Ariel Sharon introduced his "disengagement" plan in early February 2004, at the peak of international criticism of Israel's project of the Apartheid Wall and on the eve of the openings of deliberations at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Billed as a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the plan called for the evacuation of 21 illegal Jewish settlements, as well as the redeployment of Israeli troops to the Gazan borders beginning in August 2005. The Israeli army completed its evacuation and demolition of military outposts and settlements on September 12, 2005. The pageantry of the actual evacuation was accompanied by the cacophony of exaggerated wailing and tussling of illegal settlers/squatters who attempted to conflate their eviction with the Holocaust, much to the derision of their own populace.(1) This spectacle was orchestrated to produce the maximum media-related effect, both domestically and abroad.

In reality, the "disengagement" plan clearly smacked of a smokescreen. There is scant evidence to prove that Gaza is not under Israeli occupation. As principal architect of the settlement project in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza, Sharon was not dismantling the colonial structure so much as rearranging it. In Gaza, Israel's policy of strangulation has continued unabated after its celebrated "disengagement" and actually intensified following Hamas's overwhelming victory in the parliamentary elections of January 2006. After Israel pulled its troops and settlements from Gaza, it turned its attention to the more central task of colonizing the West Bank, a project which includes the pilfering of vital Palestinian resources such as water. At the same time, Israel accelerated construction of the Annexation Wall in the West Bank, expanded illegal settlements there and confined the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to ever shrinking parcels of land. Even the most cursory glance at today's news headlines would prove that Israel's "disengagement" from Gaza was a farce.

"Disengagement" as conceived by the Israeli government can be seen as a means to shirk all the responsibilities incumbent upon the Occupying Power relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons under Occupation as defined by the Fourth Geneva Convention. Until now, Israel indisputably continues to bear legal responsibility for Gaza. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights expressed concern before the implementation of the plan, arguing presciently that: "this proposed plan of 'disengagement' will facilitate Israel's continued abrogation of its legal and moral obligations under international law, including: the right of return for refugees; the derailment of the implementation of the ICJ regarding the Annexation Wall; and the right of self-determination." (2) Subsequent to their eviction from Gaza, the colonial settler population simply moved to the West Bank, as much a breach of international law as the initial Occupation in 1967. Article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention stipulates that: "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

In a sense, the Israeli "disengagement" from Gaza followed the obvious (and highly flawed) trajectory of Oslo. In the years following the Oslo Accords, Palestinians have seen their putative state sliced into a series of noncontiguous Bantustans. The current map of the West Bank shows Israeli settlements distorting the Palestinian topography, crisscrossed by highways designated for the exclusive use of the military and settlers. Now, with the advent of the ever-encroaching Apartheid Wall, Palestinians have found themselves even more hemmed in and cut off from their families, agricultural lands and neighboring cities and villages. Many Palestinians have come to regard the Oslo accords as an act of betrayal that turned the PLO leadership into a tool of the Israel authorities in suppressing their own people. The outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000 can be read in part as the popular rejection of Oslo and the very coterie of PLO leaders who came to head its new incarnation as the Palestinian National Authority. In the absence of a genuine state, indeed lacking the territorial contiguity that would make possible a viable state, Palestinians have witnessed the veneer of sovereignty promised by Oslo exposed as cruel subterfuge.

It bears noting that Israel never hid its desire to rid itself of Gaza. Following the signing of the Oslo Accords, the late Edward Said wrote: "Surely the Israelis are glad to be rid of Gaza. Rabin openly said that he wished Gaza would sink into the sea, so great were its problems, so unruly its people." (3)

Since 2005, Israel gave the appearance of making concessions to the failed peace process, while retaining absolute control of Gaza's airspace, coastline and land borders, including the main access points at the Erez and Rafah crossings, effectively controlling all entry and exit in and out of Gaza. Under the terms of the unilateral "disengagement", the Israeli army also reserves the right to re-enter the territory at will. In the past two years since Israel's ground withdrawal, Gazans have suffered collective punishment (a war crime according to international law) (4) and a crippling financial embargo intended to starve them into submission. Repeated incursions by the IOF as well as the relentless killing of civilians and extra-judicial assassinations, chiefly perpetrated by the Israeli Airforce, of Palestinian political figures, have only added to the calvary in Gaza.

As the noted Israeli architect Eyal Weizman expounds in his incisive book Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation: "In recent years it is Gaza, however, that has become for the world's largest laboratory for airborne assassinations." (5) As a result of the economic siege on Gaza, more than 77 percent of Gaza's 1.3 million inhabitants now live below the poverty line – almost double the number before the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

Rather than signaling a step towards ending the Israeli Occupation, "disengagement" proved to be the Occupation of Gaza by other (primarily airborne) means, or in other terms, an "invisible Occupation" (6); as well as an unambiguous and abject attempt to circumvent Israel's absolute legal responsibilities as the Occupying Power in the Gaza Strip. On a secondary level, Israel's much-ballyhoed "disengagement" from Gaza was a ruse intended to deflect mounting criticism directed at the Zionist state for its illegal construction of the Annexation Wall.

[1] Urquhart, Conal. "Setters' Tactics win them few friends." Guardian Unlimited. August 19, 2005. http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1552231,00.html

[2] Said, Edward W. Peace and Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process. New York: Verso, 1996. p. xxxii.

[3] PCHR Gaza. "Sharon's Gaza Redeployment Plan: A Denial of Human Rights, Not an End to Occupation". October 2004. p. 5.

[4] Article 33 of the Geneva Civilian Convention recognizes: "Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation…are prohibited".

[5] Weizman, Eyal. Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation. London: Verso, 2007. p. 241.