Two days before the 100th anniversary of the publication of "On the Iron Wall," the well-known position article written by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Minister Gideon Sa'ar published a post on his social media pages on Thursday regarding the article, which he defined as "one of the most important in the history of the Zionist movement and thought, perhaps the most important" – linking it to the "iron swords" war in which Israel has been engaged in the past month.
"Voluntary Arab acceptance of Zionism and Jewish settlement was defined in it as 'delusion.' The conclusion from this is that settlement can continue to develop only under the auspices of a protective force. "As long as the Arabs have even a glimmer of hope of getting rid of us, they will not sell their hope, neither for some sweet words nor for any nutritious slice of bread in butter. A living people agrees to concessions on such enormous and fateful questions only when it has no hope left.' In the past 100 years, the Zionist and Israeli iron wall has been built layer after tier, with Israel's security strength at its center. Peace and normalization agreements with Arab countries, beginning with the peace treaty with Egypt, were signed under the auspices of the Iron Wall. On October 7, the iron wall was breached," he wrote.
"His breach is a dangerous event in the apprehension of our enemies and neighbors. The task of our generation will be to rebuild the iron wall and plug any breach in it. The path to this is through determination to achieve victory in the current campaign, but after that (almost) everything will have to change. The discourse of responsibility is an important discourse, it cannot replace the discourse of essence," he added.
Israeli Air Force contact during airstrikes in the Gaza Strip // Photo: IDF Spokesperson
"We will have to return to the activist security concept of David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin," Sa'ar continued. "A security concept based primarily on initiative and offensiveness rather than defense; on preemptive strikes instead of estimates of when the enemy will attack; On transferring the war to enemy territory and removing it from equilibrium. We will have to reiterate that in the foreseeable future, any territory in the Land of Israel that was ceded to the Palestinians, unilaterally or by agreement, will certainly become an armed base for savage aggression against Israel and its citizens, as happened in the past. Therefore, under no circumstances should the process of withdrawals be renewed – even from any territory that is not under our control, it is impossible to truly disengage from security responsibility and ongoing damage to force buildup. The defense budget must increase dramatically in the coming years, the IDF must have a larger army, and the permanent military presence on the conflict lines must be broad."
The minister also wrote: "Jewish settlement throughout the Land of Israel must be strengthened, with an emphasis on the conflict lines. We must return to the classic Zionist concept of population dispersal instead of continuing to shrink into a Hadera-Gedera state. A real confrontation with the problem of governance in the south and north is also waiting around the corner. We must work for a great increase, and that is within our reach. These are just some of the policies necessary for the restoration of the Iron Wall. The cycle of normalization with Arab countries can exist and truly progress only under the auspices of a strong iron wall. We paid an unbearably heavy price in order to come to our senses, and we will have to remember them and their lessons even on better and quieter days than these."
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