[ashirusnw]

Israel left Gaza, and uprooted its own citizens, in an attempt to follow the 1990s model of gradually letting Palestinians have self determination and seeing if it lead to a corresponding reduction in attacks and planning of Israeli destruction. It proved a disastrous attempt, as Hamas (and Fatah who at that time still committed numerous terrorist attacks too) and lead many Israelis to double down on the belief that Palestinians would never give up on genocide against Israel.

The 100m "kill zone" has been proved necessary beyond doubt now. But if your claim is that total military and settler withdrawal besides 100m near the border for security means that Gaza was still occupied and its people justified in using terrorism, then it just shows the extremes that pro Palestinians will go to justify atrocities and explains why Israelis are tired of giving their implacable enemies the benefit of the doubt.

[biorach]

> Israel left Gaza, and uprooted its own citizens,

Those were settlers, attempting to lay claim to land in Gaza

[nahumfarchi]

Sorry, but this adds nothing to the discussion. Yes, they were settlers (I don't think anyone in this sub-thread argued otherwise). Yes, they shouldn't have been there in the first place. And yet the Israeli government uprooted them at great pain for all involved (after encouraging them to settle there in the first place). Some interpret this as some grand political manuever intended to divide the Palestinians and make a diplomatic solution impossible. This is an odd assertion in my opinion since how could anyone have foreseen that Hamas would be voted into power and spiral us into more than a decade of war? I for one believe it was a gesture of good will (probably brought about by external pressure considering it was Ariel Sharon who led it, originally a strong pro-settlments politician), and an experiment to see what would happen if Israel returned land without an official agreement as all attempts at negotiations have failed at that point in time. The fact that this did not work has a lot to do with the choices made collectively by Palestinians at least as much as those made by Israelis. To say otherwise ignores their agency and freewill in these events.