The Disengagement’s Misattributed Blame

Nineteen years ago today, Israel completed its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Recently, the disengagement has resurfaced in the headlines, particularly following Netanyahu’s speech before the world’s press last Monday. In truth, since October 7, the disengagement occupies many conversations as a punching bag to explain the tragedy that befall us on that day.

This reaction is somewhat understandable. In moments of crisis, it is a natural human inclination to seek solace by pinpointing a singular, pivotal event that can explain all that has gone awry—a psychological refuge amidst the chaos, offering a semblance of clarity in the face of overwhelming uncertainty. We are far less inclined to acknowledge that political tragedy arises not solely from a singular event but more often from false perceptions of reality that have shaped years of decision-making.

Instead of confronting how and why an entire worldview, which guided over a decade of policy under Netanyahu, collapsed in a single day—a worldview grounded in the belief that religious fundamentalists could be swayed by material incentives—some voices on both the Israeli left and right have reverted to a familiar scapegoat. They assert that October 7 can be traced back to the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

The right-wing narrative zeroes in on military and security concerns as well as the evacuation of settlements (which Bibi has exploited to divert attention from his failings), while the left-wing critique highlights the unilateral nature of the disengagement (in an effort to exonerate the Palestinians). What’s crucial here is understanding why this event, on its own, cannot be held as the singular cause of the tragedy of October 7.

The Myth of the Right: 

This is largely forgotten today, but after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, the task of protecting the settlements in Gaza and their access roads became a daily and deadly ordeal, imposing a substantial military and economic burden on the State of Israel. Despite comprising just 0.2 percent of Gaza’s population, the 21 settlements and their surrounding areas occupied approximately 20 percent of the Gaza Strip’s territory. This disproportionate allocation of resources placed immense strain on Israeli security forces. For example, something as routine as sending a child to school required a full military escort to protect against attacks by Palestinian armed groups or lone wolf assailants. Over time, this burden resulted in significant casualties among both soldiers and Israeli civilians.

Contrary to current claims, the cycles of violence in Gaza did not begin with Israel’s withdrawal. For instance, an Israeli civilian presence did not prevent Operation Rainbow or Operation Days of Penitence in 2004—both military actions targeting Palestinian threats in different parts of the Strip before the pullout. The firing of rockets and mortar shells by Palestinian terrorists into Israel also started years before the disengagement, despite popular belief. 

Hamas’ political ascendancy began as early as 2003, evidenced by the municipal elections of late 2004 and early 2005, all of which took place before the Israeli withdrawal. The reality is that Hamas gained power because the Palestinians conferred it upon them, and because the organization embodies a priority that has long been central to Palestinian political life: the rejection of a Jewish state in any borders.

You don’t need to be a strategic expert to grasp how much more complicated the fighting would have been during Operations Cast Lead (December 2008-January 2009), Pillar of Defense (2012), and Protective Edge (2014) if the settlements had still been in place. Shaul Mofaz, the defense minister at the time of the disengagement, articulated this clearly in an interview with Channel 12: “Only now do Israel’s citizens understand what would have happened to the thousands of settlers in 2005 if they had remained in the Gaza Strip. What sort of protection did that offer Israel? We saved lives by removing them from Gaza. The death toll would have been triple.”

Yet today, people are sifting through the events of 18 years ago, searching for someone to blame for October 7. And while Netanyahu’s efforts to rewrite history might be politically convenient, the reality remains: disengagement wasn’t just a strategic maneuver; it was seens as a life-saving decision.

Attorney Dov Weissglas, who served as an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and was one of the key architects of the Gaza pullout, offers a sharp reflection in his memoir about his years working with Sharon. He writes, “The resumption of rocket fire from Gaza into Israel was the result of Hamas’ takeover of the Strip. Netanyahu seized on this unfortunate development, cynically twisting it to claim that his ‘predictions’ had come true, and in doing so, reaped a generous political reward—entirely without justification.” Weissglas’ insight cuts through the noise: the root cause of the violence wasn’t the disengagement, but rather Hamas’ rise to power, which Netanyahu exploited to bolster his own political narrative.

Netanyahu’s recent attempt to blame the 2005 Gaza disengagement for the current war is nothing short of gaslighting. Standing before the global press, he spun a narrative that Israel’s withdrawal empowered Hamas, turning it into the well-armed force it is today, with advanced weaponry supplied by Iran and the capacity to unleash devastation on the Jewish state. But this narrative is profoundly misleading.

What Netanyahu conveniently omitted is his own involvement in that very decision. While he has long claimed to oppose the disengagement, the reality is far more complex. As Israel’s finance minister at the time, Netanyahu voted three times in favor of the plan—once in the cabinet and twice in the Knesset. Yes, he eventually resigned from the government just days before the disengagement was carried out, but this last-minute maneuver cannot erase his earlier support. Netanyahu has been Israel’s prime minister for almost 16 years since then. To now deflect blame onto a decision made nearly two decades ago—one in which he played a significant role—is not just disingenuous; it’s dangerous. It reveals a disturbing refusal to take responsibility for the policies he has shaped over nearly two decades.

Throughout his tenure, Netanyahu’s approach to Gaza has been characterized by a strategy of containment rather than decisive victory. Under his leadership, the IDF launched three major operations against Hamas—Pillar of Defense in 2012, Protective Edge in 2014, and Guardian of the Walls in 2021. Yet, in none of these operations did Netanyahu prioritize targeting the Philadelphi Corridor, the crucial supply route that fuels Hamas’s smuggling operations. If this narrow strip of land is so vital to Israel’s security, why was it left unaddressed during any of these military campaigns?

 This pattern of inaction allowed Hamas to grow bolder, culminating in the horrific events of October 7. By trying to rewrite history and shift blame, Netanyahu not only misleads the public but also deflects from his own responsibility in the escalation of the current conflict.

The Illusion of the Left:

On the left side of the debate, the criticism is less about the military implications of the disengagement and more about its purported unilateral nature. Scholars like Lev Grinberg and Daniel De Malach recently argued in Haaretz, “The original sin that led to the present systemic collapse was the unilateral exit from Gaza, mistakenly termed the ‘disengagement.’ The withdrawal was designed to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state, knowing that severing Gaza from the West Bank and imposing a siege would precipitate dire conditions in Gaza, inevitably leading to violence against Israel.” 

Yet, these authors fail to provide any evidence for their claims—because none exists. If they believe that Palestinian violence was uniquely triggered by the disengagement, rather than being part of a broader pattern that had been developing for decades, they are deluding themselves. The reality is that the roots of Palestinian violence long predate the disengagement. They also overlook that Salam Fayyad, who established The Third Way party, centered his 2006 PLC election campaign on Palestinian state-building, a rejection of violence against Israel, and reforms across Palestinian governance. His platform included targeting rampant corruption, overhauling the justice system to enforce the rule of law, and establishing a welfare state to address unemployment and poverty. Despite these proposals, he garnered only 2% of the vote, while Hamas, a group committed to Israel’s destruction, secured 45%. Just as Netanyahu attempts to exonerate himself, members of the self-proclaimed peace camp attempt to exonerate the Palestinians for what has unfolded since the withdrawal.

Even critics of the disengagement concede that it aligned with the country’s broader policy goals of a two-state solution and was consistent with the “road map” proposed by President George W. Bush in 2002. This was also the view of the State Department, which facilitated an exchange of messages between Sharon and Bush. In May 2004, representatives of the Quartet (the U.S., Russia, the United Nations, and the European Union) endorsed the disengagement as a step within a renewed Road Map toward two states.

Giora Eiland, who oversaw the practical planning of the disengagement as head of the National Security Council, regarded it as part of a larger strategic move by Prime Minister Sharon towards a two-state reality. Eiland was among the most vocal critics of the policy’s “unilaterality.” However, this unilateral approach was a characteristic of Sharon’s strategy as long as Yasser Arafat led the Palestinian Authority. From Sharon’s perspective, negotiations were stymied by Arafat’s consistent rejection of pragmatic two-state solutions and his lack of genuine engagement in talks. Sharon’s stance was that Israel’s future should not be held hostage by Palestinian rejectionism.

However, by November 2004, following Arafat’s death and Mahmoud Abbas’s return to power, the necessity for unilateral action seemed increasingly questionable. Sharon indicated in a conversation with Senator Joe Biden that “new opportunities arise for cooperation and for an alternative implementation of the disengagement plan together with the PA.”

Dov Weissglas  noted that “its implementation was coordinated fully with the Palestinians: In many lengthy meetings, across tens of hours, arrangements were discussed to deploy the Palestinian security forces… Detailed arrangements were discussed concerning the future of the property that would remain in the settlements after the evacuation… We helped as much as we could… to arrange all the economic-civilian aspects between Israel and the Palestinians after the withdrawal. The more time that passed, the more willingness and satisfaction the Palestinians displayed over Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.”

The level of coordination was so extensive that Weissglas observed a shift from Palestinian apprehensions to ambitious aspirations. For instance, Abbas remarked to Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s chief of intelligence, that “Gaza should be turned into Singapore.” This notion of transforming Gaza into a Middle Eastern Singapore was not an Israeli concept, as some on the left might suggest, but an idea that emerged from the Palestinians themselves.

The assertion that the disengagement plan was designed to prevent a future Israeli withdrawal from parts of the West Bank does not hold up under scrutiny. Giora Eiland repeatedly emphasized that Weissglas “met with the Americans and committed us to a major unilateral step both in Gaza and the West Bank… The Americans’ impression was that it would be a withdrawal from 60 percent to 80 percent of the West Bank.” 

It is a fact that Sharon contemplated not only the exit from Gaza but also the removal of an additional 17 settlements from the West Bank. This broader plan was ultimately abandoned due to U.S. opposition, not Israeli reluctance. The United States argued that the Palestinians would be unable to manage the territory being evacuated simultaneously with the Gaza handover. Consequently, the decision was made to proceed with a more modest evacuation of just four settlements from northern Samaria.

American concerns were of course validated. The intense conflict between Fatah and Hamas, culminating in Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in June 2007, took everyone by surprise. Leaked documents reveal that Abbas and his aides did not perceive Hamas as a serious military threat. Marwan Kanafani, a senior adviser to the PA, even downplayed Hamas as one of Abbas’s lesser concerns. Following Hamas’s seizure of Gaza, the Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, promptly imposed a blockade on the Strip. PA officials had repeatedly asserted that Hamas would fail to manage Gaza effectively and would eventually seek to be reinstated by the PA. This prediction proved to be false. In fact, top PA officials themselves advocated for a stringent blockade on Gaza, a reality that complicates certain narratives about the “evil Israeli blockade.” As Saeb Erekat, a leading PLO official, bluntly put it, “They will surrender to hunger and distress and they will have no choice.”

On the Israeli side, the rationale for the blockade was based on the expectation that it would weaken Hamas and lead to its eventual collapse. Had it not been for the blockade, Hamas would have had a far easier time building its military capabilities and would not have needed to resort to smuggling materiel through tunnels—tunnels that shocked the Israeli public when their existence came to light in 2014.

If one does however seek a historical point from which the events of October 7 can be directly traced, the focus should shift from the disengagement to the period of 2013-2014, particularly Operation Protective Edge and the lead-up to it.  In the period leading up to Operation Protective Edge, Hamas was at its most vulnerable since taking control of Gaza. The Muslim Brotherhood had been ousted in Egypt, with Abdel Fattah al-Sissi seizing power through a coup; the Gaza-Egypt crossing points were closed; and both the Islamic Republic of Iran and Syria faced regional setbacks. Despite his own rejection of Israeli peace offers in 2008, Abbas’s international standing had strengthened. Instead of peace with Israel, in April 2013, Abbas proposed a reconciliation agreement between the PA and Hamas, to which the latter had no choice but to agree. The Netanyahu government, in response, threw Hamas a lifebelt, announcing that Israel would boycott the Palestinian government of reconciliation and cease to transfer to it the taxes it collected for the PA. Today we know where Hamas got the money that Abbas subsequently refused to deliver to it: in the suitcases of cash from the Qatar government, which were brought into Gaza with the authorization of the prime minister.

During Operation Protective Edge, the grand promises Netanyahu made in 2009 about eradicating Hamas had largely evaporated. The conflict, which raged from July 8 to August 26, 2014, initially aimed to deliver a decisive blow to Hamas and neutralize its rocket stockpile. However, these goals were quickly scaled back, and the operation focused primarily on destroying the terror tunnels—albeit incompletely.

One strategy Netanyahu employed to prevent the escalation of the operation was leaking a classified security cabinet presentation. This leak suggested that a ground operation to impose a significant cost on Hamas could result in hundreds of IDF casualties. It was members of Netanyahu’s own government who attributed this leak to him.

In the future, we will likely come to understand the full scope of the policies and agreements Netanyahu pursued leading up to October 7. While the details are still emerging, it is evident that the disengagement alone cannot account for the current situation. It fails to address the underlying motivations of the jihadi enemy and overlooks the influence of those who actively empowered these forces. It serves merely as a punching bag to exonerate consecutive governments under Netanyahu from nearly two decades worth of bad decisions and more importantly offers no opportunity for Israeli lesson-learning needed for future policy making.