JERUSALEM: Five years ago on Sunday, the last of 8,000 Jewish settlers were pulled out of the Gaza Strip, some kicking and screaming, in a move that remains controversial in Israel to this day.
Israel`s handling of the evacuees has been widely seen as a test case for a potentially much larger withdrawal from the West Bank under any future peace deal with the Palestinians.
Critics, including numerous West Bank settlers, say the "disengagement," organised by then prime minister Ariel Sharon, paved the way for the June 2007 takeover of the coastal territory by Hamas, an Islamist movement committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.
They also link the withdrawal to the almost daily barrage of rockets that fell on southern Israel until December 2008 when Israel launched a devastating 22-day military offensive on the Palestinian enclave.
In the summer of 2005, Israel withdrew the settlers and all of its ground forces and handed the densely populated territory over to the Palestinians.
The pullout involved emotional scenes as settlers were dragged from their homes and synagogues by fellow Jews, though it was devoid of serious violence.
It marked the end of a 38-year Israeli presence in the coastal territory which many settlers viewed as theirs by biblical birthright. Before leaving Gaza, Israeli troops demolished the 21 settlements.
But to this day, Israel maintains control of Gaza`s air space, its territorial waters, its borders and its populations registry.
It also imposed tough sanctions on the tiny territory after Hamas and other militants captured Israel soldier Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid from Gaza in June 2006.
Sharon`s disengagement plan had raised international hopes of a genuine revival of the moribund Middle East peace process, which in 2005 was left in tatters by five years of Israeli-Palestinian violence, but little tangible progress has been made since.
But it also raised hackles at home. The then finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- today Israel`s prime minister -- resigned in protest when the cabinet gave its approval for the operation to start.
BDST: 1030 HRS, August 22, 2010
