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Evacuation of the Kfar Darom settlement in 2005
Photo: ZUMA Wire / IMAGO
On August 22, 2005, I was among the soldiers who closed the gate as we left the Netzarim settlement in the Gaza Strip for the last time.
We served there for a year and a half - a period that can only be described as hell.
As a soldier assigned to protect the settlements of Gush Katif - Gaza's main 21-settlement bloc - I saw and experienced firsthand the price paid for clinging to isolated enclaves in the midst of a hostile environment.
I lost friends when Hamas fighters invaded our military outposts.
I hitchhiked with settler mothers who drove at 150 km/h on the way home with their children in the back seat to avoid being shot at.
Back then, on that summer day in 2005, I believed that I would put all of this behind me.
Now the Israeli settler right and its false prophets are doing everything in their power to reopen the gates to hell.
Recent polls show they have the support of at least 25 percent of the Israeli public.
As a filmmaker and anti-occupation activist, I have spent the last ten years of my career appealing to the moral sensibilities of Israelis by highlighting the deep injustices that Palestinians endure every day.
I had hoped that by evoking empathy, my compatriots would realize that ongoing occupation - which leads to untold human suffering - is not the right path.
Now, in the new and horrific post-October 7 reality, it seems that there is no longer any room for empathy in Israeli society.
Therefore, it is time to show the other side of the coin: the terrible price that we as Israelis pay for the politics of domination over other people.
It's not just about the Palestinians, it's about us too.
As a former occupying soldier, my comrades and I have felt the full weight of this price in the Gaza Strip.
We have a duty to speak out as calls for the repopulation of the Gaza Strip grow louder in Israel.
Those who refuse to see the humanity of Palestinians at least owe it to us to listen to the soldiers who protected their settlements.
They need to know what we sacrificed before they drag us back there.
Hamas' atrocities on October 7, which made our worst nightmares a reality, have left every Israeli, including me, deeply saddened.
Now settler leaders are exploiting our grief and anger to promote the insane idea of settling what they see as part of their biblical birthright, while parroting the old party line that settlement is a security necessity.
An invitation to a right-wing rally calling for the re-establishment of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip in early November featured a picture of two carefree girls on an empty beach.
In reality, if you zoom out, you see a blood-soaked land engulfed in fire and smoke.
Thousands of concrete barriers and fences separated these girls from the people who paid with their lives for the Israeli civilian presence in Gaza - especially the Palestinians in the surrounding refugee camps, who live in houses riddled with bullet holes;
but also us, the soldiers who were assigned to protect the settlements.
This enthusiasm for the messianic redemption that the right-wing settlers so desperately desire, and the inevitable human price that must be paid for it, will surprise only those who were not there last time.
But I experienced the horror of Gush Katif firsthand.
I remember.
The settler right often refers to these settlements as “the country’s protective vests.”
But in reality we, the soldiers, were their protective vests.
There was nothing we didn't do to the Palestinians to ensure the security of the settlements: we conducted dozens of operations right in the middle of their busy neighborhoods.
We entered their homes and turned them into military posts.
We destroyed their properties and orchards around the settlements to create buffer zones.
If there was a choice between disrupting the lives of the Palestinians or the comfort of the settlers, it was clear which way we would choose.
Hamas was already present in the Gaza Strip long before Israel destroyed its settlements and withdrew its forces in 2005.
There were rockets, mortar shells, roadside booby traps and tunnels like the one from which Hamas blew up the IDF outpost of Orhan in 2005.
Rocket and grenade fire were commonplace, but they were only part of the story.
Not every soldier has nine lives, but apparently I do.
Once I was shot at on my way to the toilet while moving between an armored vehicle and a military post.
Another time, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at me while I was sitting in a vehicle on one of our missions.
Luckily she missed me.
I was standing right next to a booby trap when grenades were thrown at me, but somehow they didn't explode.
Once, as I was about to arrest a Hamas activist, he blew himself up next to a Shin Bet (Israeli domestic intelligence service) officer.
I still remember being covered in pieces of his flesh and my ears ringing from the deafening explosion.
I began to wonder what the hell I was risking my life for.
Today, Israel's Messianic Right speaks openly and frankly about its aspirations.
Knesset member Simcha Rothman, one of the architects of last year's judicial reform, said we would know we had won "when a Jewish child can walk in Gaza without fearing for his life."
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a minister in the Defense Ministry, speaks openly about longer Israeli control of the Gaza Strip.
Make no mistake: if we are not careful, it will happen.
How many know that the Knesset repealed the disengagement law in the northern West Bank earlier this year, paving the way for the return of settlers to previously evacuated areas?
The same lawmakers who introduced this bill also recently introduced a bill to repeal the Gaza disengagement law.
First we'll be told it's "just a security zone," and then a settler outpost will emerge there.
It will likely be named after one of the decimated kibbutz communities near the Gaza border.
A short time later we will learn that the military is providing security and that there are already satellite outposts in the area.
We cannot allow ourselves to avoid the question of what happens after the war.
We need to reflect on our vision for a free, secure and sustainable life here for both Palestinians and Israelis.
For too long, the Israeli public has allowed itself to be corrupted by messianic ideas under the pretense that the settlements are essential to security.
We shouldn't believe that.
The settlements did not protect Israel - we as soldiers protected the settlements, always at the expense of the Palestinians.
The settlers' dream was our nightmare.
This must not happen again.
The reality that led to the murderous Hamas attack and the terrible war is the reality before October 7th - a reality of occupation, bloody conflict, suffocating siege in Gaza and creeping annexation in the West Bank.
The only path to real peace and security for both peoples is not back to the reality of October 7th.
We need a genuine political process between Israel and the Palestinian people, in cooperation with the international community and the peoples of the region.
The terrible tragedy of the current war can be transformed into an opportunity for peace.
We should now adopt a pragmatic plan that addresses the existing reality, the same reality that could have been avoided if the Israeli government had committed to the withdrawal of the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state years ago.
However, this plan can only be implemented if the extreme right-wing government is replaced.
What we need first is an immediate ceasefire, followed by the exchange of hostages and prisoners - all for all.
This confidence-building step would open a horizon of hope for both nations.
The people who have to decide who will rule Gaza are the Palestinians.
Based on this reality, the process should end with free and democratic elections in all Palestinian territories - the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
In order to ensure the safety of the residents of the Gaza Strip and southern Israel and to rebuild the Gaza Strip, an international coalition of various countries must be formed.
Under the auspices of the UN, this coalition was intended to act as a border buffer between Israel and the residents of the Gaza Strip.
It was intended to prevent firing from Gaza into Israel and vice versa.
And it should free the Gaza Strip from the humanitarian catastrophe it finds itself in.
As part of the coalition negotiations, discussions about the exact permanent solution are legitimate as long as both parties agree.
I believe in the model of a two-state confederation propagated by “One Country for All,” which takes into account both threatened minorities, the Jewish-Israeli as a global minority and the Palestinians as a local minority.
Both have space and enough historical and moral reasons to safely remain there.