The day the settlers left: Gaza during the ‘Disengagement’

Pamela Olson 

The day the settlers left: Gaza during the ‘Disengagement’

In 2005, Israel removed 7,500 illegal settlers from the choice lands in Gaza they had occupied for years. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s advisor Dov Weisglass admitted the point of this “Disengagement” was to put any chance of a real peace process “in formaldehyde” so that Israel could continue colonizing the West Bank with a freer hand.

Sure enough, though about 8,000 settlers were pulled out of Gaza and a few small West Bank outposts in 2005, the settler population in the West Bank increased by more than 12,000 that year. And it has continued growing ever since.

The Disengagement was also unilateral, which meant there was no coordination with the Palestinians. No core Palestinian requests were met, such as allowing free commerce, free sea access, and the reopening of Gaza’s International Airport. Palestinians were effectively blockaded even before Hamas won elections in 2006 with a 45% plurality of the vote.

Chapter 11 of my book Fast Times in Palestine recounts the heady days leading up to the contentious pull-out of Gaza’s settlers. Below is the last section of the chapter, in which I visited Gaza for the first time just as the settlers were evacuated.

Drinking by the Sea in Gaza

Even after a year in the West Bank, it was difficult for me to imagine life in the Gaza Strip. It seemed less an actual place than a metaphor for human suffering, the modern world’s dirty little secret, a forbidden, forgotten, crowded, impoverished, dangerous, besieged penal colony. Over a million people squeezed into a 27-by-5-mile strip of land choked by settlements, ‘security zones,’ sniper towers, and military bases, like a super-concentrated version of the West Bank.

An Israeli officer had recently admitted the army’s raids into Gaza were characterized by chaos and the indiscriminate use of force. “Gaza was considered a playground for sharpshooters,” he explained.

I remembered many of the names and faces of the hundreds of Gazans I had reported on who’d been gunned down. Schools and homes, roads and restaurants—nowhere was safe. The Gazans’ framework had become so warped, most truly couldn’t fathom why Israelis were so scared of Qassam rockets. They could only dream of their only torment being an occasional barrage of unguided missiles with a half-percent kill rate.

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Click here to read the rest of the story.

Pamela Olson is happy to send a free PDF copy of Fast Times in Palestine to anyone who wishes to learn more about life under Israeli occupation. Please contact her through her website to request one.

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/settlers-during-disengagement.html