Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip

[3] In spite of the disengagement, the United Nations, international human rights organizations, many legal scholars, and a “majority of academic commentators” regard the Gaza Strip to still be under military occupation by Israel.

The 2024 ICJ advisory opinion, Article 42 of the Hague Relations and precedent in international law maintain that a territory remains occupied so long as an army could reestablish physical control at any time.

[7] The motivation behind the disengagement was described by Sharon's top aide as a means of isolating Gaza and avoiding international pressure on Israel to reach a political settlement with the Palestinians.

Israeli security forces, over a period of several days, evicted settlers who refused to accept government compensation packages and voluntarily vacate their homes prior to the August 15, 2005 deadline.

Bernard Avishai states that the Gaza withdrawal was designed to obviate rather than facilitate peace negotiations: Sharon envisaged at the same time annexing Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, and the major settlements like Ma'ale Adumim and Ariel which he had in the meantime developed, and thereby isolate Palestinians on the West Bank in territory that constituted less than half of what existed beyond the Green Line.

[36] As a result of the passing of the plan (in principle), two National Religious Party (NRP) ministers, Effi Eitam and Yitzhak Levi, resigned, leaving the government with a minority in the Knesset.

The right believes that Sharon ignored the mandate he had been elected on, and instead adopted the platform of his Labor opponent, Amram Mitzna, who was overwhelmingly defeated when he campaigned on a disengagement plan of far smaller magnitude.

On March 17, the Southern Command of the Israel Defense Forces issued a military order prohibiting Israeli citizens not living in the Gaza Strip settlements from taking up residence there.

On April 8, 2005, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that Israel should consider not demolishing the evacuated buildings in the Gaza Strip, with the exception of synagogues (due to fears of their potential desecration, which eventually did occur),[46] since it would be more costly and time-consuming.

On May 9, the beginning of the evacuation of settlements was officially postponed from July 20 until August 15, so as to not coincide with the Jewish period of The Three Weeks and the fast of Tisha B'Av, traditionally marking grief and destruction.

On August 18, Shirat HaYam was evacuated by military and police forces, after infiltrators had been removed and the settlement's speaker system was disabled after settlers used it to call on troops to disobey orders.

[50][51][52] On August 19, The Guardian reported that some settlers had their children leave their homes with their hands up, or wearing a Star of David badge, to associate the actions of Israel with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

Although Sharon was initially opposed to withdrawing from the Philadelphi Route, he relented after legal advisers told him that it was impossible to declare Israel had fully withdrawn from the Gaza Strip so long as it controlled the border with Egypt.

While the residents of Ganim and Kadim, mostly middle-class seculars, had long since left their homes, several families and about 2,000 outsiders tried to prevent the evacuation of Sa-Nur and Homesh, which had a larger percent of observant population.

[68] Following Israel's withdrawal, on September 12 Palestinian crowds entered the settlements waving PLO and Hamas flags, firing gunshots into the air and setting off firecrackers, and chanting slogans.

[79][78] International bodies, and pressure from James Wolfensohn, Middle East envoy of the Quartet, who gave $500,000 of his own money, offered incentives for the rest of the greenhouses to be left to the Palestinians of Gaza.

However, Israeli justice minister Tzipi Livni praised the court decision, expressing hope that the ruling would defuse potentially violent settler resistance to the evacuation.

These restrictions include the need for Israeli permission to import basic necessities such as milk, to host foreign lecturers at universities, and register children in the Palestinian population registry.

[94] By April 2006, only minimal compensation (approximately $10,000) had been paid to families to survive until they obtained new jobs, which was difficult for most people, considering that most of the newly unemployed were middle-aged and lost the agricultural resources that were their livelihood.

[97][98][99] In September 2005, CNN reported increasing lawlessness in Gaza, rival militant groups competing for power, and hundreds of masked Hamas gunmen carrying rifles and grenade launchers marching through the streets of a refugee camp.

[4] The International Court of Justice reaffirmed this position, stating that the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip are unlawful and its discriminatory laws and policies against Palestinians violate the prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid.

[114] Cuyckens argues that such a requirement would allow the occupying power "to easily escape the obligations otherwise imposed upon it under the law of occupation by avoiding placing troops on the ground while nevertheless controlling the territory concerned from the outside."

"[117] Rubin argues that regardless of the conditions imposed by Israel after disengagement, the occupation ended after Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip.”[111] The Disengagement Plan was also criticized by both Israelis and other observers from the opposite viewpoint as an attempt to make permanent the different settlements of the West Bank, while the Gaza Strip was rendered to the Palestinian National Authority as an economically uninteresting territory with a Muslim population of nearly 1.4 million, seen as a "threat" to the Jewish identity of the Israeli democratic state.

In his May 26, 2005, joint press conference with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, in the White House Rose Garden, President George W. Bush stated his expectations vis-a-vis the Roadmap Plan.

[119] Javier Solana, High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), stated on June 10, 2004, his support fo the disengagement as an opportunity to restart the implementation of the Road Map.

The Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen (Ireland having Presidency of the EU at the time), announced the European Union's disapproval of the plan's limited scope in that it does not address withdrawal from the entire West Bank.

Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General, commended on August 18, 2005[120] what he called Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's "courageous decision" to carry through with the painful process of disengagement, expressed the hope that "both Palestinians and Israelis will exercise restraint in this challenging period", and "believes that a successful disengagement should be the first step towards a resumption of the peace process, in accordance with the Road Map", referring to the plan sponsored by the diplomatic Quartet – UN, EU, Russia, and the United States – which calls for a series of parallel steps leading to two states living side-by-side in peace by the end of the year.

The protestors formed a human chain from Nisanit (later moved to Erez Crossing because of security concerns) in the Gaza Strip to the Western Wall in Jerusalem a distance of 90 km.

[131] A September 15, 2004, survey published in Maariv showed that: Dov Weisglass was quoted in an interview with Israeli newspaper Haaretz on October 6, 2004, as saying that the disengagement would prevent a Palestinian state for years to come (see above).

These scenarios, which never materialized, took over the headlines.Based on Keshev's research, the Israeli print and TV media "relegated to back pages and buried deep in the newscasts, often under misleading headlines" items that "mitigat[ed] the extreme forecasts.