Israel left Gaza & tightly locked the gates behind it: 18 years since Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan

In December 2003, the godfather of the settler movement, Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, shocked the world by announcing a plan to unilaterally withdraw the settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip. Eighteen years ago this month, the withdrawal was completed, ending 37 years of a direct Israeli presence in the area.

In the short months that followed, however, the initially hopeful Gazans would come to the shattering realisation that Sharon’s plan was not an end to Israel’s military occupation.

The early weeks following Sharon’s announcements were cautiously anticipatory. Because information on the plan was scarce, many Gazans scoured Israeli Hebrew newspapers looking for a glimpse of what the Gaza disengagement meant for us. It was less of a political curiosity and more of an anxious eagerness for normality. Most of us were born under Israel’s occupation and had not experienced an alternative lifestyle. So ‘normality’ meant, above all else, an immediate release from the Israeli army and settlers’ oppressive control over our daily existence.

''Since 2005, Israel made the siege tighter but somewhat official. The occupying power’s responsibilities under international law are linked to the occupation being temporary. Either the occupation ends or the occupied territory is annexed and its residents are granted equal citizenship rights. Israel, however, has placed Gazans in a state of purgatory, neither here nor there.''

Swinging between hopefulness and cynicism, the PA through the State Information Service (now merged into WAFA, Palestine’s news and information agency) commissioned a small feasibility study, which I was involved in, to investigate how to benefit from the settlements’ infrastructure after the settlers had been removed.

It did not take us long to learn that Sharon’s plan had a primary party missing from it: the Palestinians, and particularly Gazans.

Our feasibility study ended up in the bin.

Sharon believed the 8,000 settlers who occupied one-third of the 365km² Gaza Strip, surrounded by 1.5m Palestinians, had become a burden on Israel’s security. Instead of worrying about the settlers’ daily safety and needs, the Israeli army’s resources were better used for border security.

Undeclared, nonetheless, were long-term strategic goals. By redeploying the army and settlers, Israel sought to proclaim an end to its occupation, ostensibly to absolve itself of any legal responsibility as an occupying power without relinquishing full control of the area.

Sharon also wanted to divert the international community’s attention to Gaza as a significant Israeli peace initiative, allowing him free reign to expand the more critical West Bank settlements. The final outcome, as Israeli Bureau Chief Dov Weisglass admitted, was to create enough facts on the ground to repudiate Tel-Aviv’s commitments under Oslo and as such, freeze the political process with the Palestinians and eliminate their routes to statehood.

Today, all of these factors are muted in favour of the typical Israeli mantra of ‘blaming the victim.’

After the disengagement, Gazans were left with the opportunity to develop a prosperous mini-state. A Middle Eastern Singapore as Shimon Peres once put it. What transpired instead was Hamas’ takeover and more ‘terror.’

Israel is now facing a messy situation that - like a Greek tragedy - resulted from ‘miscalculated good intentions’.

Tested against reality, this is perhaps the only narrative that an occupying society indulged in a misplaced victim neurosis and superior entitlement can cope with.

For Gazans, it is a different story. The disengagement had changed the occupation from boots-on-the-ground to a particularly aggressive, remote-controlled matrix of subjugation with a lower threshold for accountability. This was apparent from day one, as not only did the Israeli government destroy the settlement infrastructure and deprive the impoverished population of the opportunity to benefit from it, but it also left them with the burden of clearing the rubble.

We watched in horror as the army left only to lock the Gaza gates behind it and stand guard at them. All happened while the United States hailed Sharon for his ‘bold, historic step.’

We had all understood that we were heading toward further isolation.

Most commentators nowadays suggest the disengagement was a prelude to the current siege, which was reinforced when Hamas won the 2006 election and later, captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Others believe the siege began in earnest in 2007 after Hamas took over the Strip from Fatah as the latter refused to hand over powers as per the election results.

We, the people on the ground, spoke of ‘further isolation’ because Gaza was already under siege, and yes, even during Oslo. It was just simply too implicit and decades in the making for an external eye to instantly discern.

With the First Intifada (1987), Israel tightened its external and internal control of the Strip, and following Oslo in 1994, a fortified external control area was established around it through fencing, walls and militarised zones. Stricter limitations on entry and exit were put in place.

During the Second Intifada in 2000, access to and out of Gaza was considerably minimised, and internally, the army moved in to split the narrow strip into two parts: North and South. When it was not completely shut, the Rafah Crossing with Egypt - Gaza’s only outlet to the world - was also excessively tightened, allowing travel to only men over 40 and special humanitarian cases. Today, with the Israeli army physically absent from the crossing, Egypt’s al-Sisi continues to exercise strict criteria on Gazans’ travels.

Since 2005, Israel made the siege tighter but somewhat official. The occupying power’s responsibilities under international law are linked to the occupation being temporary. Either the occupation ends or the occupied territory is annexed and its residents are granted equal citizenship rights. Israel, however, has placed Gazans in a state of purgatory, neither here nor there.

This seemingly removed Israel’s responsibilities toward the local population while maintaining the operational freedom of an occupying power. It allowed it to fully control the area, while simultaneously dealing with it as an enemy state against which maximum military strength can be utilised. Think of the fact that since 2005, Israel waged four ‘wars’ on Gaza alongside many other fighting rounds that claimed thousands of Palestinian lives.

The international community, meanwhile, confined its role to humanitarian intervention without holding Israel accountable. Israel was left to control international aid and subcontract the occupying power’s humanitarian obligations to the Palestinian Authority, UNRWA bodies, and the Red Cross.

These entities possess no sovereignty and all are subjected to Israel’s policies. They are used to keep Gazans constantly on the verge of a humanitarian crisis, but not severe enough to stir international criticism and trigger a complete population implosion.

The strategy is meant to gradually drain Gaza demographically and dismantle its society’s infrastructure. With nothing but hopelessness and oppression around, therefore, thousands of Palestinian youths left the area, some through desperate, dangerous methods trying to cross the Mediterranean seeking a better life elsewhere.

My uncle, a professor of English literature at the local al-Aqsa University, likes to sum up Gaza’s hopelessness by quoting a line from T.S. Elliot’s The Waste Land: “I had not thought death had undone so many.” To him, much like I heard repeatedly from others, Gaza has grown into a form of parallel reality that can be survived but not truly lived.

For many others, still, “the waste land” is a dark cloud with a shimmering silver lining. The strangling siege and bleak future pushed Palestinians to invest heavily and creatively in building a formidable resistance infrastructure to deter Israel and make it accountable for its actions.

However, between the brutal siege and tough resistance, Gaza’s future remains hazy.

Israel, on the other hand, has created a serious problem it cannot resolve.

Eighteen years later, I can only think that tearing down and binning the feasibility study was the best investment that - unknowingly at the time - spared some of us the painful disillusionment that followed.

Dr Emad Moussa is a Palestinian-British researcher and writer specialising in the political psychology of intergroup and conflict dynamics, focusing on MENA with a special interest in Israel/Palestine. He has a background in human rights and journalism, and is currently a frequent contributor to multiple academic and media outlets, in addition to being a consultant for a US-based think tank.

Follow him on Twitter: @emadmoussa

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