On September 1, 2005, Egypt and Israel concluded an agreement on governing the security of the border area between Egypt and Gaza once IDF troops left as part of the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip. That border area included the Rafah crossing, and that agreement marked the first time Israel had consented to having a third party take responsibility for Palestinian border security.

It got off to a bad start.

As CBS reported less than two weeks later: “as soon as Israel pulled out, border security collapsed. Thousands of Palestinians crossed the border and Egyptian guards appeared helpless.”

Nor was it just security around the crossing that collapsed. Contrary to the popular narrative of American Jews playing a counterproductive role in the peace process, U.S. Jewish donors had bought up thousands of greenhouses and other infrastructure from exiting settlers and then transferred that infrastructure to the Palestinian Authority. And yet: “Palestinians looted dozens of greenhouses, walking off with irrigation hoses, water pumps and plastic sheeting in a blow to fledgling efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip.… In some instances, there was no security and in others, police even joined the looters, witnesses said.”

In other words, anarchy.

Back to the border. From that 2005 report: “On Monday, masked Hamas fighters were seen on the Palestinian side of the border, with some crossing over to the Egyptian side.” One reason the Egyptians didn’t try very hard to control the crossing? Because they wanted to get rid of their own Palestinian residents: “The Egyptians also want to allow Palestinians on the Egyptian side of Rafah to move permanently to the Gaza side to rejoin families, the officials said.”

Got the picture? This is what it looked like when Israel last relinquished the Rafah crossing and the Philadelphi corridor along the border.

It is now 19 years later to the day since that CBS story was posted on September 13, 2005. And we are having the same conversation about whether and how Israel should relinquish control of the crossing, what that will mean for Palestinian self-governance, and whether Cairo can be truly counted on to show that when Israel hands over security to anyone else, all hell doesn’t break loose.

We’re having this conversation precisely because history tells us that when Israel hands over security, all hell breaks loose.

Those were heady days, back in 2005. The disengagement from Gaza was a major concession to the Palestinian Authority. Not only did Israel get nothing in return from the PA, but the Bush administration smartly advised Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to disengage from part of the West Bank as well in return for crucial guarantees that the U.S. would henceforth officially recognize the legitimacy of some settlements remaining in Israel’s hands in the event of a two-state solution.

In one fell swoop, the Bush and Sharon administrations catapulted the peace process forward and put the ball in both the Palestinians’ and Egyptians’ courts. Could Israel rely on anyone else’s cooperation to make the region freer and more secure?

In the intervening 19 years, we got our answer. Israel is back in control of the crossing because Egypt’s stewardship of the border area resulted in the worst attack on Israel’s homeland since the end of the War of Independence in 1949.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is insisting on retaining operational control of the Philadelphi corridor at least until it can be provably and permanently removed from Hamas’s control and there is a security regime in place that will not facilitate periodic atrocities against Israeli civilians. This has, we are told by the New York Times today, “destabilized a once-strong security partnership between Egypt and Israel.”

But is that what’s destabilized it? It’s worth once again considering the mindset of regional leaders at the time of the 2005 agreement.

The current Israeli ambassador to the U.S. is Michael Herzog, brother of Israeli President Isaac Herzog. In 2005, Michael Herzog contemplated what would happen if Egypt failed to uphold its end of the border agreement. Herzog predicted that an Israeli military return to the corridor would be seen as a major affront to Egypt and would not have external diplomatic support. Instead, “It is more likely that a porous border will result in a toughened Israeli stance regarding the opening and control of the other border crossings under discussion and making it harder for people and goods to enter Israel from Gaza. Here, the security concerns will be compounded by economic ones — the collapse of the Israel-PA unified customs regime long applied along the PA’s borders will require the establishment of a new independent Israeli customs regime along the Israel-Gaza border.”

This was prescient. The international community wouldn’t countenance Israel going back into an area it left even if its security depended on it and even if it were a result of the Egyptian (or Palestinian) abrogation of a written agreement. Therefore, Israel would have to tighten security elsewhere and more closely regulate the entrance of goods into Gaza at any other entry point.

And what happened when Israel did so? The international community complained not about Egypt’s failure—the cause of the situation—but about Israel’s compensating for Egypt’s failure by using preventive measures rather than traditional military ones.

The lesson was that the world will complain about any Israeli action whatsoever. And it will not hold anyone responsible for abrogating international agreements, but it will condemn and possibly sanction Israel for taking nonmilitary actions to counteract another country’s abrogation.

Seen in this light, the argument currently being made to Netanyahu—that Israel could always just “go back into” Rafah as needed—is ludicrous beyond comprehension. Israel’s critics are asking it to submit itself willingly to the deadly repetition of history. And they are fully aware of the implications.