“If Israel would simply leave the ‘Occupied Territories’ then there would be peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
There is one major flaw with that suggestion and demand which can be heard in parliaments and college campuses worldwide.
Israel already left one of those territories and the result was more terror and bloodshed on all sides.
The Gaza Strip, on Israel’s southwest border, was under Egyptian control from 1948-1967. During the Six Day War in June 1967, Egypt bombarded Israeli towns from Gaza. Israeli forces had no choice but to enter the Strip to protect its citizens by defeating those who were firing on Israel. That left Israel in control of the area. The international community labeled Israel as an “occupier” and called for Israel to leave the region.
Related reading: The Six-Day War: A Concise Timeline
Over the course of the next 40 years, 9,000 Israelis moved into 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip, creating beautiful communities along the beachfront and developing greenhouses and flourishing farming businesses.
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In April 2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was one of the generals on the front lines fighting Egypt in the Six Day War, made the official announcement of his Gaza Disengagement plan – the very difficult decision for Israel to leave the Gaza Strip – including forcing all 9,000 Israelis living there to leave their homes.
In his April 14, 2004 letter to US President George W. Bush, Sharon explained that “there exists no Palestinian partner with whom to advance peacefully toward a settlement” and, therefore, Israel must take unilateral action to address the conflict with the Palestinians. Sharon explained that in the absence of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, this move would strengthen Israel’s security and would improve its international standing.
It was a major risk. Palestinian terrorists were already firing rockets into Israeli cities and if the IDF left the area and wasn’t there to crack down on the terrorists, this could leave Israel exposed to exponentially more rocket attacks. But the hope was that the Gaza Disengagement would motivate the Palestinians to lay down their arms and build a successful, flourishing society filled with hope and opportunity. Israel even left greenhouses in Gaza standing to give the Palestinians living there the chance to make an income and build an economy.
The Gaza Disengagement plan faced significant disapproval in the Israeli public and Knesset. Sharon lost a majority of his Likud party and had to bring the Labor party into his coalition to enable government support for the plan. There were significant demonstrations throughout Israel in the months and weeks leading up to the plan’s execution.
Likud MK Benjamin Netanyahu who resigned from the government in protest of the plan on August 7, shortly before its implementation, and, in light of Sharon’s unwillingness to bring it to a national referendum, told the parliament that:
Only we in the Knesset are able to stop this evil. Everything that the Knesset has decided, it is also capable of changing. I am calling on all those who grasp the danger: Gather strength and do the right thing. I don’t know if the entire move can be stopped, but it still might be stopped in its initial stages. Don’t give the Palestinians guns, don’t give them rockets, don’t give them a seaport, and don’t give them a huge base for terror.
On August 15, Sharon once again told the Israeli public that he had hoped Israel could keep the Gaza settlements forever, but the reality provided no choice and stated: “It is out of strength and not weakness that we are taking this step.”
In a move which would have major security ramifications for Israel, the Knesset voted on August 31 to withdraw from the Gaza-Egypt border, changing the previous plan which called for Israeli control of that border. The Israeli leadership believed that an IDF presence on the Gaza-Egypt border would not give Israel the ability to say that the Strip was no longer “occupied” by Israeli forces. But leaving that border essentially opened it to the smuggling of arms – including missiles – into Gaza and these were used against Israel in the years following the disengagement.
Israel’s Gaza Disengagement plan was praised by the international community. US President George W. Bush announced on April 11, 2005 that
I strongly support Prime Minister Sharon’s courageous initiative to disengage from Gaza and part of the West Bank. The Prime Minister is willing to coordinate the implementation of the disengagement plan with the Palestinians. I urge the Palestinian leadership to accept his offer. By working together, Israelis and Palestinians can lay the groundwork for a peaceful transition.
The president announced that the US would give $50 million to the Palestinian Authority for new housing and infrastructure projects in the Gaza Strip.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan praised Sharon’s “courageous decision” and said he “believes that a successful disengagement should be the first step towards a resumption of the peace process.”
Ibrahim Gambari, the UN’s Under Secretary General for Political Affairs told the UN Security Council that
Israel has demonstrated that it has the requisite maturity to do what would be required to achieve lasting peace, and the Israeli Defense Forces has demonstrated their ability to discharge their mission with carefully calibrated restraint. Prime Minister Sharon should be commended for his determination and courage to carry out the disengagement in the face of forceful and strident internal opposition.
The process of removing 9,000 Israelis from their homes was not a simple one. Israel offered each family more than $200,000 to vacate their homes voluntarily. While many families chose to leave peacefully, thousands had to be forcibly removed from houses and synagogues. Powerful scenes emerged of sobbing Israelis being carried by four soldiers, and in some instances the soldiers themselves cried and even joined the residents for prayers prior to their evacuation.
There were some episodes of violence as residents and outsiders who came to give moral support barricaded themselves in synagogues and homes, leading to altercations prior to their removal. The emotional process took some time and the entire evacuation which included the demolition of all 2,800 residential buildings and the IDF removing all of its soldiers from the Strip was completed on September 12, 2005.
Israel also reinterred the 48 bodies that were buried in the Gush Katif cemetery and reburied them in locations which the families chose in Israel proper. The coffins were all draped in Israeli flags during the transfer and the families observed a one-day mourning period following the reburials.
It is important to understand what this evacuation meant for the thousands of law-abiding Israelis who built their homes and lives in the 21 Gaza Strip settlements. By 2007, only 56.8% of the evacuees had found jobs. And even for those who found work, the average monthly salary was NIS 5,380 (about $1,281), a 39% drop from their average monthly income before the disengagement. The families were moved to hotels before being moved to caravan mobile homes. Some remained in hotels for as long as half a year.
By the summer of 2014, nine years later, approximately 60% of evacuees were still living in the temporary caravans. On the positive side, eleven new towns had been completed, many given names reminiscent of their neighborhood names in Gaza, and unemployment had dropped to 18%.
It should be noted that Bedouin citizens of Dahaniya, which sat along the Israel-Gaza border asked to be evacuated and were resettled in the Israeli town of Arad. The village had cooperated with Israel for decades and the residents feared that the Palestinians in Gaza would punish them for this.
On September 21, 2005, Israel declared its border with the Gaza Strip to be an international one with a valid passport or other valid travel documents required to pass through any of the four border crossings. Israel, out of security concerns, continued to control Gaza’s coastline and airspace and reserved the right to enter Gaza for military operations when necessary. Egypt took control over the Gaza-Egypt border and Israel continued to provide Gaza with water, electricity, communication and sewage networks.
Immediately following Israel’s Gaza Disengagement, Palestinians entered the evacuated Israeli settlements firing gunshots into the air, setting off firecrackers and chanting anti-Israel slogans. The synagogues which were left behind were desecrated. Within 24 hours the Palestinian Authority bulldozed the synagogues that were not destroyed by the looters.
Sadly, the Palestinian mobs also ransacked the greenhouses which Israel left intact – looting their irrigation pipes, glass, plastic sheeting and water pumps.
And even more sadly, rather than turning the Gaza Strip into a free, open, capitalistic society, Hamas took it over a year later and rules the area as a strict Islamic dictatorship, choosing to use the billions of dollars in international aid to build terror infrastructure instead of helping its people.
For Israel, not having IDF soldiers in the Strip gave Palestinian terrorists free rein to launch tens of thousands of rockets into Israeli cities, compelling Israeli troops to enter Gaza to try to bring the rocket attacks to a halt – causing bloodshed among Israelis and Palestinians.
Related reading: Background Briefing: Israel’s Gaza Wars
Despite Israel uprooting 9,000 Israelis from their homes and removing all of its soldiers from the Gaza Strip, the United Nations and other international organizations still call it a “military occupation” because Israel maintains control over the Strip’s airspace, water borders, and six out of seven of its border crossings. But Israel only does so due to security concerns. It has no choice. The moment the Palestinian leadership in Gaza lays down its arms and ceases its calls and efforts to destroy Israel, the Palestinians can have full control over what enters their land.
Related reading: The Gaza Blockade: An Explainer
Polls at the time of the Gaza Disengagement indicated that a majority of Israelis supported the move. But now, after seeing how Israel has been bombarded with rockets from Gaza, most Israelis view it has having been a mistake and even more significantly, most Israelis are against any further unilateral withdrawals from disputed territories.
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