Key figures: Ariel Sharon (Prime Minister of Israel), Benjamin Netanyahu (Finance Minister, resigned in protest), Dov Weissglas (Sharon’s chief of staff and chief negotiator), Mahmoud Abbas (President of the Palestinian Authority)
Summary
In August 2005, Israel carried out a unilateral withdrawal of all its military forces and civilian settlers from the Gaza Strip, together with four settlements in the northern West Bank. The plan, proposed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in December 2003 and formally adopted by the Israeli cabinet on June 6, 2004, was ratified by the Knesset in stages — a preliminary vote on October 26, 2004 (67–45) and final approval of the Disengagement Plan Implementation Law on February 16, 2005 (59–40, with five abstentions).
The withdrawal removed all 21 Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and 4 in the northern West Bank (Kadim, Ganim, Homesh, and Sa-Nur), evacuating approximately 8,000–8,600 settlers. The settler evacuation began August 15, 2005 and was largely completed within Gaza by August 22, with the last northern West Bank settlements cleared by August 23. The Israel Defense Forces completed its full military withdrawal and demolition of remaining infrastructure by September 11–12, 2005, ending a 38-year Israeli military and civilian presence in Gaza that began with the 1967 Six-Day War.
The operation was Sharon’s most consequential and divisive policy as prime minister. It fractured his own Likud party, prompted Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s resignation in protest, and ultimately led Sharon to leave Likud in November 2005 to found the centrist Kadima party.
Background and the Disengagement Plan
Sharon first outlined the concept of a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in a December 2003 speech, framing it as a response to the stalled Israeli–Palestinian peace process and the perceived absence of a reliable Palestinian negotiating partner during the Second Intifada. He formalized the proposal in an April 14, 2004 letter to U.S. President George W. Bush, who endorsed the plan while affirming that some existing Israeli population centers in the West Bank were “already the reality on the ground.”
The Israeli cabinet approved an amended version of the plan on June 6, 2004, by a 14–7 majority. The Knesset gave preliminary approval on October 26, 2004 (67 in favor, 45 opposed, seven abstentions), and passed the Disengagement Plan Implementation Law in its final reading on February 16, 2005, by a vote of 59–40 with five abstentions. The law authorized the government to evacuate all Israeli settlements in Gaza — Netzarim, Kfar Darom, Neve Dekalim, and 18 others — along with Kadim, Ganim, Homesh, and Sa-Nur in the northern West Bank, and offered financial compensation to relocating residents.
Implementation and Evacuation
Settlers were given a deadline of midnight on August 15, 2005 to leave voluntarily and accept compensation, after which the IDF and Israeli police began forced evacuations. Roughly two-thirds of Gaza’s approximately 8,000–8,600 settlers left before the deadline; the remainder were removed over the following week by a security force of about 14,000 soldiers and police officers. Evacuations were largely peaceful, though several settlements saw organized resistance: at Kfar Darom, several hundred residents and outside activists barricaded themselves inside the local synagogue and on its roof, throwing debris and acid at security forces before being forcibly removed, and at Neve Dekalim a group of American Orthodox Jewish activists barricaded themselves in a basement and threatened self-immolation.
By August 22, 2005, all 21 Gaza settlements had been emptied of residents, and by August 23 the four northern West Bank settlements were cleared as well. Demolition of vacated homes and infrastructure followed (synagogues were left standing at the Palestinian Authority’s request but were later burned by Palestinians after the withdrawal), and the IDF completed its final withdrawal from the Gaza Strip on September 11–12, 2005, ending direct Israeli military control of the territory that had begun in 1967.
Aftermath
The disengagement reshaped Israeli domestic politics. Benjamin Netanyahu resigned as finance minister on August 7, 2005 in protest of the plan, and opposition within Likud to Sharon’s policy intensified through the autumn. On November 21, 2005, Sharon resigned as Likud’s leader and, with Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres, and other party moderates, founded a new centrist party, Kadima (“Forward”), on November 24, 2005, dissolving the Knesset and triggering early elections held in March 2006.
Control over Gaza’s border crossings, airspace, and coastline remained with Israel after the withdrawal, and the extent to which Gaza’s occupation formally ended has remained a matter of legal and political dispute. The Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, assumed civil administration of the evacuated territory. Hamas’s subsequent January 2006 electoral victory and its 2007 takeover of Gaza followed within roughly a year and a half of the withdrawal.
Significance
The Gaza disengagement was the first time Israel unilaterally dismantled functioning settlements and withdrew its military from occupied territory it had settled with civilians, rather than doing so as part of a negotiated peace agreement (as had occurred earlier when it dismantled the Sinai settlements under the 1979 Egypt–Israel treaty). It ended nearly four decades of continuous Israeli settlement and military presence in Gaza and became a template debated for years afterward as a possible — and, to critics, cautionary — model for handling the West Bank. Domestically, it triggered the collapse of Sharon’s Likud-led governing coalition and the creation of Kadima, reshaping Israeli party politics for the subsequent decade. The withdrawal, and the political and security vacuum that followed it, remains a central reference point in analyses of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict’s subsequent trajectory, including the 2006 Hamas election win and the 2007 Hamas takeover of Gaza.