This Week in History: Gaza Disengagement begins

20.08.2011                      20.Aw-Elul, 5771                      Ekew

Geschichte:

This Week in History: Gaza Disengagement begins

Move raised questions about possible dangers, consequences of any future mass evacuation in W. Bank should peace deal be reached.

On the morning of August 15, 2005, tens of thousands of soldiers descended on the Gaza Strip – without their weapons. Less than two years earlier, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon had presented his Gaza Disengagement Plan (then known as the Separation Plan), ending once and for all what had been considered a permanent Israeli military and civilian presence deep inside the Gaza Strip.
Sharon first announced the plan in 2003, just months after the United States presented the Road Map to Peace plan, the latest US effort at forging an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. In presenting the plan, Sharon explained that he attached great importance to peace talks but due to other problems faced by Israel outside of the Palestinian conflict, “I do not intend to wait for [the Palestinians] indefinitely.”…