‘I wish Gaza would be swallowed by the sea’: Ben-Gurion’s 1956 warning

70 years after the Suez Crisis, Israeli archives opened this summer reveal the founding prime minister David Ben Gurion warning that continued rule over Gaza would lead to terrorism, international isolation, an arms embargo and profound moral damage. Ynet News tells the story.

'He also urged his commanders to understand how Gaza’s residents themselves viewed Israel. They were not simply an abstract hostile population, he said, but people who believed their land and homes had been taken from them and were now occupied by people they regarded as strangers.

'And Israel would not be confronting Gaza’s population alone, he warned. The Arab world stood behind them, while the United Nations and much of the international community regarded continued Israeli rule there as illegal.

'Ben-Gurion argued that the consequences were not only diplomatic or military, but moral. If Israel remained in Gaza while facing prolonged resistance and condemnation from abroad, he said, the damage could ultimately undermine the country from within.

'“The state could not withstand it,” he warned. The danger, he said, was not necessarily military destruction but moral erosion. Israel’s existence depended in part on maintaining what he called its moral right to exist, both in the eyes of its own citizens and internationally. If that disappeared, he argued, Israel itself could not remain secure.'

Believe that in 1967 the Israelis were attacked by the Arabs. This is not true. The Israelis launched the attack and captured the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and theoccupation of those territories has been a victory  from which Israel may never recover