And we will not agree to discuss their release even when they have been in prison for decades.

We will tell them that only through force will their prisoners see freedom. We thought that we would continue to arrogantly reject any attempt at a diplomatic solution, just because we don't want to deal with all that, and that everything would go on like this forever.

Once again it was proven that this is not the case. A few hundred armed Palestinians broke through the barrier and invaded Israel in a way that no Israeli imagined possible. A few hundred people showed that it is impossible to imprison 2 million people forever without paying a cruel price.

At the same time that the smoking old Palestinian bulldozer ripped through the world's smartest barrier on Saturday, it ripped through Israel's arrogance and complacency. And this is also how she ripped apart the idea that it is enough to occasionally attack Gaza with suicide drones - and sell them to half the world - to maintain security.

On Saturday, Israel saw images it had never seen before. Palestinian vehicles patrolling their cities, cyclists entering the gates of Gaza. These images tear apart that arrogance. The Palestinians of Gaza have decided that they are willing to pay any price for a moment of freedom. Is there hope in it? No. Will Israel learn its lesson? No.

On Saturday they were already talking about razing entire neighborhoods of Gaza, occupying the Strip and punishing Gaza "like it has never been punished before." But Israel has not stopped punishing Gaza since 1948, not even for a moment.