On 12 September 2005, Israel completed its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. While erroneously presented as a peace offering to Palestinians, the unilateral withdrawal rebuffed any cooperation from the Palestinian Authority, enabled an indirect Israeli occupation with Gaza's population treated as dispensable, and served the purpose of entrenching Israeli occupation in the West Bank. On this 10th anniversary, we recommend The Gaza Strip as Laboratory: Notes in the Wake of Disengagement by Darryl Li published in Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. 35, No. 2.
"Israel’s challenge is how to pursue maximum land and minimum Arabs in a way that preserves this consensus just enough to forestall support for a single state based on equal citizenship. The disengagement is perhaps the best example of this game. A border is a fixed line separating two proper sovereign political entities. A frontier is more ambiguous and flexible, moving as demography moves. No matter what the PA may choose to believe, Israel’s demarcating a frontier does not mean it is giving up its supremacy on the other side."
