Since 2005, the myth of a unilateral Israeli “withdrawal” from Gaza has stubbornly persisted...And yet objectively speaking, what happened in August of that year was not much of a “withdrawal” at all, given that the Israeli military continued to control Gaza’s borders while subjecting the territory to a punishing blockade and periodic wanton bombardment.
Israeli officials themselves made no effort to hide what they were really up to. In 2004, while the plan was still being discussed in the Knesset, Dov Weisglass, a senior adviser to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, stated point-blank: “The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”
By “freezing” the political process, Weisglass went on to explain, “you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem”. Thanks to “disengagement”, then, the whole issue of Palestinian statehood had been “removed indefinitely from our agenda” – and all with the “blessing” of the president of the United States of America “and the ratification of both houses of Congress”.
In 2006, Israel launched Operation Summer Rains in the Gaza Strip, which scholars Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe would subsequently characterise as being thus far the “most brutal attack on Gaza since 1967”. This, of course, was before Gaza was awakened from its dreams of liberation with an all-out Israeli genocide, which has now killed more than 53,000 Palestinians since October 2023.
In 2006, Israeli government adviser Weisglass – the same character who revealed the “formaldehyde” approach to disengagement – also took it upon himself to charmingly clarify the logic behind Israel’s restrictions on food imports into the Gaza Strip: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” Now that Israel is literally starving Palestinians to death in Gaza with the full complicity of the United States, it seems the “idea” has undergone some revisions...
Belén Fernández @ Al Jazeera
Israeli officials themselves made no effort to hide what they were really up to. In 2004, while the plan was still being discussed in the Knesset, Dov Weisglass, a senior adviser to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, stated point-blank: “The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”
By “freezing” the political process, Weisglass went on to explain, “you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem”. Thanks to “disengagement”, then, the whole issue of Palestinian statehood had been “removed indefinitely from our agenda” – and all with the “blessing” of the president of the United States of America “and the ratification of both houses of Congress”.
In 2006, Israel launched Operation Summer Rains in the Gaza Strip, which scholars Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe would subsequently characterise as being thus far the “most brutal attack on Gaza since 1967”. This, of course, was before Gaza was awakened from its dreams of liberation with an all-out Israeli genocide, which has now killed more than 53,000 Palestinians since October 2023.
In 2006, Israeli government adviser Weisglass – the same character who revealed the “formaldehyde” approach to disengagement – also took it upon himself to charmingly clarify the logic behind Israel’s restrictions on food imports into the Gaza Strip: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” Now that Israel is literally starving Palestinians to death in Gaza with the full complicity of the United States, it seems the “idea” has undergone some revisions...
Belén Fernández @ Al Jazeera
