Israel's Disengagement from Gaza

Amid the impasse of the second intifada, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unveiled a plan in December 2003 to remove all Israeli settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip, where 21 settlements with roughly 8,000 settlers — Britannica puts the settler population at about 9,000 — sat among some 1.3 million Palestinians. The Knesset approved the plan by 67 votes to 45 in October 2004, adding four small settlements in the northern West Bank at Washington’s insistence. When the evacuation deadline passed on 15 August 2005 only about two-thirds of the settlers had left; soldiers enforced the order over the following week, carrying resisters from homes and synagogues, and the last residents departed Netzarim on 22 August. Israeli forces demolished settlement buildings, dismantled military installations, and completed their withdrawal on 12 September 2005. Under the Philadelphi Accord signed with Egypt, Egyptian border guards took up positions along the border corridor, and a November 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access placed European Union monitors at the Rafah passenger crossing.

Israel proclaimed an end to its military government in Gaza, and Sharon told the UN General Assembly that Israeli control over, and responsibility for, the Gaza Strip had ended. The plan was carried out without coordination with the Palestinian Authority, which was left to secure and develop the territory. Yet Israel kept hold of every lever around Gaza’s perimeter: it controlled all land crossings apart from the monitored Rafah passenger terminal, the entire coastline and fishing zone, the airspace, the population registry, and buffer zones inside the fence, and it reserved the right to re-enter at will. Gaza’s airport, destroyed in 2001, was never permitted to reopen, and no seaport was allowed to operate.

Whether the occupation ended has been disputed ever since. Israel maintains that it ceased to be the occupying power in 2005. The United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and human rights organizations including B’Tselem hold that Israel’s effective control over Gaza’s borders, movement, and economy means the occupation continued — B’Tselem calls the Israeli position that it bears no responsibility for Gaza’s residents “entirely baseless.” The International Court of Justice settled on the same view in its advisory opinion of 19 July 2024, finding that after the 2005 withdrawal Israel “remained capable of exercising, and continued to exercise, certain key elements of authority over the Gaza Strip,” and that Israel’s obligations under the law of occupation “have remained commensurate with the degree of its effective control.”