The Gaza disengagement, 2005

What happened

In 2004 the Israeli government announced a Disengagement Plan under which Israel would withdraw its military presence from the Gaza Strip and from several areas in the northern West Bank. ¹ The cabinet resolution approving it is dated June 6, 2004, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon addressed the Knesset on the plan on October 25, 2004. ¹ The Knesset approved it 67 to 45, with seven abstentions and one member absent. ³ Sharon's own Likud split on that vote, 23 in favor and 17 against, while every Shas member voted no. ³ The cabinet-approved text opened by stating that the approval was not itself a decision to evacuate settlements, and that a separate cabinet decision would be needed to say which ones and when. ³ Implementing legislation followed, including a bill setting compensation and offering evacuated families $30,000 to relocate to the Galilee or the Negev. ³

The plan was unilateral: Israel wrote and executed it without the Palestinian Authority. ⁸ It had American backing in writing. In a letter dated April 14, 2004, President George W. Bush told Sharon the withdrawal steps would mark real progress toward his June 2002 two-state vision, and in the same letter called it unrealistic to expect final-status talks to produce a full return to the 1949 armistice lines. ⁴ Our view is that the second half of that letter is much of why Sharon wanted the first half.

By 2005 the settlers living in 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the northern West Bank had been evacuated under the plan. ¹ Roughly 8,000 people were removed from the Gaza settlements. ⁸ Most left by the August deadline. ⁸ Some did not, and soldiers carried them out, including from the roof of the synagogue at Kfar Darom on August 18. ⁸ The Israel Defense Forces completed their withdrawal at 7 a.m. on September 12, 2005, ending an operation the army called Last Watch with a short ceremony at the Qissufim crossing. ² Palestinians entered parts of Gaza for the first time in 38 years, and Mahmoud Abbas planted a flag in the soil of an abandoned settlement. ⁸

Israel dismantled every settler home before leaving. ² It did not dismantle the synagogues. After a cabinet meeting that Sunday the government decided it could not demolish 27 of them and left the question to the Palestinian Authority, which did not want it either. ² Within hours of the handover, synagogues at Netzarim, Kfar Darom and Morag were set on fire by crowds who followed the Palestinian security forces in. ²

The Palestinian Authority took over the ground Israel vacated, and did not hold it long. In January 2006 Hamas won 74 of 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council, taking control of the parliament and becoming the first Islamist movement in the Arab world to reach power through a vote. ⁵ Eighteen months later, in June 2007, Hamas seized the Gaza Strip outright through armed victories over PA and Fatah forces loyal to Abbas, who responded by dismissing the Hamas government and appointing a caretaker cabinet in the West Bank. ⁵ From that point there were two Palestinian governments, one in Gaza and one in Ramallah. ⁵ Israel, with Egypt, imposed a blockade limiting the movement of goods and people in and out of the Strip. ⁸

Why it still matters

Twenty years on, Israelis are still arguing about whether the disengagement was a mistake, and they are not close to agreeing. ⁸ One version, held by many of the evacuated families and by ministers in the current government, draws a straight line from the withdrawal to Hamas rule to the attack of October 7, 2023. ⁸ The other version comes from people who planned the disengagement. Dov Weisglass, Sharon's closest aide at the time, has argued that officials always feared Hamas might take Gaza, and that leaving thousands of Israeli civilians inside the Strip would have produced an October 7 scenario in 2008 rather than 2023. ⁸ Yohanan Zoref of Israel's Institute for National Security Studies argues the causal link is a political claim rather than a factual one, and points out that far more people were killed in and around Gaza in the five years before the withdrawal than in the decade after it. ⁸

Our view is that both arguments are stronger than their opponents usually allow. The settlements were defended at real cost, and the withdrawal removed Israeli civilians from a place they could not be protected cheaply. It is also true that Hamas read the exit as proof that force works. Zoref says Hamas began describing armed resistance as the power that pushed Israel out of Gaza. ⁸ A recent poll in Israel Hayom found 52% of Israelis supporting the rebuilding of settlements in Gaza, an idea Weisglass calls unserious on manpower grounds and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called not realistic. ⁸

The other live question is legal. Israel's own Supreme Court held, in Al-Bassiouni in January 2008, that since September 2005 Israel no longer had effective control over what happens in Gaza, that a government decision had ended the military government there, and that soldiers were no longer permanently stationed in the territory. ⁶ The same judgment found Israel still owed duties to Gaza's residents, deriving from the ongoing armed conflict, from Israeli control of the crossings, and from Gaza's dependence on Israeli electricity, while rejecting the broader duties that belligerent occupation would impose. ⁶

The International Court of Justice reached a different conclusion in its advisory opinion of July 19, 2024. ¹ It held that physical military presence is not the decisive test, and that a power which has established authority over a territory can retain obligations under the law of occupation after withdrawing. ¹ Applying that, it found Israel had remained capable of exercising, and had continued to exercise, key elements of authority over Gaza, including control of the land, sea and air borders, restrictions on the movement of people and goods, collection of import and export taxes, and military control over the buffer zone. ¹ The wording of the holding was narrow. The withdrawal had not entirely released Israel of its obligations under the law of occupation, and those obligations remained commensurate with the degree of effective control. ¹

That opinion drew dissent from within the Court itself. Judge Cleveland criticized the majority's approach to Gaza, and Judges Tomka, Abraham and Aurescu did the same in a joint opinion. ⁷ The Israel Democracy Institute's analysis argues that the Court never actually determined that Gaza remains occupied, only that Israel bears certain unspecified obligations, and that Israel's controls over Gaza are better explained by the law of armed conflict and by the Oslo framework than by occupation law. ⁷ The claim that Gaza was still occupied after 2005 is really two different claims. Sometimes it is a claim about who actually governed the territory, which was Hamas from June 2007 onward. ⁵ More often it is a claim about which body of law binds Israel at the crossings and the coastline, which is the question the two courts answered differently, in 2008 and in 2024. ⁶¹

The words you'll hear

Disengagement Plan. The 2004 Israeli plan to withdraw the military and all settlements from the Gaza Strip and four settlements in the northern West Bank, approved by cabinet resolution on June 6, 2004. ¹

Unilateral withdrawal. Withdrawal carried out by decision of one side rather than by agreement. Israel did not negotiate the disengagement with the Palestinian Authority, though it did secure written American support first. ⁴

Gush Katif. The block of Israeli settlements in Gaza whose residents were evacuated in August 2005. Every settler home in the Strip was dismantled by the IDF before it left. ²

Effective control. The legal test for occupation. Israel's Supreme Court held in 2008 that Israel lacked it in Gaza after September 2005; the ICJ held in 2024 that Israel retained enough elements of authority to keep obligations under occupation law. ⁶¹

The blockade. The restrictions Israel and Egypt placed on movement of goods and people into and out of Gaza after Hamas took the Strip in 2007. ⁸

PLC. The Palestinian Legislative Council, the parliament Hamas won in January 2006 with 74 of 132 seats. ⁵