Twenty years after Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, the war with Hamas drags on and Israeli troops control most of the territory; disengagement, once seen as a step toward peace, deepened political divides and boosted Hamas’s power; many now believe Israel will maintain a long-term grip on Gaza.
Twenty years ago, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, dismantling 21 Jewish settlements and pulling out its forces. The Friday anniversary of the start of the landmark disengagement comes as Israel is mired in a nearly two-year war with Hamas that has devastated the Palestinian territory, and means it is likely to keep troops there long into the future.
Israel’s disengagement, which also included removing four settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s controversial attempt to jump-start negotiations with the Palestinians. But it bitterly divided Israeli society and led to the empowerment of Hamas.
The emotional images of Jews being ripped from their homes by Israeli soldiers galvanised Israel’s far-right and settler movements. The anger helped them organise and increase their political influence, accounting in part for the rise of hard-line politicians.
On Thursday, Smotrich boasted of a settlement expansion plan east of Jerusalem that will “bury” the idea of a future Palestinian state.
Not an end
For Palestinians, even if they welcomed the disengagement, it didn’t end Israel’s control over their lives.
Soon after, Hamas won elections in 2006, then drove out the Palestinian Authority in a violent takeover. Israel and Egypt imposed a closure on the territory. Though its intensity varied over the years, the closure helped impoverish the population and entrenched a painful separation from Palestinians in the West Bank.
Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians claim all three territories for a future independent state.
Israel couldn’t justify the military or economic cost of maintaining the heavily fortified settlements in Gaza, explained Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Misgav Institute and the Institute for National Security Studies think tanks. There were around 8,000 Israeli settlers and 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza in 2005.
By contrast, there are more than 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, most living in developed settlement blocs that have generally received more support from Israeli society, Mr. Michael said.
Because Israel withdrew unilaterally, it enhanced Hamas’s stature among Palestinians in Gaza.
“This contributed to Hamas’ win in the elections in 2006, because they leveraged it and introduced it as a very significant achievement,” Mr. Michael said.
Footage of the violence between Israeli settlers and Israeli soldiers also created an “open wound” in Israeli society, he said.
“I don’t think any government will be able to do something like that in the future,” he said. That limits any flexibility over settlements in the West Bank if negotiations over a two-state solution with the Palestinians ever resume.
“Disengagement will never happen again, this is a price we’re paying as a society, and a price we’re paying politically,” he said.
‘Willing to build’
Anita Tucker, now 79, was part of the first nine Jewish families that moved to the Gaza Strip in 1976. She and her husband and their three kids lived in an Israeli army outpost near what is today Deir al-Balah, while the settlement of Netzer Hazoni was constructed.
At first, relations were good with their Palestinian neighbours, she said, and they worked hard to build their home and a “beautiful community.”
She can still recall the moment, 20 years ago, when 1,000 Israeli soldiers arrived at the gate to the settlement to remove the approximately 400 residents. Some of her neighbours lit their houses on fire in protest.
“Obviously it was a mistake to leave. The lives of the Arabs became much worse, and the lives of the Jews became much, much worse, with rockets and October 7,” she said, referring to the decades of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel and the date in 2023 of the Hamas attack that launched the ongoing war.
Despite the passage of time, her family still is “yearning and longing for their home,” she said.
“It’s hard to believe, because of all the terrible things that happened that we predicted, but we’re willing to build there again,” said Ms. Tucker.
Many Palestinians believe Mr. Sharon carried out the withdrawal so Israel could focus on cementing its control in the West Bank through settlement building.
Now some believe more direct Israeli occupation is returning to Gaza. After 22 months of war, Israeli troops control more than 75% of Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks of maintaining security control long term after the war.
Amjad Shawa, the director of the Palestinian NGO Network, said he doesn’t believe Mr. Netanyahu will repeat Mr. Sharon’s full withdrawal. Instead, he expects the military to continue controlling large swaths of Gaza through “buffer zones.”
Israeli former Major General Dan Harel, who was head of the country’s Southern Command during the disengagement, remembers the toll of protecting a few thousand settlers. There were an average of 10 attacks per day against Israeli settlers and soldiers.
Mr. Harel said the decision to evacuate Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip was the right one, but that Israel missed crucial opportunities.
He also sharply criticised Israel’s policy of containment toward Hamas after disengagement. “We had such a blind spot with Hamas, we didn’t see them morph from a terror organisation into an organised military, with battalions and commanders and infrastructure,” he said.
The October 7 attack, Israel’s largest military intelligence failure to date, was not a result of the disengagement, said Mr. Harel. “The main issue is what we did in the 18 years in between.”
