Ask Haviv Anything - 134: Was Gaza still occupied after 2005?

Episode Date: July 26, 2026

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything ), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/ ), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur ).And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/ ) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur ).--Welcome to our new short-form episodes interspersed with the regular interviews and lectures that dive into an often-asked question about Israel, Jews and the Middle East.In our current episode we ask: Was Gaza still occupied after 2005?If you appreciate what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [e-mail]⁠.Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Okay, continuing with our subscriber questions, does Israel occupy Gaza? And in what way is the Gaza disengagement from 2005 relevant to that question? Thank you for that question. This person has been hearing online that, in fact, the occupation of Gaza never ended, even though Israel withdrew in 2005 in August of that year. And this person is asking whether Israel is still occupying Gaza. So I want to do two things. One address the vocabulary.

This question is a question asked by a certain kind of international elite that is infatuated with the technical vocabulary. The answer is no, there's no serious argument. They pretend to have a serious argument. They built a movement to fight occupation. And if the Israelis are willing to give up occupation, then that's problematic for their movement. So they need the Israelis to still be occupying because that's the thing they know how to accuse it of. Nevertheless, put it into your favorite AI and fact check me on this point. We will walk through that argument on the semantics, and you will see that they need to invent a new kind of occupation to still use the word.

But the word has cachet, so they won't give up the word. They do this on all of the words they accuse Israelov, by the way. They're not exactly the thing that was. They're not even in some really important salient ways the thing that was. But we need to use the word because the word itself is mobilizing. The word itself is exactly the kind of morality play running in our heads. And so we will do whatever it takes to keep using the word. And that's the case here with occupation in Gaza.

That doesn't mean Israel doesn't have humanitarian responsibilities in Gaza, including before October 7. It doesn't mean there wasn't a blockade. It doesn't mean that you have to agree with Israel's policies. It's just not belligerent occupation under the Geneva Conventions. Let me get into it. But then I want to address the more serious arguments about Israeli tensions. which are, for example, that Israel pulled out of Gaza, sought out failure in Gaza, helped Chámas turn Gaza into what it turned it into, so that it would never have to pull out

of the West Bank, that Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister who carried out the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, actually was doing it to not end the military rule in the West Bank. So let's get into it. The question of whether there's an occupation in Gaza is basically a question of something called effective control. You militarily occupy a territory you captured in war. under the Geneva Conventions, if you control that territory. And traditionally, that is a very simple thing to test.

If the military is in the place, if it has boots on the ground, and if it runs the place after a war, it's occupied the place. If the place is full of people who are not the citizens of the country that captured the territory, that's a status of belligerent occupation, where you control a territory from another state, where you control the population that is not your citizens, It is a legal construct that immediately automatically kicks in and basically says you all owe each other certain things, even if, okay, these non-citizens captured in this war aren't part of the social contract of the civil rights contract within state A that captured this territory on these people. Still, state A owes them certain things by dint of the Geneva Convention, you know, not to forcibly remove them all, not to basically not to, basically not to,

kill them. Okay. These are protections. These are rights. That it owes them even if it's beyond the, you know, reach of its own constitutional rights, its own, right, the American constitution. famously doesn't give all that many rights to non-citizens. Well, if the U.S. military captures a territory full of non-citizens, it still owes basic rights under Fort Geneva. So, belligerent occupation is that. Do you control the territory? Well, Boots on the ground is the basic test, and boots on the ground did not exist in Gaza from the withdrawal in 2005. What did Israel have, especially after 2007, when Hamas carries out a coup in Gaza, a violent coup against not Israel, but against the Palestinian authority,

and takes control of Gaza from the recognized international Palestinian government. Recognize, I mean the UN recognized in international forums, recognized by most states in the world. And then the basic problem with calling it an occupation becomes obvious. Israel doesn't control what happens inside Gaza. Now, in 2007 kicks in an Israeli blockade, basically beginning in the Second Intifada in 2000, terror organizations in Gaza, Hamas, Palestinian Islam jihad, primarily, start shooting rockets at the towns and villages on the Gaza border area inside Israel. They will be shooting them for the next 25 years. And kids grow up with daily rockets.

You know, they start after 2006 building literally a bomb shelter room attached to every apartment. It's a vast, vast project of many untold billions of shackles to give these people bomb shelters in their daily routine lives, in their classrooms, in their homes, in their apartments, and their supermarkets. And that's the Israeli response to that rocket fire. But that rocket fire means that when Hamas takes over Gaza from the PA, what Israel begins to impose is a serious blockade meant to prevent all kinds of dual use, whether it's concrete, you know, metal tubes. after conflicts, for example, after 2014, millions of cubic meters of concrete are allowed into Gaza for rebuilding. They went mostly into building that tunnel system. So Hamas has never, ever given aid to the civilian population primarily. It has always hoarded it, making the entry of whether it's dual-use materials, whether it's aid itself.

Basically a de facto feeding of Hamas, an arming of Hamas, a way to contribute to Hamas. Hamas' military infrastructure, which was only ever meant to be used in a war they planned to declare. So that was the source of the Israeli blockade. Does that blockade constitute occupation? Well, Israel didn't even control all the borders under that blockade. The Rafah crossing is from Gaza into Egypt. There's a border with Egypt. Egypt blockaded it.

Egypt participated with Israel in a blockade. Egypt has similar fears, not identical fears, but similar concerns. but similar concerns over Hamas. And so is it an occupation? If it's a joint Israeli-Israel and Egypt cooperate on relatively little, a little bit on natural gas because they have no choice.

They need each other. A little bit on border security because they need each other. They don't like each other. They're not deep, warm allies. They don't invest in each other's economies. They agree on this. And they work together on this

because Hamas poses the same threat to both. Is it a belligerent occupation? If you don't have internal control, can't prevent the people who do run the place from arming against you forever and ever, only impose the blockade after that happened, don't have boots on the ground, and another country on the other side in a border you don't control. Religion and occupation was always about total control. You don't control that side. Joined you in that blockade for its own security reasons from the same source of a security threat? The answer is, no, not at all. you're being stupid. But people are willing to do that just to maintain the word occupation applied to

Gaza. There was a famous case in 2008 where the Israeli Supreme Court was demanded by a Palestinian who appealed to the court to rule on this very question. Does a state of belligerent occupation exists in Gaza? And the court ruling was absolutely not because of all these reasons. It's simply not what it is. By the way, you can oppose that blockade. You can argue that the Israeli policy generally is wrong. You can argue that there are six good policy reasons or 11 moral reasons or a whole cascade, a whole array of reasons why this is not the right path. But you cannot argue that this thing that the fourth Geneva establishes to fill a lacuna a hole in wartimes protections for civilians, that one specific institution, you cannot argue that that exists

in Gaza. By the way, in the places of the Israeli army today controls Gaza, it's on the and it controls the place. Absolutely it exists. It did not exist before October 7. And those who argue it did are lying. Incidentally, including in that 2008 Supreme Court decision, the court explicitly said that blockades in international law do have humanitarian under the laws of war, just the laws of armed conflict. There are humanitarian responsibilities that Israel owes the territory, owes the people living there, which is totally a legitimate argument. And Israel's own Supreme Court believes that and ruled that, that's not what occupation is. It's a completely separate thing. And then that question of occupation in Gaza is not really this technical terminology thing, even though this

whole world exists just to find new bad words to throw at Israel, no matter how much the bad word has to be changed. But there are real fundamental questions. For example, Ariel Sharon pulled out of Gaza. Gaza turned into a massively armed belligerent entity, and that created massive blowback in the Israeli body politic against ever pulling out of the West Bank, even if some polls would have told us back in 1999 or 2004 that there was some Israeli willingness by the Israeli public to pull out of some areas, major, significant areas of the West Bank. That was no longer true after Gaza fell to Hamas and the 2006 war was fought, the kidnapping of

Gilad Shalit that began that fighting in Gaza that then expanded to Lebanon in the summer of 2006 in July when Hezbollah carried out an attack across the border, another place from which Israel had just unilaterally withdrawn back in 2000 and now they were fighting a war against terror groups that had filled the vacuum that Israel left behind.

That Ariel Sharon in fact, he was a brilliant strategist and a brilliant and ruthless military commander. That Ariel Sharon was perfectly capable of engineering a Gaza failure so that Israel would never have to pull out of the West Bank, which is much bigger, 16 times the size of Gaza. If Israel pulls out of the West Bank, it shrinks to nine miles wide in the middle of the country

in the middle of the Middle East. It is a reasonable argument for an Israeli to make that Gaza is not a core existential threat. The West Bank is. and so not wanting to pull out of the West Bank is not a crazy thing to assume the Israelis believe, even the Israelis willing to pull out of Gaza. And the argument goes, Ariel Sharon engineered a failure in Gaza to ensure nobody ever pulls out of the West Bank. The problem with this accusation, incidentally, it has to be said in defense of those who say this,

after the fact when a bunch of right-wingers who supported Sharon's disengagement from Gaza had to explain to a right-wing. that was no longer pro in disengagement of any kind, pro withdrawal of any kind, why they had once been, that's the argument they made. I never actually supported withdrawal. There was just this one tactical withdrawal. So the people who make this claim, they bring right-wing Israeli voices. Those are right-wing Israeli voices trying to survive a shift in public opinion, a very fast and profound shift that says that was a catastrophe. Who, what idiot would have supported that? Well, politicians who now want to pivot and be on the right side of history again, at least according to their voters, made that shift in that way. Those quotes are brought in by these people to make this

argument. So it's a very serious argument. The argument that Gaza is under occupation is fake. It's fake. And if the entire UN apparatus and 63% of all legal scholars on earth say it, it remains fake. It remains a redefinition of the word occupation for the purpose of continuing to level it. In Israel, giving Israel the credit for the withdrawal from Gaza is deeply problematic for these people, not because there's some kind of like, you know, moral scoreboard that they're keeping track of, but because that means you have to shift some focus to Palestinian agency, some focus to what Hamas does, what Hamas tells Israelis it wants to do to them, to their children. some focus to how certain Palestinian factions

will never not play spoiler and that there are therefore some Palestinian responsibility to the situation Palestinians are in. And to avoid that, the occupation can never end, no matter what Israel does. It can never be about Hamas. It has to only ever be about Israel. There's this powerful impulse

to keep saying a word that nobody who actually knows the topic seriously believes that that's the word that applies. But wow, this argument that, yeah, okay, occupation's over in Gaza, you pulled out, so that it can collapse the way it collapse, that you never have to pull out of the West Bank, Palestinians, never get a state. That is a much more rational and serious argument. My only problem with that argument, other than that, you know, I knew some of these people,

some of these planners, I've interviewed them, I've met them, I've talked to them over the years, that is not what they believed in real time. But besides me telling you that, which is not so useful to you, there's the timing. When Sharon pulled out of Gaza in August of 2005, he also took down four small settlements in the northern Samaria region, than the sort of northern West Bank. And it was a message. And Sharon, August 2005, there's the withdrawal. He then has a stroke. He leaves Likud.

He establishes Kadima, a new political party. He then has a stroke. He's now out of commission. There's a new elit. election, and the number two guy in Kadima who joined Sharon from Lykud, a right-winger named Eud Olmert, is now the head of Kadima, and he's running in the 2006 elections after Sharon is incapacitated. And Olmer talks about, on the campaign trail, explicitly says, Aririch Sharon, Ariel Sharon, wanted to pull out of the West Bank, and I'm going to do it. And he talked about

something called a convergence plan. It would come to be called a convergence plan, which is a terrible name for a plan. Israeli leaders will do just about anything to avoid the word withdrawal. They'll disengage from Gaza because the problem with Gaza was just too much engagement. And they'll converge out of, by the way, in Hebrew it's Hittkensut, meaning in-gathering plan, which is worse sounding than somehow convergence in English. Israel's going to suck in its belly, kind of an image. Whatever you call the name to sell it to Israelis, it was a withdrawal from 90% of the West Bank. Ulmer talked about it on the campaign trail about the need for it.

He won that election after talking about it publicly, not before, and when he formed the government in March of 2006, he gave the defense ministry to the Labor Party. The left wing that after the second intifada after the peace process collapsed in 140 suicide bombings, the left wing that could no longer win elections, was given the control of the agency of government that would actually carry out the withdrawal.

The people who Olmer tasked with carrying out withdrawal from the West Bank. He made sure were people who believed in a withdrawal from the West Bank. And that's the government that forms in March of 2006, that within 10 weeks, 12 weeks, faces the first Hamas attack from Gaza through a tunnel. The first Hamas tunnel attack that kills two Israeli soldiers and kidnaps Gilad Shalit. And then there's the beginning of a very small scale, but nevertheless shooting battle going on in Gaza. And that's when Chisbel on July 12, six years after Israel pulled out of Lebanon,

carries out its major, first major cross-border attack on July 12, 2006, kills, I believe, four Israeli soldiers, kidnaps two, and that launches the second Lebanon war. And then Olmeert is fighting a war on two fronts, Gaza and South Lebanon,

from which he had just unilaterally withdrawn. And he promised his war, Israelis, that he would attain deterrence. He told Israelis it was safe to pull out of the West Bank. Well, the West Bank is so much more dangerous for Israel than Gaza or South Lebanon. It's enormous, and it's the highlands overlooking our population centers. So if it's not safe in Gaza, if Gaza is filled, the vacuum of power we leave behind is filled by bad guys who are undeterable because they don't care what damage is done to their populations. And the same happens in Saad Lebanon, how could we possibly pull out of the West Bank?

Olmer tries to show that he can regain deterrence in Lebanon and Gaza, and he does it by essentially smashing Lebanon. Every bridge in Lebanon is destroyed. Half of Beirut loses electricity. Ulmer tries to prove that he can deter. But Chesbelin says literally out loud, literally publicly, it announces that it is totally undeterable, will never stop the rocket fire. the Israelis will definitely be destroyed and killed,

and nothing Israel ever does to Lebanon will ever deter Chisbalah. And in fact, it works very hard to keep shooting right up to the last minute, right up until the signing of 1701, the UN Security Council resolution that ended the war. Unfortunately for Palestinians, the Israelis believed Hamas and Chisbalah. The Israeli public watched, as no matter what Israel did in Gaza or Lebanon,

these non-state actors that filled a vacuum that we leave, behind fill every available space and are totally undeterable and don't care about the suffering of their own people. In fact, the suffering of their own people is their strategic leverage. And Olmert was never able to pull out. In that whole psychological arc in the Israeli psyche, where's Palestinian agency? Where is Lebanese agency? Where is Chazbala? Where's Hamas. Where is anyone other than, you know, this whole idea that Sharon carried out the Gaza withdrawal? Everyone said to him, do it with an agreement. Let the PA, he let the PA in, by the way. Do it with an agreement so that it doesn't collapse and fail. But he didn't because he wanted it to

fail so that he wouldn't have to pull out of the West Bank. Well, who decided that it failed? Who decided that that would be how it ends up? Why do Palestinians not have a choice in their own decisions and their own actions? Why is everything always deterred? on their side and only ever agency on our side. When does a Palestinian have to take responsibility and run something properly? How can the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza end so badly on the Palestinian side from Palestinian decisions, Palestinian political impulses, a literal Palestinian civil war that murdered Palestinians over the question of which way Gaza would go, and it went the bad way, because those are the guys who won that civil war.

And that's Israeli agency? That's a secret Israeli plot. Incidentally, Hamas only ran in the 2006 Palestinian elections. They gave it a claim to have a right to rule Gaza because the United States forced Israel to allow it to take part in those elections. An organization that had massacred thousands of Israelis and was utterly and totally and still is committed to the complete annihilation of Israel. Has to be part of the Palestinian election. Condoleezza Rice told the Israelis they would,

lose and that would finally settle the question of what Palestinians want. And then they won. Now what? Why is American agency not relevant here for that foolish decision, that misunderstanding of Palestinian politics? Why are there

always excuses? And just the basic fundamental thing Palestinians and Shia in Lebanon, Khazbalah keep telling Israelis. We really actually want you dead. This doesn't end until then. Why is that not part of the array, you know, quilt of intersecting interests and behaviors and actions and decisions that led us to where we are?

That whole concept of changing occupation to mean whatever the hell Israel is in Gaza. No matter what Israel is in Gaza, that's what the word occupation means because we need to keep saying occupation. Because we can't see Palestinian agency anywhere. Well, that means you didn't see in 2006. that Hamas was willing to lead Gaza into destruction. That's a shame for Gaza because it means that you were on the wrong side when Hamas did lead Gaza to destruction and when it will do so again. And again and again and only ever tell ordinary Israelis,

you can hate Netanyahu all you want, you can criticize Israeli policy all you want. You still have to deal with millions of ordinary Israelis convinced that the Palestinians will only ever come to murder their kids, that that's the only thing on offer. and they were not convinced that by Netanyo. They were convinced that by Hamas, by Palestinians. And until you grapple with that,

none of this changes. The people who refused to see Palestinian decision-making, they're no help to Palestinians. They, in fact, pave the path to the next war. Thanks for listening.