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/ BARAK / 112 then in response to Hamas rocket fire into Israel. The moral: Arik was wrong to withdraw. But the Islamists’ ascendancy was happening anyway. After all, it was Hamas attacks that provided the spearhead of the intifada of terror launched in the wake of Camp David. Arafat’s own influence was also inexorably on the wane by the time he passed away, in Paris, at the end of 2004, to be succeeded by Abu Mazen. I do not know of a single senior figure in Israel with any military experience who believes that we would be more secure today if we still had thousands of soldiers and settlers inside Gaza. Surprised though I was by Arik’s decision to leave, I had no doubt that the fundamental security judgment he was making — that a disengagement was in Israel’s own interest — was the right one. I was encouraged, too, by his parallel announcement of a small, token withdrawal from a few small West Bank settlements. My regret at the time was that he did not go further toward the kind of major West Bank disengagement I’d been arguing for, and that even in Gaza the pullout seemed insufficiently prepared or thought out. The model, I believed, should have been our withdrawal from Lebanon — involving detailed prior consultation with, and political support from, the UN and key international allies. I also felt it was critically important to ensure that, while we would obviously need offshore patrols to prevent arms and munitions from getting in, we allowed and encouraged an environment in which the Gazan economy could function and grow after we left. None of that happened. Though we left Gaza, we effectively sealed off and blockaded one of the most densely populated, economically strapped and politically febrile strips of land on the face of the earth. Still, I did see it as an important first step toward the kind of wider disengagement that would prioritize Israel’s own security interests, and political and social cohesiveness, until and unless conditions allowed a for a serious new effort for a final peace deal. I was heartened when Shimon led Labor back into Arik’s coalition at the start of 2005 to ensure he’d have the support necessary to go through with the Gaza withdrawal. And while I did make a brief attempt to return as party leader later in the year, when it was clear I wasn’t going to win, I threw my support behind Shimon and against the other challenger, the longtime labor- union leader Amir Peretz, who was running on a platform to take Labor out of Sharon’s government. But Peretz won the leadership election. He did leave the cabinet, forcing Arik to call an early election for March 2006. And that, along with the most ambitious and 398 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028246