What a difference 20 years can make.

It was precisely two decades ago this month, on February 20, 2005, that the cabinet, under then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, voted 17-5 to uproot thousands of Jews from their homes in Gaza in what the media euphemistically referred to as the "Disengagement Plan."

Six months later, defying strategic logic, Jewish history, and basic morality, as well as common sense, Israel pulled out of Gaza and turned it over to our enemies, setting the stage for the eventual Hamas takeover and all the horrors that followed.

A total of 21 Jewish communities were destroyed, and their 10,000 residents were forced to leave the lives, businesses, and homes they had struggled so heroically to build.

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Last week, a potentially historic bill was introduced to the US Congress, one that could lay the groundwork for a momentous and long-awaited change in American policy toward Israel.

On January 31, Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY, 24th District), alongside Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), submitted the RECOGNIZING Judea and Samaria Act (capitalized in its official name), which would require all official US government documents to use the term "Judea and Samaria" rather than the "West Bank."

The pair had originally put forward the proposed legislation in December, toward the end of the 118th Congress, and have now resubmitted it after the 119th Congress commenced its term in January.

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Early last month, shortly after the fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, Israel took a step that dramatically altered the strategic landscape of the entire region.

Quietly and without any prior indications, the IDF entered the buffer zone on the Golan Heights separating Israel and Syria and liberated the highest peak of Mount Hermon, raising the blue-and-white banner over the tallest mountain in either country.

And while Israeli officials were quick to insist that the move was temporary, it would be a grave mistake to forgo this territory.

For both strategic and historical reasons, the Jewish state should annex all of the newly acquired parts of Mount Hermon and formally incorporate them into Israel.

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Last week, Israel made one of its gravest strategic mistakes since the war began on Oct. 7 last year.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the Jewish state agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon, prompting shouts of joy and sighs of relief in underground Hezbollah bunkers throughout Beirut.

Sure, Israel gave the terrorist organization an unprecedented pummeling in recent months, degrading its military arsenal, weakening its command structure, and delivering a blow to its fighting image.

But it is precisely now, when Hezbollah is down but not out, that Israel can and should finish the job rather than retreating to its corner like a boxer in the ring in between rounds.

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As the IDF battles to clear southern Lebanon of Hezbollah terrorists, it is worth highlighting an intriguing historical fact, one that many seem to have forgotten.

Having grown up with an international boundary between the Jewish state and our neighbors to the north, we take it for granted that this is how it has always been and should be.

But the truth is that the current border between Israel and Lebanon is little more than a century old and is entirely artificial, a relic of a time when European colonialists whimsically drew lines on maps over a bottle of brandy in smoke-filled rooms.

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