Over the previous few weeks, Israel marked twenty years because the “Gaza Disengagement”: the 2005 operation that uprooted 8,500 settlers and pulled out its troops. Offered as a approach to ease Israel’s army burden and redraw its borders, the transfer bypassed the Palestinian Authority and left Israel in command of Gaza’s borders, airspace, and assets. Overseas, nonetheless, the withdrawal was seen as a daring step towards the two-state resolution. Because the EU’s international coverage chief on the time, Javier Solana, put it, “The profitable final result of Disengagement will provide a momentous step for a peaceable future for Israelis and Palestinians, dwelling side-by-side and having fun with safety, financial prosperity and social well-being.” The EU, alongside its fellow members of the Quartet – the US, Russia, and the UN – positioned disengagement on the centre of its roadmap diplomacy, successfully endorsing then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateralism as progress.
Gaza, February 2025. Writer: Jaber Jehad Badwan / Supply: Wikimedia Commons
Disengagement’s false promise
20 years on, nonetheless, the promise celebrated overseas has soured at residence. Israeli tv marked the anniversary with dramas and documentaries that solid the evacuation as nationwide trauma, inviting viewers to grieve with settler households and to see the October 7 assaults as its inevitable consequence. What such commemorations omitted, nonetheless, was the political logic of the time, which sought not decision however impasse: burying the two-state resolution fairly than advancing it.
Certainly, the transfer itself was strategic misdirection disguised as peacemaking. By tacking on the evacuation of 4 remoted outposts within the northern West Financial institution, Sharon might declare it was not “Gaza solely”, whilst he used the gesture as a defend towards mounting diplomatic strain. Shedding territory that had grow to be a legal responsibility gave him the political area to tighten Israel’s grip on the West Financial institution. As his confidant Dov Weisglass admitted, the plan was meant to pour “formaldehyde” over the peace course of – preserving a stalemate whereas bulldozers pushed new roads and housing deeper into the ridge-top cities.
Palestinians shortly understood what Israeli officers overtly admitted: Gaza was being discarded as a token of flexibility whilst settlement enlargement within the West Financial institution accelerated. Israel nonetheless managed Gaza’s skies, seas, and borders – and, with devastating impact, held a veto over each bag of cement required to rebuild properties, faculties, and infrastructure after every wave of destruction.
The disillusionment with unilateral exit was not confined to Gaza. Israel’s retreat from southern Lebanon in 2000 had already proven how withdrawal with out settlement risked drawing Israel again in with better power. The concern appeared confirmed in 2006, when Hezbollah’s abduction of two troopers triggered a warfare, 1000’s of rockets fell on Israel, the bottom marketing campaign faltered, and a state inquiry faulted the federal government for unclear goals. The lesson many Israelis drew was blunt: additional withdrawals, together with from the West Financial institution, had been off the desk.
For Palestinians, the lesson was the alternative: militancy, not negotiation, might power change. Israel had withdrawn with out consulting Mahmoud Abbas – or the Palestinian Authority – suggesting that diplomacy yielded nothing whereas Hamas’s rockets pressured concessions. If settlers left solely when violence made occupation untenable, militancy, not negotiation, gave the impression to be the lever of impression.
That perception helped Hamas win the January 2006 elections and seize management a yr later. In response, Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade. Factories rusted, whereas Gaza’s college graduates discovered their levels ineffective past the fence. For a era raised with out alternative, ballots got here to look futile whereas tunnels and rockets delivered outcomes. For hawks in Jerusalem, each rocket justified the siege; for militants in Gaza, each new restriction confirmed that solely power registered.
The siege, nonetheless, was not Israel’s doing alone – or Israel and Egypt’s for that matter; as an alternative, it quickly hardened into a global coverage. The US and Europe reduce direct help to the Hamas-led Authority and confined their involvement to humanitarian aid. The EU’s civilian Border Help Mission at Rafah, launched in 2005, was suspended in 2007. What started as a regional standoff hardened right into a coverage of containment.
At the same time as Gaza was sealed off, the West Financial institution was being remade. The separation barrier crept far east of the 1949 Armistice Line (“Inexperienced Line”), enclosing settlement blocs. By 2020, the Trump administration’s “Peace to Prosperity” blueprint merely codified what enlargement had already established on the bottom.
The cycle of siege and warfare
The siege was punctuated by wars – in 2008-09, 2012, 2014, 2018, and 2022 – every framed as an “operation” meant to revive deterrence. Planners referred to as it “mowing the grass,” treating militancy as a recurring activity fairly than the predictable results of statelessness. This rhythm hardened into doctrine. Every spherical left Gaza weaker however by no means quiet. By 2023, Hamas’s assault was much less a rupture than a end result.
On 7 October 2023, Hamas militants breached Gaza’s perimeter, attacked southern Israeli communities, killed roughly 1200 individuals, and took 250 hostages. Israel vowed to “destroy Hamas”. After virtually two years of bombardment and incursions, Gaza lies in ruins: huge areas decreased to rubble, many of the inhabitants displaced, and Palestinian deaths surpassing 60000. Israel frames the marketing campaign as existential self-defence; critics name it collective punishment, warfare crimes, and calculated hunger. An awesome majority of consultants claims Israel’s actions in Gaza quantity to genocide: an ethical disaster that recollects atrocities Europe as soon as pledged by no means to allow once more. In bitter irony, Israel has now authorised a full army takeover of Gaza – framed as non permanent – precisely twenty years after declaring it had “left” the Strip.
Disengagement failed as a result of it was by no means designed to succeed – least of all on Palestinian phrases. A real withdrawal would have transferred sovereignty along with accountability. As an alternative, Israel retained levers of management whereas disclaiming obligation for Gaza’s welfare. Unilateralism destroyed reciprocity, weakened moderates, and empowered extremists. Siege generated resistance, not submission – and safety missing legitimacy proved hole. On 7 October, neither partitions nor surveillance expertise might erase proximity or quell resentment.
Exterior actors helped entrench the impasse. Washington and Brussels, as soon as fluent in two-state diplomacy, decreased Gaza to a humanitarian disaster to be managed, not a political battle to be resolved. Ceasefires displaced negotiations, and help displaced political will. By accepting Israel’s self-justification, outsiders lulled themselves into believing the battle may very well be quarantined.
The temptation to substitute recognition for accountability has now returned in Europe’s new diplomatic choreography.
Recognition with out de-occupation
As Gaza burns, Europe once more reaches for coverage gestures. France has mentioned it would formally recognise Palestine at September’s UN Basic Meeting, joined by the UK, Australia, Malta, and Belgium. In parallel, France and Saudi Arabia co-chaired a UN high-level convention that produced the “New York Declaration”, a time-bound roadmap promising “tangible, time-limited, irreversible steps” towards two states. But for now, a lot of this momentum stays declarative.
The timing crystallises the tragedy. Precisely twenty years after Sharon’s “disengagement”, as Israeli operations proceed in Gaza, European capitals put together to recognise Palestinian statehood. Recognition, absent de-occupation, dangers turning into mere ceremony within the shadow of devastation – the identical logic that when traded withdrawal with out sovereignty for the steadiness of a siege. The symmetry is unmistakable: the place Israel as soon as withdrew settlers whereas preserving management, Europe now affords recognition whereas acquiescing to manage.
If recognition is to be greater than theatre, it should come as recognition-plus: a binding UN Safety Council decision mandating time-bound settlement evacuation and land transfers; enforceable restrictions linked to settlement development; switch of borders, airspace and assets to Palestinian sovereignty; and strong help for Palestinian institutional renewal beneath a unified, reputable management.
Disengagement was supposed as respite; as an alternative, it deepened despair. 20 years on, the warning is obvious: a disaster merely managed will finally handle us – and Europe, which as soon as championed a two-state resolution, can not afford to face apart. Recognition, by itself, won’t arrest the drift. To matter, it have to be anchored to concrete steps that ship sovereignty and reciprocity fairly than theatre. In any other case, Europe can have rehearsed disengagement twice: first in Israel’s title, then in its personal.
