Playing "what if" with history is a tricky game, but we can more or less understand what would have happened if Israel had not withdrawn from Lebanon and Gaza. In Gaza it is simple and obvious. There were Qassam rockets before the withdrawal and they killed about a dozen people. As their accuracy improved, they would have killed a lot more people in the settlements. Hamas came to power because Arafat died, leaving a power vacuum. Everyone predicted that the PLO would fall apart without Arafat, but most of us did not draw the inevitable conclusions. Instead of fighting Hamas across the Green Line, with the tacit assent of most of the world, Israel would have been fighting Hamas inside Gaza, defending Israeli citizens inside Gaza, while the world condemned Zionist imperialist colonialist aggression and the Israeli occupation. Hundreds of settlers would have died and thousands of Palestinians. Eventually, the UN would have forced us out of Gaza. The Hamas, instead of being a rogue group subject to sanctions by the donor countries, would have been recognized as the legitimate government of the Palestinians.

In Lebanon too, we can imagine what would have happened if the IDF had stayed. There would have been no UN Security Council Resolution 1559 and no Cedar Revolution, such as it was. Lebanon would have remained even more a puppet of Syria and Iran than it is today. As the pressure on Syria and Iran mounted, they would have used Hezbollah to punish Israel. This would have included more raids on Israeli troops inside Lebanon, as well as launching of long range rockets, which can reach well beyond the narrow security zone. Israel would have been unable to respond, because the US and EU would have urged restraint and mediation, and Israel would have been forced to evacuate Lebanon.

As for "we told you so," let's remember who told whom what and when they told it. In the summer of 1967, Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz predicted that the occupation would spawn resistance, that the resistance would spawn terror, and that Israeli cities would no longer be safe. His predictions were sadly accurate. My personal acquaintance with Katyusha rockets did not come in this war. In the 1970s, I was a student living in Jerusalem. One morning a Katyusha rocket struck on Kaf-Tet beNovember street, a block from where I lived.

In Lebanon there is no Israeli occupation, but the Hezbollah was born during the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, and now it is part of the apparatus that Iran and Syria use to sabotage the peace process. Israel withdrew from Gaza and dismantled the settlements there, but Gaza remains under seige essentially. The seige cannot be lifted, because the Hamas and other groups would then import massive shipments of arms. Hamas too is part of the Iranian troublemaking apparatus. Like Hezbollah, it has signaled in every way possible that it will not end the "resistance" until it has ended the "occupation" of Haifa and and Tel Aviv. Once the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank let the toothpaste of Islamist radicalism out of the tube, it is very hard to put it back.

It is clearly not possible to make peace with Hamas or Hezbollah. It is equally clear that we must have peace, and we cannot have peace unless Israel is willing to end the occupation of the West Bank. Some say that Israel cannot end the occupation until Hamas and other extremists are beaten. Maybe it is equally true that Israel cannot beat Hamas and the other extremists until the occupation is ended.

"We told you so."