Today’s genocide is rooted in Israel “leaving” Gaza in 2005
JVL Introduction
Israel unilaterally disengaged from the interior of the Gaza Strip in 2005 but, as we all know, it retained control of all but one crossing point, the air and most of the sea. Israel also destroyed the 21 Settlements it had built rather than leave them for Palestinians to use. While there, Jewish people were less than 1% of the population of the Strip but the Settlements used 20% of the land. (See, eg Wikipedia on Israel’s disengagement).
This “withdrawal” laid the foundation for the genocide today. Levy argues that “how Israel conducted the withdrawal of its settlements from Gaza — and subsequently narrated the fallout — can be understood as a critical juncture in the demise of the two-state paradigm. It was also a harbinger of what is now replacing it: not just separating from the Palestinians, relegated to shrinking Bantustans, but annihilating and erasing them.”
LL
This article was originally published by +972 on Wed 10 Sep 2025. Read the original here.
How Israel’s Gaza ‘disengagement’ planted the seeds of today’s genocide
Enraged by the 2005 withdrawal, the national-religious camp worked to brand territorial concession as a disaster — with ethnic cleansing as the only solution.
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Insightful article.
A footnote re the Introduction comment “Israel also destroyed the 21 Settlements it had built rather than leave them for Palestinians to use. ” True, but when wealthy Jewish philanthropists (including from Bosnia, if I recall correctly) bought the glasshouses (flower exports being a major export for the Gaza settlements) to be given to the local population for their economic development, the Gazans destroyed them. I think the same fate would have befallen the settlements if handed over.