If Israel had never withdrawn from Gaza in 2005, it would have saved well over a thousand lives and tens of billions of dollars ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, May 26, 2025

If Israel had never withdrawn from Gaza in 2005, it would have saved well over a thousand lives and tens of billions of dollars

The IDF plans to occupy large parts of Gaza as the only way to get rid of Hamas.

What would have happened in Israel never withdrew from Gaza in 2005?

It seems likely that the wars in 2009, 2012, 2014 and others would never have happened. It seems likely that October 7 would never have happened. There would have been other terror attacks, especially against the Jews who still lived in Gaza, but they would not have had anything close to the death toll of October 7. Hundreds, and probably well over a thousand, lived would have been saved.

(One part that I cannot estimate is if Hamas had sent their larger rockets into the Jewish communities in Gaza in the intervening years. There would have been no time to run to shelters so the death tolls then would have been as much as in the dozens per attack. But on the other hand, Hamas would have had a much harder time manufacturing or importing those larger rockets if the IDF was still in Gaza. However, we can be sure that there would have been more road ambushes of civilian cars and infiltration attempts.)

How about monetary cost?

Synagogue burned in Gaza in 2025

So far the Gaza war has cost about $67 billion. The other wars were another few billion, and the withdrawal itself cost $2 billion. So that is well over $70 billion Israel would not have spent.

As far as the annual cost of the IDF staying in Gaza for the past 21 years, the best estimate I could find came from a critic of the occupation policy in 2005, Dr. Shlomo Swirski. Using his numbers and estimating only the Gaza components, the annual cost in 2004 was about $1.1 billion. Even if that would have doubled over time, that would still be no more than $40 billion cost over the 21 years.

That number sounded really high in 2005, but now we see that the expenses of not staying in Gaza were at least $30 billion higher., more likely $40 billion.

At the time, I thought that withdrawal from Gaza made sense. The cost of protecting a relatively small number of Israelis who lived in Gaza seemed to be disproportionate to their numbers, over $120,000 per resident per year. I could understand then why most Israelis would be resentful of the army spending so much to protect them. Maybe it would have made sense to evacuate the people but keep the military, although politically that would have been difficult.

But now with hindsight, "occupation" was a bargain, and if Israel had stayed in Gaza - even with the residents - many priceless lives, as well as tens of billions of dollars so far, would have been saved.