JERUSALEM, Israel – The war in Gaza has been at the top of the news cycle for nearly two years. However, 20 years ago this week, Israel expelled thousands of Israelis from thriving communities in Gaza and northern Samaria in a move that was supposed to bring peace.
What happened since then is a much different outcome.
In 2005, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon uprooted 21 Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip and four in Samaria, or the northern West Bank, forcing ten thousand Israelis out of their homes.
Known as "The Disengagement," it was a land concession that was billed as the next step to peace with the Palestinians under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority.
Just two years later, the terror group Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in a violent intra-Palestinian battle for control.
In the ensuing years, Hamas and other terror groups have launched tens of thousands of rockets, carried out many suicide bombings, and dug numerous terror tunnels.
The murder of nearly 1,200 Israelis in the October 7th, 2023, cross-border attack from the Gaza Strip is deemed the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. It has prompted many Israelis to call for a return to Gaza.
Avi Abelow from pulseofisrael.com told CBN News, "People actually don't know Gaza is Jewish. Jews have lived in Gaza, on and off, for thousands of years."
Gaza is first mentioned in Genesis, and later (Joshua 15) is named as part of the inheritance given to the biblical tribe of Judah.
Abelow notes that even in the early 1900s, Jews were living in Gaza.
"Before Israel was established in the 1940s, there were Jewish communities in Gaza," Abelow said. "Unfortunately, the British, because they didn't want to defend the Jews, they basically expelled them. They said, 'Run away,' because we were being killed by the pogroms by the Arab Muslims in the late 1920s and the 1930s."
From the 1948 establishment of Israel until the 1967 Six-Day War, Gaza was under Egyptian control. Following Israel's victory, most of the 21 Jewish communities there were established in the 1970s and early '80s.
The communities began to thrive. Over 30 years, agriculture grew to a $60 million per year industry, producing 15 percent of Israel's exported vegetables.
Anita Tucker, nicknamed "the Celery Lady," successfully farmed in her community of Netzer Hazani for decades. Ten years ago, she told CBN's Scott Ross about one of her first encounters with the Arabs there.
She recalled, "One day, we see it like out of no place – comes, like out from under the sand dunes – comes this Arab with his keffiyeh and his long galabia, his long Arab robe. We see they have bread and salt in their hands in the Muslim tradition. "Bruchim haBaim! Welcome!" they said to us. "We're so glad that you're here!"
Tucker remarked that the local Arabs were happy for their success. "They were happy with that blessing because it was work for the people," she said. "We taught them the modern agriculture."
She believes the relationship started to break down when the world began talking about peace.
"I say they misspelled it on the (political) right. Instead of writing P E A C E, somebody, by mistake, wrote P I E C E. And they started tearing us to pieces and tearing the Arabs living in Gaza to pieces," Tucker stated.
Yair Shoshan was an 18-year-old resident of the community of Gadid in 2005.
"We knew the minute we would leave the farms of Gush Katif, we knew we would pay a price," he remembered. "We knew it would cost us in missiles and terror attacks, and shootings. In the end, here we are closing the circle."
The 9,000 Gaza residents of Gush Katif decided not to leave voluntarily. They felt they had settled the biblical land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with the blessing of the Israeli government. Until the end, they believed for a miracle.
Shoshan recalled, "It was the saddest thing that the soldiers participated in the disengagement. They evacuated us. They pulled us out. They took us out by force. And we thought it wouldn't happen until the last day, we were sure the gardeners were taking care of the gardens. And until the last day, we were watering the grass, and we were certain it wouldn't happen."
After more than 30 years of nourishing successful communities, it took just a week to obliterate the traces of Jewish life on the sand dunes of Gaza.
Amichai Chikli, Diaspora Affairs Minister in today's Netanyahu government, told us, "I thought it was a terrible mistake to withdraw because it sends the wrong message to the enemy that you are going back under pressure, that you are actually surrendering because you don't – you just don't want to fight."
Chikli served in the Israel Defense Forces at the time. He asserted, "I think that October 7th is a direct result of the disengagement, and I have one thing to say about it: We have betrayed the land of Israel in 2005, and the land did not forget and did not forgive. We should never abandon an inch of our soil in Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem, etcetera."
Six months before the disengagement, polls showed nearly two-thirds of Israelis supported it. Chikli observed, "Many people who supported the disengagement in the villages nearby Gaza, they really thought that it will get – it will bring peace."
Chikli believes it was a tough lesson to learn. A recent poll revealed that 76 percent of Israelis believe it was a mistake to pull out.
In the eyes of their enemy, Chikli says, every Jew is a settler who doesn't belong here, whether in Gush Katif or Tel Aviv.
"They see it from a religious perspective. They see it as a Muslim, as a Muslim territory," Chikli said.
President Donald Trump said recently that Israel made a mistake in pulling out of Gaza. Abelow believes it's time for Israel to return.
"That test to see if (the Palestinians) can have their own state blew up in everyone's faces. They want to destroy us," Abelow insisted. "They cannot live there. We have to move back and live there and take it back again. It's time to make Gaza Jewish again."
