20 years after its landmark withdrawal from Gaza, Israel is mired there
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, with implications that continue to reverberate today .
The emotional images of Jews being ripped from their homes by Israeli soldiers galvanized Israel's far-right and settler movements. The anger helped them organize and increase their political influence, accounting in part for the rise of hard-line politicians like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
On Thursday, Smotrich boasted of a settlement expansion plan east of Jerusalem that will 'bury' the idea of a future Palestinian state.
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, controlling entry and exit of goods and people. 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.
'There was no chance for these settlements to exist or flourish or become meaningful enough to be a strategic anchor,' he said. 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, Michael said. Most of the world considers the settlements illegal under international law.
Because Israel withdrew unilaterally, without any coordination with the Palestinian Authority, it enhanced Hamas' 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,' Michael said. 'They saw it as an achievement of the resistance and a justification for the continuation of the armed resistance.'
Footage of the violence between Israeli settlers and Israeli soldiers also created an 'open wound' in Israeli society, Michael 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.
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.
Originally from Brooklyn, she started a farm growing vegetables in the harsh, tall sand dunes. At first relations were good with their Palestinian neighbors, she said, and they worked hard to build their home and a 'beautiful community.' She had two more children, and three chose to stay and raise their families in Netzer Hazoni.
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 neighbors 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 Oct. 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. Several of her 10 grandchildren, including some who spent their early childhood in the Gaza settlements, have served in the current war and were near her old house.
'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 Tucker.
After Israel's withdrawal 20 years ago, many Palestinians described Gaza as an 'open-air prison.' They had control on the inside – under a Hamas government that some supported but some saw as heavy-handed and brutal. But ultimately, Israel had a grip around the territory.
Many Palestinians believe 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 Netanyahu will repeat Sharon's full withdrawal. Instead, he expects the military to continue controlling large swaths of Gaza through 'buffer zones.'
The aim, he said, is to keep Gaza 'unlivable in order to change the demographics,' referring to Netanyahu's plans to encourage Palestinians to leave the territory.
Israel is 'is reoccupying the Gaza Strip' to prevent a Palestinian state, said Mostafa Ibrahim, an author based in Gaza City whose home was destroyed in the current war.
Israeli former Maj. Gen. 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, including rockets, roadside bombs big enough to destroy a tank, tunnels to attack Israeli soldiers and military positions, and frequent gunfire.
'Bringing a school bus of kids from one place to another required a military escort,' said Harel. 'There wasn't a future. People paint it as how wonderful it was there, but it wasn't wonderful.'
Harel says the decision to evacuate Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip was the right one, but that Israel missed crucial opportunities.
Most egregious, he said, was a unilateral withdrawal without obtaining any concessions from the Palestinians in Gaza or the Palestinian Authority.
He also sharply criticized Israel's policy of containment toward Hamas after disengagement. There were short but destructive conflicts over the years between the two sides, but otherwise the policy gave Hamas 'an opportunity to do whatever they wanted.'
'We had such a blind spot with Hamas, we didn't see them morph from a terror organization into an organized military, with battalions and commanders and infrastructure,' he said.
The Oct. 7 attack, Israel's largest military intelligence failure to date, was not a result of the disengagement, said Harel. 'The main issue is what we did in the 18 years in between.'
__
Associated Press writer Fatma Khaled contributed from Cairo.
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Despite visits to Syria by two heads of Lebanon's government, no Syrian official has visited Lebanon. Here is what's behind the complicated relations. A coldness that goes way back Many Syrians have resented Hezbollah for wading into Syria's civil war in defense of Assad's government. Assad's fall sent them home, but many Lebanese now fear cross-border attacks by Syria's Islamic militants. There are new restrictions on Lebanese entering Syria, and Lebanon has maintained tough restrictions on Syrians entering Lebanon. The Lebanese also fear that Damascus could try to bring Lebanon under a new Syrian tutelage. Syrians have long seen Lebanon as a staging ground for anti-Syria activities, including hosting opposition figures before Hafez Assad — Bashar Assad's father — ascended to power in a bloodless 1970 coup. In 1976, Assad senior sent his troops to Lebanon, allegedly to bring peace as Lebanon was hurtling into a civil war that lasted until 1990. Once that ended, Syrian forces — much like a colonial power — remained in Lebanon for another 15 years. A signature of the Assad family rule, Syria's dreaded security agents disappeared and tortured dissidents to keep the country under their control. They did the same in Lebanon. 'Syrians feel that Lebanon is the main gateway for conspiracies against them,' says Lebanese political analyst Ali Hamadeh. Turbulent times It took until 2008 for the two countries to agree to open diplomatic missions, marking Syria's first official recognition of Lebanon as an independent state since it gained independence from France in 1943. The move came after the 2005 truck-bombing assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri that many blamed on Damascus. Two months later, Syria pulled its troops out of Lebanon under international pressure, ending 29 years of near-complete domination of its neighbor. When Syria's own civil war erupted in 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians fled across the border, making crisis-hit Lebanon the host of the highest per capita population of refugees in the world. Once in Lebanon, the refugees complained about discrimination, including curfews for Syrian citizens in some areas. Hezbollah, meanwhile, rushed thousands of its fighters into Syria in 2013 to shore up Assad, worried that its supply lines from Iran could dry up. And as much as the Lebanese are divided over their country's internal politics, Syria's war divided them further into those supporting Assad's government and those opposing it. Distrust and deadlock A key obstacle to warming relations has been the fate of about 2,000 Syrians in Lebanese prisons, including some 800 held over attacks and shootings, many without trial. Damascus is asking Beirut to hand them over to continue their prison terms in Syria, but Lebanese judicial officials say Beirut won't release any attackers and that each must be studied and resolved separately. In July, family members of the detainees rallied along a border crossing, demanding their relatives be freed. The protest came amid reports that Syrian troops could deploy foreign fighters in Lebanon, which Damascus officials denied. Another obstacle is Lebanon's demand that Syrian refugees go back home now that Assad is gone. About 716,000 Syrian refugees are registered with the U.N. refugee agency, while hundreds of thousands more are unregistered in Lebanon, which has a population of about 5 million. Syria is also demanding the return of billions of dollars worth of deposits of Syrians trapped in Lebanese banks since Lebanon's historic financial meltdown in 2019. The worst post-Assad border skirmishes came in mid-March, when Syrian authorities said Hezbollah members crossed the border and kidnapped and killed three Syrian soldiers. The Lebanese government and army said the clash was between smugglers and that Hezbollah wasn't involved. Days later, Lebanese and Syrian defense ministers flew to Saudi Arabia and signed an agreement on border demarcation and boosting their coordination. In July, rumors spread in Lebanon, claiming the northern city of Tripoli would be given to Syria in return for Syria giving up the Golan Heights to Israel. And though officials dismissed the rumors, they illustrate the level of distrust between the neighbors. Beirut was also angered by Syria's appointment this year of a Lebanese army officer — Abdullah Shehadeh, who defected in 2014 from Lebanon to join Syrian insurgents — as the head of security in Syria's central province of Homs that borders northeastern Lebanon. 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