Israel’s Disengagement from Gaza: A Failure of Planning or a Flawed Plan?

What will we do once we withdraw from Gaza and find, as we inevitably will, that Arafat or his successors have stepped in and the squads of terrorists are again operating from there into Israel, murdering and destroying? What will we do when the Katyusha fire starts hitting Sderot… and Ashkelon… and Kiryat Gat…. Will the television pictures showing us shelling Gaza in return be more palatable than those as showed us in front of Beirut, or less upsetting than those of Israeli troops battling West Bank rioters?With the launching by Israel of Operation Cast Lead on 27 December 2008 in response to the breakdown of a six month cease-fire with Hamas and the firing of missiles into Israel from Gaza Ariel Sharon’s words seem prophetic. Yet, three years after he warned of the dangers of Israel leaving Gaza, Sharon surprised the world by announcing his intention of unilaterally carrying out such a course. Sharon was true to his word and on 12 September 2005 Israel completed its military withdrawal from Gaza ending its thirty-eight years occupation. Israel’s move was heralded as step leading to a ‘democratic state in Gaza and opening the door for democracy in the Middle East’. Palestinians were seen as being given the opportunity of building a ‘Dubai on the Mediterranean.’ But within months of Israel’s pullback that optimism had turned to despair for Palestinians and regret for Israel. Instead of building the foundations of a state, ‘the Palestinians saw that they had been put back in prison’. For Israel, the number of missile attacks from Gaza only increased. Ten months after its withdrawal, Israeli troops returned to Gaza. This chapter assesses why the Gaza disengagement plan, which promised so much, failed. It asks whether this outcome was a failure of planning and policy implementation or whether Israel’s unilateralist approach to leaving Gaza was fundamentally flawed?